User-Generated Content and Editors in Games: A Comprehensive Survey
Yuyue Liu, Haihan Duan, Wei Cai
TL;DR
This survey refines the taxonomy of user-generated content (UGC) in video games by separating changes to gameplay from changes to resource files and by distinguishing UGC editors from general editors. It presents a parallel, two-axis framework with representative cases and discusses propagation, governance, and future directions such as AI-generated content and metaverse implications. The paper also investigates ethical concerns, including cheating and copyright, and analyzes the relationships among games, users, and communities to highlight the enduring impact of UGC on game design and industry sustainability. Overall, the work offers actionable classifications and insights to guide research, tool development, and policy around user-driven game creation.
Abstract
User-Generated Content (UGC) refers to any form of content, such as posts and images, created by users rather than by professionals. In recent years, UGC has become an essential part of the evolving video game industry, influencing both game culture and community dynamics. The ability for users to actively contribute to the games they engage with has shifted the landscape of gaming from a one-directional entertainment experience into a collaborative, user-driven ecosystem. Therefore, this growing trend highlights the urgent need for summarizing the current UGC development in game industry. Our conference paper has systematically classified the existing UGC in games and the UGC editors separately into four types. However, the previous survey lacks the depth and precision necessary to capture the wide-ranging and increasingly complex nature of UGC. To this end, as an extension of previous work, this paper presents a refined and expanded classification of UGC and UGC editors within video games, offering a more robust and comprehensive framework with representative cases that better reflects the diversity and nuances of contemporary user-generated contributions. Moreover, we provide our insights on the future of UGC, involving game culture, game genre and user creative tendencies, artificial intelligence, its potential ethical considerations, and relationship between games, users and communities.