After writing my previous article on leveraging user-created content, I’ve been thinking about the subject some more.  I had one more insight I felt I should share.  But first let’s back up a bit…

A lot of times in games you work with sets of data.  Data is just information, 1s and 0s, the contents of variables; it doesn’t have any meaning in itself.  For data to mean something, it has to have context.  You “view” the model in a certain context.

When I talk about “leveraging” content, all I’m really talking about is switching the context.  A classic example (one example where software actually does leverage user-created content) is Streets of SimCity.  This was a racing/combat game published by Electronic Arts; the player went on missions involving driving around a city.  The really interesting thing was that the player could import city maps from SimCity 2000, and these cities would be rendered in full 3D to create custom driving environments for the player.  (SimCopter had a similar feature; the player could fly a helicopter around an imported city.)

The point here is the context switching.  In the context of SimCity 2000, a city is (roughly speaking) an arrangement of buildings and zones that have economic effects on each other.  However, in Streets of SimCity, the city is an arrangement of buildings and zones that define 3D geography.  The underlying data has not changed, it’s just that the games view it in different contexts.

With this in mind, we revisit the question: In what situations would it be appropriate and/or easy to leverage user-created content?  Now the answer is more apparent.  To leverage content in a new situation, you must view it in a different context so it has a different meaning.