Thank you! In between the lines of your post is the entire reason we're holding this contest and the very crux of what we think is slowing down the mod community.
Game development (as a whole, not just Unreal) has steadily become more and more difficult with every generation of games, and it has gradually required the efforts of more and more people to create a game. Notice how long the end credits for most games are these days? Long gone are the teams of a dozen (or in modern cases even two or three dozen) coming together to produce a game. Out of necessity, game development is taking on a production model much similar to the world of film visual effects, in which you have a massive team of very specialized people each working in very small niches.
That's why mod development is slowing down. It's not fun anymore! To make even a simple mod, you've got to personally take on the workload of a small team of people. Who would want to do that? They don't even do that in the industry.
Look at Epic's Level Designer job opening here.
Note the first paragraph:
It's just saying that you need to be experienced with the Editor and that you need to be able to work with a TEAM of modelers, texture artists, and scripters. NOT that you need to be able to do the work of that entire team. You'll also note that they prefer (not "require") applicants with a WORKING knowledge of 2D and 3D tools. But a "working" knowledge is far from "fluency."
The truth is there is a niche for those people who can use the editor and a group of assets that have been made for them to create a well constructed level. But most people out there who want to get into game modding don't see it that way. Many people still have the (mis)conception that development has not changed over the last decade or so, and that one must be a Jack of All Trades in order to really go out there and get a job.
The mod-community-to-be is staring down the barrel of all of the technical skills required to make even the most simple of game assets, and it scares the heck out of them. And rightly so. It's already to a point where you will have several people working on the kinds of things that most modders want to do. And the rookies are seeing the RESULTS of the work, but missing the fact that it takes the efforts of many to produce those results.
Rome wasn't built in a day. But more importantly, it wasn't built by a just one person, either.
But let me jump away from all of that for a minute. Sometimes the key to getting people started in something big is to show them how they can take on a small portion first. And that's really what this contest is about. It's about tackling a particular niche in the game industry and - with any luck - exposing MORE people to this universe. If they want to branch out from there and start taking on new niches, then that's awesome! But some may want to just focus on the key aspect of this contest, and it should be known that there is a place for those people out there as well.
As for handicapping... well, you can't ever have a rule that doesn't handicap SOMEONE. At the same time, I don't think that removing custom content from the contest precludes the ability to bring something new to the table. However, as has already been stated by Anuban, for those people that absolutely must make something that is completely their own, Epic is already holding an absolutely KILLER contest, and we certainly don't want to draw attention from that. Rather, we're trying to attract those people who aren't (yet) ready or are not interested in the various fields within asset development, and would rather focus on making great levels with the tools at hand, even if it just serves as a way to get them started on a much bigger path in the future.
We (all of us, including you), whether we acknowledge it or not, WANT as many people as we can get into the mod community. Look at Microsoft and their slow (if existent) progression toward allowing user-developed content. If more gamers out there were into this sort of thing, it would become more of a clear cut case that Microsoft would WANT to open up the ability for user-developed content (For UT3) on Xbox 360. We would have it already.
But this will require small steps. Sometimes you've got to show people how that it's possible for them to walk, and thereby empower them to want to start running.
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. What do we need to take into consideration.
