More info and the official announcement!
The whole environment feels exactly like SC:BW mapmaking did at the very start of when I joined SEN who knows how long ago- lots of information being shared, lots of cool ideas getting started (and very few getting finished), and people just finding out amazing things that are possible with the new hammer editor. People are remaking Smite, League of Legends, and even some RTS games inside of the Dota2 custom games section. And of course plenty of minigames- Omni Party, Pudge Wars, etc.
I haven't done anything serious with the SC2 mapmaking engine so I can't say for sure which is more user-friendly or powerful, but I would absolutely love to be able to play a variety of old Starcraft maps inside of Dota2 and I think it's going to be the breeding ground for a lot of new content. And I don't think Valve could fuck up their version of the Arcade as much as Blizzard did if they tried to- and everything is entirely free.
One nice thing that was talked about prior to Dota2 that I could definitely see Valve actually doing well is monetization of custom games. Currently, there are three different monetization systems which all reward content creators:
- Tournaments can sell their tickets which allow people to watch in-game replays
- Graphic designers can release their custom hero sets to the workplace- top ones are added to the game.
- Competitive gaming teams can sell penants which players can buy to get some in-game drops when watching pro games.
In each of these cases, the people working behind the scenes- the tournament admin, the designers, or the gaming teams- earn a percentage of the revenue from it. I believe this number is 25% in most cases, but I'm not sure. Either way, it's been enough for a reasonable number of the best people to support themselves full time through Dota2.
So, although it's not there yet, you can be sure that Valve encourages embracing User Generated Content. For example, maybe an author would be able to set a maximum number of "free plays" of their map, and then in order to continue playing you would have to buy the map for some set price, and you as the mapmaker would earn 25% of that. 1% of the nearly 10 million Dota2 players in the past month like your $4 map? You just earned a (second?) 6 figure salary.
So if you haven't taken a look yet, I definitely encourage you to do so. Here are some examples just from the past couple of days:
- Dota Dash (Mario-kart esque)
- Warlocks
- Over the Shoulder Smite-esque
None.
