What happens if you mix the fluidity and unchecked openness of creativity with the rigour and absoluteness of copyright law?  Utter confusion.

A few posts ago I was getting excited about the user generated content that games like Little Big Planet are putting centre stage. Well having now spent a little time with the game and played a few 'user' levels I can now confirm that there are some mind blowing and very lovely things coming out of this world of player/creators.

So my heart sank when I saw this report at 1up.com. It seems that the age old tension between the desire to create an environment where anything goes, or as the TV advert says - 'play with everything' and an environment where the needs of the publisher (in this case Sony) to protect the rights of intellectual property owners at all costs prevails.

Homage levels to other games such as Super Mario have been removed suddenly without warning or explanation, which does beg the question why they have released a game that is going to require them to resource the policing of it even more as time goes on and the user base increases.

This is a quote from the creator of a much loved level called the Azure Palace that was removed without explanation  -

"I invested a huge amount of time making The Azure Palace to not only be original, but to shift the gameplay of this wonderful game you guys made. Besides similarities to underwater stages in general, there is nothing directly taken from any game/movie/etc. If there so happened to be one, the terms of moderation are by far extremely irrational. The user is given no chance to change certain aspects of his creation to conform to said rules above. WE'RE NOT EVEN GIVEN A FREAKING REASON AS TO WHY IT HAPPENED!!!"

Media Molecule the game's creators have said they will try to deliver a much clearer moderation system soon. But it has become clear that moderation decisions are not being taken by the developers but by Sony itself.  This has obviously left a sour taste.

Unfortunately this seems to have affected some of the finest user levels, leaving users confused and the level maker burnt after spending sometimes up to 30 hours to pull off a particularly innovative creation.

This is an object lesson for all of us involved in social media, building user trust and in the developing of tools that engage the creativity of users - I only hope this one get's sorted out before it creates any lasting damage.

Justin

It seems like Web 2.0 console gaming is now fully upon us. Recently we have seen Blast Works 'Build, Fuse and Destroy' for the Wii, a shoot'em up which asked its users to build and share their own levels.

But by far the biggest critical success so far is Little BIG Planet which the Guardian has said is the reason anyone should buy a PS3 right now. The game has sumptuous imagery, an amazing physics engine and looks a lot of fun but like Build, Fuse and Destroy much work has been put in by the developers to create a user toolkit to create new levels, that will in theory give the game a much longer lease of life, as users design, share and play each other's new creations.

Having seen the toolkit in action it looks like making new stuff in the game is pretty hard and will likely reduce the active audience considerably, but like the rest of the user generated world, maybe it only needs a few percent of super users to allow this game to  keep on delightfully growing.