作者：Spencer Dalziel

2007年，索尼电脑娱乐公司总裁Phil Harrison创造了“游戏3.0”这个词。随后它便成为了索尼在线虚拟社区Home的宣传标语。Harrison通过从Youtube以及Myspace等web 2.0应用中提取用户生成内容（UGC），并以此创造出了游戏3.0的概念。

这一理念认为网站，应用和游戏能够受UGC驱动并创造出具有社交性，协同性以及多元化的在线内容，并且由用户不断更新这些内容。

Harrison是在看到Media Molecule创造《小小大星球》时才诞生了游戏3.0这个想法。可以说取得了巨大成功的《小小大星球》是专为游戏3.0以及web 2.0（具有综合且容易使用的平台设计工具）量身打造的一款游戏。如此用户便能够为其他玩家创造出不间断的游戏内容，并保持这些内容的更新。

但是我们该如何将这一理念整合到大型多人在线游戏中，并实时传送UGC？德蒙福特大学（游戏邦注：DMU，位于英国莱斯特郡）的Raouf Hamzaoui教授认为这一理念的可能性不仅停留在理论上，他同时也希望通过自己的努力将其落实行动。

cng-final(from tehinquirer)

德蒙福特大学参与了社区网络游戏（CNG）项目以推广UGC并将其整合到MMO游戏中，从而能够同时支持数千名玩家一起体验这些游戏内容。从理论上来看，这一理念是将游戏3.0和《小小大星球》内容更新与《魔兽世界》或《第二人生》等游戏整合在一起。

Hamzaoui说道：“该联盟成立于2008年末，并希望获得欧洲信息和通信技术委员会的支持。而德蒙福特大学正是因为主攻多媒体通信而受邀加入了该联盟。”

当前网络所面临的问题便是关于如何将实时UGC传送到MMO游戏中。我们不仅需要快速提供相关内容，还需要确保它能够穿越网络，并无缝地整合到游戏体验中。

“我们不难将CNG的UGC性能整合到游戏中，因此社区运营商（或者MMOG运营商）便能够有效地调整灵活性，”Hamzaoui说道“但是我们首先需要从广义上理解UGC。UGC可以包含那些可被添加到游戏中的纹理和对象以及从屏幕中抓取的游戏视频，并在与其他玩家分享前由用户做出注释。除了技术，CNG还必须确保UGC能够加强用户体验并且不会扰乱游戏的进展。”

教授表示，提供无缝UCG整合的后勤工作虽然具有难度，但是对于CNG项目来说却是完全可行的。

“包括UGC在内的社区活动将受到一个单独服务器的控制。而MMOG运营商将控制这一服务器。每个CNG服务器将作用于不同的用户区块，并且将覆盖不同的地理区域。MMOG服务器和CNG服务器是相互联系在一起并能够共享用户数据。”CNG团队正致力于研究游戏调整技术，从而让我们能够进行纹理换置，游戏大小修改与游戏重叠等行动。而每一种技术的研究都是为了能够在内容更新时提供给玩家更棒的用户体验。

“CNG将创造一个拦截层并改变游戏指令，从而将游戏资产替换成项目使用程序所生成的资产。CNG将使用拦截层缩小游戏窗口尺寸并设置新窗口围绕着它们。CNG将使用拦截层重新设计游戏可视化领域并在游戏帧领域添加网页浏览器对象以托管在线网页。”

但是对于整个团队来说他们面临的最大障碍之一便是如何最大规模地实现这一创想。MMO玩家可能是最苛求的PC用户，而如果CNG项目不能提供优化的UCG体验，他们便会毫不留情地离开。

对于教授的团队来说，他们所面临的最大难题便是让许多MMOG玩家在无需中断游戏以及无需将数据加载到服务器的前提下分享大量的UGC。

为了克服这一难题，DMU的团队加入了对等（P2P）系统开发中，允许MMO玩家能够将游戏的实时视频呈献给其他用户。这让每个MMOG用户能够成为高端实时视频的来源——但是这种整合却不简单。拥有较高比特率且上千名玩家同时播放的视频便是一大网络杀手。而教授的任务便是克服这一问题并设计出拥塞控制机制。从而让玩家能够在不影响网络运行的前提下获得最大数额的UGC。

“P2P实时视频系统仍然出于开发阶段，但是MMOG玩家已经能够多路传送实时视频了。任何玩家都可以在P2P网络中接收到相关视频，”Hamzaoui说道。

为了实现这一目标，视频流量便不应该压制上传和下砸的带宽，否则将会彻底扼杀了整款游戏。整个团队需要确保客户端-服务器流量的平衡，否则游戏将不能正常运行并且MMO玩家也将永远离开游戏。团队便是使用面向所有P2P网络流量的“网络拓补结构”而创造出了平衡。

“其它对等结构也将根据它们与其它不同资源的距离，以及周围其它机构的能力而自动附加到所有P2P子集上。UDP作为传送协议能够保护视频数据在应用层中避免出现丢包的情况，并且还包含了一些联系着接收机外反馈的无比率代码，”Hamzaoui解释道。

运行于引擎盖下的这种技术的整合将能够加强游戏的社交性。教授也希望能够因此打开玩家的协作工具箱，让他们能够享受即时传讯，文件共享，撰写博客以及游戏中进行音频和视频聊天等功能。DMU还有一个项目是关于创造能够捕捉，编辑，注释并将游戏中的视频上传到视频共享网站中的功能。

如果该项目不能从MMO游戏开发者和发行商的角度进行思考，它便会引出巨大的缺陷——尽管CNG已经诱发了我们对于项目结果的期盼。所以CNG既会与MMO游戏开发者保持交流，同时也在联盟中拥有了一席之地。来自布莱顿的游戏开发商Redbedlam推出了一款以罗马为背景的大型多人在线游戏，并且他们也是该项目的成员，从而也证明了这种组合创造具有实践意义。

该项目所带来的利益也是显而易见。整个团队致力于创建效益高的社区工具，而开发者也不需要拿自己当前的MMO游戏去整合UGC。同时它也能够在一款MMO游戏中创造不同社区，并为广告商们提供潜在的收益来源。

Hamzaoui教授认为在不远的未来我们将能够实现在MMO游戏中创造UGC元素的设想。

“UGC的使用将变得越来越重要——特别是用于支持大型多人在线游戏中的社交网络。最近尼尔森报告指出美国人会投入23%的在线时间于社交网络服务中，但是却只有10%的时间是在玩在线游戏。”

结合UGC和社交互动我们可以发现在线游戏玩家开始慢慢接近他们早前极力抵触的MMO游戏，而这类型游戏的玩家数量也随之提高并能够给他们带来更多游戏乐趣。

CNG项目将在2012年8月份结束，而教授也告诉我们所有的参与者都非常享受整个开发过程。我也希望在明年的这个时候我们能够看到他们仍在努力迎合MMO玩家的需求。

游戏邦注：原文发表于2010年8月19日，所涉事件和数据均以当时为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

MMO games can do user generated content

By Spencer Dalziel

Thu Aug 19 2010

BACK IN 2007 Sony computer entertainment president Phil Harrison coined the term ‘gaming 3.0′. The term was floated as a bit of marketing puff for Sony’s terrible online Home avatar-based community. Taking the bones of user generated content (UGC) from web 2.0 applications like Youtube and Myspace, Harrison envisioned using that to create gaming 3.0.

The idea was that sites, applications and games could be driven by UGC to create social, collaborative and dynamic online content that would be continually updated by users.

Gaming 3.0 for Home might have been flim-flammery but it was prescient and Harrison extrapolated the idea when he saw Media Molecule working on Little Big Planet (LBP) in the same year. The massively successful and insanely addictive LBP was tailored for gaming 3.0 and web 2.0 with integrated, easy-to-use platform design tools. The idea was that users could create ceaseless permutations of gaming content that could be uploaded and played by other players.

Now that works and it works well. But how translatable is that framework into Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, feeding UGC in real time? Professor Raouf Hamzaoui at De Montfort University thinks it is not just theoretically possible, he is working on a project to make it happen.

De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) is taking part in a Community Network Game (CNG) project to distribute UGC and embed it in MMO games that can support thousands of players simultaneously. In theory, the idea is to mash gaming 3.0 and LBP content updates with games like World of Warcraft or Second Life.

“A consortium was formed in late 2008 to bid for a European Commission Information and Communication Technologies call for proposals. DMU was invited to join the consortium because of its expertise in multimedia communications,” Hamzaoui told The INQUIRER.

The problem for current networks is coping with delivering real time UGC for MMO games. Content has to be provided on the fly and could kill the network, whereas it should be a seamlessly integrated experience.

“CNG UGC capabilities are not hard coded into the game and therefore have the flexibility for being changed by the community operator (which may be also the MMOG operator),” Hamzaoui said. “It is important to clarify that we understand UGC in a broad sense. UGC can include textures and objects added to the game but also video of the game captured from the screen and annotated by the user before being shared with other gamers. The challenge of CNG is both on technology and making sure that UGC will enhance the experience of the users and would not disturb the game.”

At the moment, the professor said the logistics involved in offering seamless UCG integration are difficult but feasible for the CNG project.

“The community activities including UGC will be controlled by a separate server. The server may be operated by the MMOG operator. Each CNG server may serve a different segment of users and may be covering different geographical areas. There might be a connection between the MMOG server and the CNG servers to share user data.”

The CNG team is working on game adaptation technology to allow texture replacement, game size modification and game overlay. Each technology is designed to create a better user experience when uploading content.

“CNG will develop an interception layer and alter the game’s directives for replacing the game’s assets with assets that will be generated by the project’s utilities. CNG will use the interception layer for decreasing the game window size and surrounding it with new windows. CNG will use the interception layer for redesigning the game visualisation area and adding web browser objects to the game frame area to host online web pages.”

But one of the biggest hurdles for the team is rolling this out on a massive scale. MMO gamers are probably some of the most demanding PC users and if the CNG project doesn’t provide an optimised UCG experience they won’t stick around.

The difficulty for the professor’s team is allowing a large number of MMOG gamers to share a high volume of UGC without interrupting game play and without the need to upload the data to a server.

To meet the challenge, the team at DMU are involved in the development of a peer-to-peer (P2P) system which should allow MMO gamers to stream live video of their game to other gamers. This lets every MMOG user become a source of high-quality live video – no easy feat to integrate well. High bit-rate video with thousands of people playing simultaneously is a network choker. The professor’s task to overcome this is to design congestion control mechanisms. These will give the player the maximum amount of UGC without taking the network out of commission.

“The P2P live video system is still in the design stage [but] any MMOG player should be able to multicast live video. The video can potentially be received by any other player in the P2P network,” Hamzaoui said.

To achieve this, the video traffic shouldn’t overwhelm the upload or download bandwidth. If it did, it would kill the game. The team needs to hit an absolute equilibrium on client-server traffic or the game will go down and the MMO gamers will weep. The team uses a “mesh-based topology” for all P2P network traffic to create balance.

“A peer should be automatically attached to a subset of all P2P overlays according to its distance to the different sources and to the capacity of the other peers in its surroundings. UDP is used as the transport protocol, and the video data is protected against packet loss at the application layer with rateless codes in conjunction with receiver feedback,” Hamzaoui explained.

The incorporation of this technology running under the hood will enhance the social aspect of gaming. The professor hopes it will open up collaborative toolsets for gamers so they can instant message, file share, blog, and audio and video chat in game. DMU’s part of the project will also develop tools to capture, edit, annotate, and upload videos of the game to video sharing sites.

The project would be lacking if it didn’t have the eyes and ears of MMO games developers and publishers but CNG has already whetted the appetite for some. As well as speaking with a raft of MMO games developers, the CNG has a member on its consortium. Brighton based games developer Redbedlam released a Roman MMORPG game and is a project member, adding practical advice to the mix.

The benefits from the project are obvious. The team is building cost-effective community tools and developers won’t have to recode their current MMO titles to incorporate UGC. It should also enable the creation of separate communities within a single MMO game and offer another potential revenue stream for the ad-men.

Professor Hamzaoui thinks that creating the element of UGC in MMO games will take off in the near future.

“The use of UGC, especially to support social networking in MMOGs, will become more and more important. A recent Nielsen report shows that Americans spend almost 23 per cent of their online time on social networking services and just over 10 per cent on online games.”

Combining UGC and social interaction could see online gamers moving to MMO titles they had previously avoided, and would also increase the number of gamers playing, keeping everyone happy.

The CNG project will end in August 2012 and is a closed development effort so you can’t sign up. However, the professor told us that the partners will be happy to exploit the results. Hopefully that means we’ll be able to catch up this time next year to see if they managed to keep those demanding MMO fans happy.(source:theinquirer)