According to the Playstation.Blog, LittleBigPlanet reaches 1 million user created levels.
Now, what I find really fascinating is: if you assume that even only 0.1% of these user generated levels is actually fun to play, this still leaves you with 1.000 enjoyable levels! Even if you only play a hundred of those only for 10 minutes, you have increased the time you spent playing this game by 16 hours (which is more than some games deliver out of the box).
Obviously, the problem is finding those 0.1% – market for a new kind of search engine? Are there cross-game UGC search engines already available?
This is the perfect game for you: Achievement unlocked
As auntie pixelante puts it:
achievement unlocked is a game the goal of which is just the simple accumulation of these arbitrary goals. there are a hundred. you’ll have unlocked at least two before you even start the game, at which point you’ll unlock four more: one for having started the game, one for having reached the game’s first (and only) screen, one for not having moved yet, and one for having unlocked at least one achievement.
…
all the things that satisfy the compulsive behavior publishers assume we have.
Now, as I’m in the process of implementing a MMO-light’ish platform, the topic of having achievements has been raised a couple of times in various discussions between the designer and me already… and I’m kind of undecided whether they should and would play an important role in the platform, or not.
Thinking about it, I observe how strangely fulfilling it seems to be to just count and compare the numbers of “friends” or “buddies” in Facebook, Xing or other similar platforms, at least for some people…
Is this the true meaning of virtual life – to be friends with as many people as possible (especially if it’s as easy as inviting somebody as friend with a click of the mouse, and no obligation to do anything else afterwards – EVER)?