Go for it, gamers - you can design and share Now players can design their own challenges - and share them

screenshot form the game Little Big Planet-- which lets the user creates games for other gamers. screenshot form the game Little Big Planet-- which lets the user creates games for other gamers. Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Go for it, gamers - you can design and share 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Ever since the first arcade games appeared, gamers have tried to leave their own mark on their favorite titles. Back then, you left a cool, perhaps offensive, set of initials in the machine's high-score column.

Over time, software companies have tried to key into this desire by giving gamers an increasingly impressive set of tools to personalize their games. But now, gaming companies - aided by hardware advances, online networks and the proliferation of broadband - are equipping players with an unprecedented amount of creative power to, in essence, design their own games and share them online with others.

Gamers, who were once enticed by the fantasy of becoming heroes, sports stars and warriors, are now being invited to become game developers.

"This started with the YouTube age," said Shane Satterfield, editor in chief of GameTrailers.com and vice president of content for Spike Digital Entertainment. "People have been given the power to create their own movies and share them, and it's opened the gates for other forms of media."

Last year, Halo 3 allowed users to create their own maps for multiplayer games. Earlier this summer, Electronic Arts released the first title from its collaboration with Steven Spielberg, called Boom Blox, which lets players create their own explosive challenges and share them with others online.

This fall, things will heat up with Guitar Hero World Tour, which invites players to make their own Guitar Hero songs that other people can download and play. Spore, the latest title from famed designer Will Wright, premieres next month with a robust creature creator that can be used to conceive a wild array of animals.

And then there's LittleBigPlanet, a new Sony PlayStation 3 title out in October which was built from the ground up as a way for gamers to flex their creative muscles. The most anticipated game for the PlayStation 3 this fall, it endows players with the ability to make levels and challenges using a wide variety of tools and objects that respond faithfully to physics.

The games are part of a new wave of titles that encourage casual players to make in-game creation a pursuit that rivals the game-playing itself.

"A lot of people enjoy playing games and they're excited by the idea of making games. But they don't know how to go about it," said Mark Healey, creative director of Media Molecule, developer of LittleBigPlanet. "The desire has been there for a long time, but it's only now the technology is making it easier to put the power into people's hands."

Healey said the mantra of LittleBigPlanet developers was that they wanted their creation to be for video games what YouTube was for video. But they sought to take it a step further by giving people the practical and easy-to-use tools to actually make the game, unlike YouTube, which simply facilitates video sharing.

To be sure, traditional game playing is not going away by a long shot. Most gamers will be happy to play out the vision of a trained professional. But developers see new opportunities to engage players with this sort of wish fulfillment.

"It's empowering people; it makes people feel they made something cool," said Amir Rahimi, producer for EA's Boom Blox. "What is unique is we do it in a way the casual audience can be the game designer. ... With Boom Blox anyone can get in there and create."

The added benefit of including these creative and sharing tools is that it extends the usefulness of a game well beyond its traditional life cycle. Creators can keep making whatever they want, and players can try out a virtually endless supply of user-created levels and challenges.

Guitar Hero World Tour, which launches in October, is a good example. While the game will include about 85 well known songs, it also will offer a selection of user-generated songs through its GH Tunes online library.

"The games are so huge and expensive these days and there's only so much game you can give a consumer, so it makes sense to expand it out to a huge audience of people," said Scott Pease, director of development at Neversoft, developer of Guitar Hero World Tour. "Even if only 1 percent of players get into creating, that's a ton of content you can offer that extends the life of the game."

Satterfield said the challenge will be to make sure the best user-generated content rises to the top. Gamers will want a reliable way to explore their peers' creations. Otherwise, players might sour on the idea of trying out the work of amateurs.

Pease said Guitar Hero World Tour will offer a slew of YouTube-like features like ratings, best songs of the week and a top artist showcase. LittleBigPlanet will also feature a similar structure to encourage exploration. And the game is including a self-reporting system to ensure that creators don't tread into offensive territory.

Satterfield said a lot of eyes will be on LittleBigPlanet in particular to see how it performs. If it does anywhere near what people expect, he said, it's likely other developers will follow suit.

"LittleBigPlanet is a big experiment for the industry," Satterfield said. "It remains to be seen if this will work. There hasn't been a game that gives you this much freedom to create and share."