Your Next: Building Community Building
Why community video content is vital to EverQuest Next
Sean 'Day[9]' Plott recently gave a presentation at GDC Next (How appropriate) titled The Observer Friendly Game, he makes a great case as to why this type of content is valuable to developers as well as players and I highly recommend you check it out if you have any interest in online media or game design.
So, with that in mind, how will SOE choose to approach new digital media for the EverQuest Next duo? As I'm sure you can guess, I believe it should not only allow and encourage the community to make content based on their games, SOE should integrate it into the core experience.
SOE has a good track record of encouraging community content with PlanetSide 2, so it's safe to assume we'll see a similar stance for EverQuest Next. The way I see it, this will be great for EverQuest Next and even better for Landmark.
For Landmark, the best possible promotion will be players showing off their creations. When people see what is possible to achieve with the tools players will have I'm sure more than a few will want to try it for themselves, and with such a low barrier to entry many will. When we get to the point of player made story driven content backed up with SOEmote, we could have a new colossus on our hands.
With prominent YouTubers such as Jesse Cox and the Yogscast's Sjin already expressing interest, there will certainly be more to follow, and Landmark looks certain to enjoy a strong YouTube presence as soon as NDAs are lifted. But what of the future?
We have a company that embraces community created content, content creators and a captive audience all lined up, so where could this lead? Personally I hope that SOE fully embraces emerging 'new media' outlets like Twitch and the people that create the content, and by fully embrace I mean put a stream in the launcher, advertise YouTube series on the official site, provide content creators with tools and resources like artwork for overlays or machinima and fonts for titles. Give them resources for contests and giveaways, let a fan podcast drop the breaking news first (they've actually already done this last one, it was amazing). Directly support the people that will make the game a sensation.
SOE has stated time and again it wants the community to be directly involved in the development of EverQuest Next; it’s giving us the tools to build the game, why not tools to build the community?
In the interest of full disclosure, I do make YouTube videos and I have used Twitch to broadcast (and certainly will again). I have never monetized any of this content and have no plans to in the near future, though I fully support people who do.
LockSixTime