UGC can power entire virtual economies (benefiting developers and consumers)

Of course, Second Life is known for far more than just Tringo. The users of Second Life are responsible for creating 100% of its virtual content, and their efforts are generating millions of dollars in collective revenue every month. Second Life's UGC-driven economy is notable for its size, but not necessarily its uniqueness; numerous massive multiplayer game developers are hoping to similarly benefit from player creativity. And much (both positive and negative) has been written about the attempts by respected MMOG designer Raph Koster to incorporate UGC in Star Wars Galaxies.


UGC can reduce the cost of populating games with rich content

An oft-cited challenge facing the video game industry is the increasing cost of populating video games with content – an unfortunate consequence of increasingly advanced hardware, competition, and the popularity of "open world" games. Fortunately, users are more than willing to help tackle this challenge when given the tools and opportunity. Fans of The Sims (most popular PC game of all time) have collectively created a gigantic library of virtual objects that any player can download in order to populate their virtual home. And RedOctane, publisher of the smash hit Guitar Hero, used a public competition to acquire original music for Guitar Hero 2 (and of course, generate buzz for the title.)


UGC can help developers identify promising talent

It may not come as a surprise that Valve, maker of the aforementioned Half-Life, wisely decided to offer jobs to the users who created Counter-Strike. But this phenomenon isn't limited to such famous users – game companies have been encouraging young, prospective designers to showcase their talent via UGC for years. The process is often informal, but some developers (such as Bioware) have gone so far as to build competitions around it – identifying talent and enriching their games in the process.


UGC can spawn new art forms – like machinima

Many people still think of video games as children's entertainment at best, crude time-waster at worst. Common acceptance of games as an art form – on a par with film and television – is still a work in progress. And yet, not only is it indisputably true that games are art (see Dr Henry Jenkins' excellent arguments to this effect), but games have given birth to an entirely new art form. I'm referring, of course, to the unique animated films – created through the use of video game engines – that are known as machinima. What started as a fringe consumer hobby has quickly evolved into a burgeoning art form, complete with extremely popular (and profit-generating) professional outfits such as Rooster Teeth, creator of Red vs. Blue. If you've never watched machinima of any kind, do yourself a favor and check it out. Trying to understand it from verbal descriptions is like trying to understand television without ever having seen it.


UGC can turn games into powerful academic, social, and economic tools

Machinima is just one of many significant non-game phenomena that have arisen from the union of video games and UGC. A host of academic, social, and economic tools are being created by users of games – without special encouragement or support from the video game industry. Games are being used to create classroom simulations, to supplement (or replace) traditional video-conferencing, to make history lessons interactive, and much more. And I'm not even talking about the surprising range of "serious uses" for commercial, unmodified games (such as weight-loss systems); that's a topic for a whole new article.