The Sims allowed people the ability to create their own characters and environments so there definetely was user-generated content within that game, just like in Spore.

Again, the idea is that the experience of "creating" is what attracts the player. This isn't a foreign concept. Lego has had success with this for the past 50 years, and they sell a bunch of plastic blocks in a bucket!

Character creation and environments are not UGC (I could understand confusing the latter, but the former?). It's levels that refers to, and anything like that in The Sims is still made by the developers.

He can quote all the speeches in the world, and Reggie could say "we only make UGC games from now on," but there aren't any new Nintendo games to support this argument. It's all hogwash until I buy a Nintendo game, it asks me to make a level, and I say "where the hell is the game in here?" Nintendo has over 20 million-sellers on the Wii. Wii Music is the only game that's all about UGC. Spore was a good point, but it was the most pirated game of all time. Tons of people wanted to play the game, but nobody wanted to pay EA for DRM, especially when you'd have to call EA and ask permission to install it more than 3 times.

And when Reggie's talking about "active entertainment rather than passive entertainment," he isn't necessarily talking about UGC. I think he's talking about using your imagination to play a game in several ways. New SMB Wii can be played alone, as a team, or as a race or a battle. You can do a speedrun, try to get 99 lives, look for secrets, or watch the Super Guide. Animal Crossing can be about shopping, collecting, fishing, trading, or about designing clothing and decorating your apartment. This is what separates games from movies, which tell the same story each time to each consumer.

And March of the Minis is a full game with a level editor ON THE SIDE. It does not replace the full game. I still have no idea what he's talking about.

Anyway, the new Excitebike for WiiWare has a level editor, and nobody can complain, because the original Excitebike had one too, in 1984. And it kicked ass.

You create your own house and characters in The Sims and they are shared on a local level, so isn't that considered UGC? Sure, there are building blocks created by the developers, but the same is true for Spore and LittleBigPlanet.

"Nintendo’s embrace of User Generated Content reveals a deep resentment for content within the company culture. They want to make gameplay ideas, not the content for them (they would rather dump that on you, the poor consumer). This distaste for content within Nintendo perhaps illustrates why Nintendo rarely adventures into new content. All we get is old content (Metroid, Mario, Zelda) recycled with new gameplay processes. Even with in the universes themselves, little is changed. Link still gets the Master Sword, hook shots, boomerangs, visits Kariko Village and Hyrule Lake, and defeat Ganon still after twenty years. The only difference is that the game is in 3d, or that you are traveling by boat, by train, or using the stylus, or you turn into a dog, or that you have no sword. For a company that champions creativity, Nintendo shows very little of it on the content side. This is perhaps why they keep hemorrhaging customers of the Core Market. People get bored playing the same content over and over again."

This paragraph is exactly how I feel. I realise now that this is what I want from new Nintendo games. Similar gameplay; new and original content. Pokémon is suffering from this even more than Zelda: there's always Gyms, a Rival, and Elite Four, an evil Team, legendaries fought at the end... - I don't want new gameplay modes from Pokémon (like Contests or Mystery Dungeon or Battle Tower). I want new content (new level design, music, game progression).

Same with Metroid. Prime and Fusion were interesting takes, but what would really interest me is the same sort of world and content expansion that Super Metroid did to Metroid, or SMB3 did to SMB1. Other M looks to be following Fusion in linearity, Halo in storytelling and FF in graphical style. None of those represent a world and enemies/items/puzzles expansion.

That doesn't make The Sims a UGC game. It just shows Spore isn't that much of a UGC game.

But Little Big Planet is one because the actual levels are relatively few and there are loads of tutorials on how to make your own.

Malstrom has said that mods (that require game hacking and often programming skill) aren't UGC. In fact he praised games that allow mods.

But when the developers make in-game tools with limited blocks like Wii Music, or LBP, or SSBB's levels, that's the UGC he is criticising.

Well... I've always defined UGC as, simply, any game content created by the user (hence a house created by the user in The Sims is UGC). But I guess you're saying UGC has to make up the entirety of the game for this to be what Malstrom's talking about, right?

Anyways, I still don't clearly see why it's a big problem for consumers. Again, I think this is something that appeals to a different audience and has a different appeal. It doesn't mean the game industry is trying to get out of the business of creating, but even if it did, how would consumers really even know or care about it? People buying games are just looking to have fun, they aren't concious of the supposed game industry's plot to screw them over.

"But I guess you're saying UGC has to make up the entirety of the game for this to be what Malstrom's talking about, right?"

No, things like levels, stages, missions, songs (for rhythm games), dungeons and overworlds, puzzles, etc.

The Sims is basically one big stage, for each game and expansion. What you do in there is your choice, but the content is still from the developers.

The problem with Spore was that the content was too weak, as you pointed out. The UGC was given emphasis first, while The Sims was content properly integrating UGC.

So in that sense, it's not UGC. It's UGC without good enough content.

Mario Paint was mostly UGC, but the content, which included the tools, was great. So was The Sims. And most games with editors still have loads of developer-made content.

Spore, Little Big Planet, and Wii Music were lacking. Not that they didn't have any, just not enough.

EDIT: Okay, I get it. It's using UGC as a substitute for content. The Sims was no substitute. The gameplay was all about having fun with your character, and that was the content.