American McGee is over in Shanghai these days, hard at work on a new Alice game. But once upon a time he worked on Doom, which was a prime destination for user-generated content. And he apparently has some strong feelings about games that rely heavily on that same sort of content to drive interest.
Asked by Geek.com what he thought of the new trend of user-generated content appearing on consoles as well as PCs, with Little Big Planet as an example, McGee said, "New trend? I seem to recall this being a "trend" back in the Doom days. The only difference now is that someone is trying to monetize it."

"That's all fine and good, but I think if game products or publishers are relying on "outside the box" content created by users to drive interest in their titles - then they should find ways of compensating those users for developing added value. That might even inspire the user content communities to step up their game."

McGee didn't elaborate on what compensating users would entail, but the thing that springs to mind is cold, hard cash.

Of course, it could be argued that the enjoyment derived from creating and sharing levels through a game like Little Big Planet is compensation enough. What do you think?