1. Building Community around Pollinated Content
Upload your creature and send him on an epic journey into the SPORE Community

2. What is this thing called Content?
Buildings & Lots
Sims
Stories/Movies
Introduction to content.
-- Can’t talk about Pollinated Content without know what content means in a Maxis game.

3. by the way, these aren’t to scale….
I will talk about the various content types in Spore and which ones will be included in the pollinated system. (and will probably have more art in this slide by March…)
Hopefully I’ll be able to talk in specifics by level about how the pollination system will work – will determine this with my Exec. Producer, Marketing and PR closer to GDC.
by the way, these aren’t to scale….

4. Pollinated huh? what? What it isn’t: What it is (sorta):
P2P
MMORPG
modding
What it is (sorta):
Asynchronous sharing of stuff you made in your game with your pals or a total stranger
The benefits of not having a zillion simultaneous connections to your server
Review how asynchronous content sharing works and why it works for games where there is no server side simulation required.
Draw comparisons with MMORPG (WoW, CoH, Everquest) – server side simulations, little content customization.
Draw comparisons with BF2 (maps),

5. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine
The Sims 2 Community is prolific!
12K Movies and 50K Stories
430K Sims uploaded by 55K users from over 170 countries
280K Lots uploaded by 64K users
Make the creators famous and give them a place to share their creations!
These numbers are current. Need to run report to get all-time totals (Sims DB is purged of content on a regular basis)
Users like to share content this way - and more people are consumers (downloaders) than creators (uploaders)

6. Taking it to the next level
Share the best content automatically and in the background
Provide an integrated space for users to share their game experiences
Describe Pollinated content system in spore.
Describe
- Player Journal
- Search
- Browse
- Buddy List
- Style Groupings

7. Content Pollination Server Player Computer Ecosystem Player creature
Will’s description of Pollinated Content – functional matching in the Creature Game
Player creature

8. Pollination #2 ++ Server Player Computer Buy Mode
Will’s slide about aesthetic matching – Buildings using collaborative filtering in the shopping catalog

9. The Massively Solo Player Game
Combat
Other players download your creatures and compete with them for ultimate survival in their game
Cooperative
As other players play the Space game, your creatures participate in alliances and become even more connected
Will’s term – the MSPG
How does your creation impact other people’s games and how do you get feedback about that?
How do you find your friend’s content and make new friends with similar taste in content as you?
Missions
Your uploaded creatures become the game pieces of other player’s missions in the Space game
Shared Experience
Share your best creations with a group of your friends and have their content automatically fill your Spore galaxy.

10. Our town (or tribe, or city, or planet….)
Fan site webmasters
Community Leaders
Artists
Storytellers
Why should you want to have a strong community?
Why is community important?
New content means greater replayability of games, by broadening the diversity of available content
Keeps a captive audience – which was perfect for the expansion pack based revenue model of the Sims (also WoW and other MMORPG’s are an example of this)
Huge WOM. a faithful community is the best advertising you can do – be creating a way for fansites to also become content repositories you expand the circle.

11. The Maxis Way How we’ve done it
tools, websites and knowing your audience
open(ish) communication between developers and community
make it easy. make it fun.

12. Make the users do the work
SC4
The Terrain
Generator and
the BAT
Sims1
Make a Date!
Sims2
The Body Shop and getting in the game
--- Need better screenshot of Make-a-Date tool
--- Need Creature editor screenshot
-- Add animation
Maxis has a history of releasing tools to their users – often pre-ship. After users create content, they can share it either on a fansite or via the official Maxis sites.
Shared Experience creates community
Screenshot of
Creature Editor
will go here

13. The Internet brings us all together
Pick the stuff you like and connect with others or
Connect with others to get the stuff you like

14. Talk about fansites and their place in the community.
Talk about ongoing discussions about hooks for fansite participation in Spore. How content will be shared, grey shards, Style groupings.
(will probably add a dozen more screenshots – emphasis is on strong participation in the fansite community)
What we’ve learned from the fansite webmasters:
Word of Mouth – the best way to build relationships
Be generous with your time and energy – these folks are your best evangelists
Don’t forget to protect your IP…

15. A needle in a haystack… or should I say an amoeba in a galaxy?
How are you going to find stuff in Spore?
Buddy Lists
Style Groups
Collaborative Filtering
Store, find, sort, annotate
Bring it back around to the metagame in Spore.
Spore is about exploration – of your planet, of your solar system, of the galaxy – how will players find content and how will they find each other?

16. Bring it all together, by bringing it all together
Creators
Consumers
Gamers
Community Leaders
All served by the pollinated system – one system, many solutions, one community

17. Go ahead… Ask me anything and no… I don’t know when we’re shipping…
Questions and answers
and no… I don’t know when we’re shipping…