Where is the effort overall when releasing CS or FC?

[Kreekakon]

My opinion:

Short, and half facetious answer:

Replace GoAnimate with the custom story tools.






Longer answer:

The reason that I think there are so many "low quality" custom stories is largely owing to the fact that the custom story tools are incredibly easy to use, and produce working levels with. When someone picks it up they'll tinker around for a bit, and very quickly be able to make a working(?) level.

Most people, particularly ones who haven't fumbled around in video game development related tasks before, will at this moment be very excited that they created their own "video game". They'll feel very good about themselves running around in their very own level when in reality they've only scratched the surface of what making a good custom story demands. After this they'll be itching to take their "skills", and try to crank out whatever spontaneous idea they probably came up with, and show it to everyone as fast as they can because they're very excited to show off what they can do.

I'll be honest, I think the "excitement" phase is something that almost everyone who just learned how to use the tools will experience. The wise thing to do here though is to calm down, not be over-eager, and realize that there's much more to making a custom story than just randomly slapping together whatever you think looks nice.

As for my additional thoughts after this...refer to Statyk's post because he pretty much nailed t.