The biggest issue I have with it, is one that's been pointed out many times, currently many mods are out there to fix bugs left in by the game developers (ex: lady walking into ground in skyrim, air- walking). This does nothing to make developers want to fix their bugs, in fact it incentives them to leave them in so they get money from mods that are made to fix the bugs. Yes modders could release the bug-fix mods as a free mod, but i take it for granted that humans are inherently greedy.
Also in the short time it was up mods (such as skyUI) that were created as a basic mod which further mods changed and improved, were changed to paid, leading to the *free* mods that depend on it, to actually cost money (a sort of ingenious business plan actually). Basically the other complaint I have is that modders will release multiple mod packs, when they usually would have released them together.
One thing that complicates software in regards to almost anything else is the lack of marginal cost. Uploading 1 app, or a thousand, has the same fixed cost (the time to develop them).
As for why paid modding is inherantly corrosive. Captiliasm makes the assumption that there are limited resources for unlimited wants, thus wants are mutually exclusive, if you choose to do X, you can not do Y. Mods... are not mutually exclusive, inherently. I can play 1 Starcraft 2 map, or a thousand, and the act of playing one does not preclude me from ever playing another. With paid mods, I now must fall back into the captialistic choice of pay for mod to the exclusion of being able to pay for another. Once I'm forced into that choice, as a user, I will become VERY selective of what mods I will use, drastically reducing the ones I'm willing to even try at all. This deprives a modder feedback, since how can a user provide useful feedback if they can't even try it at all?
From the dev side, I now have every incentive to block ANYONE from using my work without my explicit permission. This entails multiple lawyers and contracts now being obligatory, an expense that must be born by someone, either the modder or the host (Valve) or the original developer (Bestheda). Furthermore, as a modder, since mods are behind a paywall, people will have to waste time and effort reinventing the wheel (since to learn how X is done, I must pay, instead of just looking) instead of improving existing material. This is covered quite well in the Parlor and the Cathedral article I linked.
Imagine for a moment that upon buying the SC2, we modders had to pay to be able to even open the Blizzard dependencies in the editor. I imagine that would be a turn off for a fair amount of the crowd here.
Capitalism does not 'make the assumption that resources are mutually exclusive'. In fact, I'd argue it's closer to the opposite: the neo-classical economics it is based on kind-of assume that there's always enough of everything: if someone's pricing too high, you go to a competitor that is - naturally - available. It makes the assumption that people will try and optimize their profit: or simply, get the most bang for their buck. The thing is, the fact that paid mods exist does not mean that free mods disappear entirely. The only place you will become 'more selective of what mods you use' is within actual paid mods. And this just means you do some research before trying any random thing. That's really no different than you not buying every single indie game out there.
At the same time, feedback is overrated: I'm willing to argue you can make a perfectly balanced and fun map or mod by using just a bunch of friends as QA, if you just dedicate yourself. I mean, entire games may not even have QA teams larger than 20 heads and you're telling me you need the feedback of hundreds of people to make your map balanced? Really?
You really also don't need legal matters for this at all, if there is some kind of company policing these things. Blizzard polices their StarCraft maps (although in a limited way). If Valve did the same for their mods (double checked with authors of free mods on Curse and such), I'm sure a mod marketplace could work fine. Again: the issue is Valve not being willing and/or able to do this, not some kind of inherent impossibility. The fact that people have already been making money of maps and mods for years demonstrates this.
I see so many of the same dumb arguments from people against the idea of a marketplace rehashed every time it is brought up. But so many of them make absolutely no sense or are deliberately ignoring solutions to problems they are proposing.
"99% of people will over charge their mods and so instead of them being highly popular and being able to earn a bit through donating, only 1 rich person will buy it and the mod will be never used."
But out of all of them THIS one has to be by far the dumbest one I've ever heard.
The whole idea of "donating" is silly since nobody donates. I've made close to 20 games over the last 5 years, some were pretty popular and I have received exactly $0.00 in donations. At first I thought it was because I was not advertising a way to donate to me properly so I put the way to donate to me on every single one of my maps descriptions and loading screens, nothing. I even have the way to donate on my youtube channel.
Streamers make money for playing games, Youtubers make money for playing/reviewing games, Modders make jack shit for enhancing games/making them.
DarkRevenant would beg to differ, I think. Your issue may be that you've never managed to cultivate a strong and tight community surrounding one specific map. It's really not necessarily 'jack shit'. Modders and mappers do receive a shitload less compensation than Twitchee's or Let's Play-ers thriving on Youtube add revenue, though, there's no doubt about that.
I'm glad you brought that up actually. The example of a few games receiving donations is a good example of why only having donations as a monetization option is detrimental.
Let's say there are two mods/games, Mod A being a single player game and Mod B being a multiplayer game. Mod A is a much better developed game with tons of replayability, depth and has a huge cult following. Mod B is a decently developed game with moderate replayability and a decent following. Mod A receives no donations simply due to the fact of it being single player and not exactly inspiring much of a community feel. Mod B receives tons of donations just for being multiplayer and inspiring a community.
Requiring a community is forceful on the modders and I feel it is unnecessary. I would much rather worry about making fun games and improving on others then managing a community. Players are more then capable of creating their own communities around games and a lot of the time, they do.
I feel this is wrong and is just one of many reasons being able to sell mods/games should be an option. Personally, I would like to see a "pay what you want" option with the ability to offer trial periods to give players a chance to see if its worth it.
I've made close to 20 games over the last 5 years.
You are very productive. And your games are inventive, sometimes use nice math, and usually barely fit the engine. You proved to be able to implement any kind of complexity, even though you use triggers instead of pure code. It's hard to understand, why you limit yourself inside modding. Your skills are beyond editor's horizon. Doing what you do in a game engine is much simplier. Doing the games you do in sc2 editor is like using a cycle on river instead of boat. Also, the playerbase is tiny here if we compare it to mobiles. And mobiles are not PC, their games are not that complex, they are like from the golden NES era, but are not limited with poor graphics, so you would be able to create a realy nice game every couple of months.
You simply have no right to blame modding for your $0.00 income. It's up to you to make that step to the area where you doomed to be successful. It's so simple: download unity, spend a month to transpose your skills from triggers to C#, and you are what you are born to be, a proud indie game developer.
There are two kinds of gamers. Gamers with money, and gamers with time.
Gamers with money are the ones who invest money in free to play games to save time, because they don't have a large excess of it.
Gamers with time are the ones without much or any access to funds, directly, and have the time to voice their opinions regularly online.
When the idea of paying for mods came up in the skyrim community, the gamers with time, and no direct access to money, are the ones to speak up and voice their opinions. There are many of them, and they likely makeup the majority of the hardcore playerbase of skyrim, but they don't makeup the majority of the players overall.
This means that the majority of the feedback being read is from one side.
Donations are a very poor solution, this community has taught me that. The primary reason that the vocal ones in the Skyrim community suggest this as a solution is because they think it's a nice compromise, but they themselves won't ever donate anything and don't know the reality behind a donate button like this community does.
Having paid mods is a fantastic opportunity for not only the modder, but for the gamer too. The average gamer might not realize the potential until something great comes from a paid mod system. It's an undeniable fact that having more time to put into a project will result in the potential for far bigger and better mod projects. The majority of modders I know do it on the side while holding a job or going to school. Having the opportunity to work on a mod full time impacts the end result greatly. Something like StarCraft Universe wouldn't be happening without the funding it got from it's Kickstarter, at least not as ambitious of a version.
It boggles my mind that so many within the modding community don't support something like this. No one is forcing you to take advantage of the system if it were to ever exist, but to be completely against it is to deny there is any good potential from such a system, which makes no sense to me.
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Stuff I've worked on: Carbot's StarCrafts Mod (2014-present) StarCraft 2 Hotkey Trainer (2010) | Mineralz Evolution (2011+) | Dungeon Legacy (2013+) | Phoenix TLMC 4 Entry (2014) Assisted: City of Tempest (2012) | BarCraft (2013) | Poker Defense (2014) and a few more.
I'm willing to counter argue that. There's an Extra Credits video that makes a strong point that feedback from friends or hardcore testers aren't the best. They will be biased and less likely to be brutally honest. Those tester friends would likely end up like the developer having tested the game so much and become so desenstized to its flaws they may overlook problems while developers/designers make design decisions that other people won't find fun when playing.
Which is a great argument if you're trying to say that a game will be better balanced and more fun if you have a larger group of testers. I'm not disputing that a bigger group of testers is better. However, that doesn't change the fact that I'm pretty convinced you can at least reach a certain standard with a small group. People on Mapster have long had a tradition of acting like they need way more feedback than they do. I've often seen it used as an argument explaining why the popularity system is shit: "people only play the popular maps so I can't test my map so I don't know what sucks and I can't make it better". Honestly, if you can't get it at a point where it's fun and mostly bug-free without having 10 or more testers, you're doing something very wrong. I made a single player map which I only personally tested and it still had decent balance and was fun to play through. Sure, once some more people started playing I got some pointers on bugs that allowed players to skip sequences and such, but I sure as heck didn't need more than a couple of folks to make it presentable.
These are common expressions I've seen and it is my firm opinion that more time, effort, and skill does not always mean a better game. I'm sure there are plenty of examples out there but one that comes to my mind is Duke Nukem Forever. It is simply not that easy to make a great game with raw money and time, otherwise all games released by 'AAA' studios would have been mega hits with little or no complaints from players, reviewers, or critics.
About your comment Zolden, I don't see why developers/designers must push the engine/tools to their limit and implement games with the most complex methods possible. Similar to what I just said I'm pretty sure players don't care about that. As long as you make a very good and enjoyable game play experience they don't mind if it takes 5 years, 5 hours, expert programming, etc. It's the end product that matters which Extra Credits touched on in a video and the Totalbiscuit video (I linked in this post) mentions that too. Players aren't going to rip into the source code of every game they play and go 'wow, this developer used this super complex array, structure, and variable so it must be a good game' :P . As a developer you can certainly be proud of complex or technical achievements but the players don't really care about that.
Seeing as how SC2 modding is so powerful allowing any kind of game possible I would say it's very similar to indie game development. Making a successful and truly fun game takes a passion and resilience. If alot of developers (which seems to be the case) are constantly worried about the time spent on your projects then game design likely isn't for you. You simply can't rush art.
I said potential. Will more time and resources improve the quality of any game or project? No, and Duke Nukem Forever is a great example of this.
Having more time and resources allows you to raise the bar. There are projects abandoned constantly due to lack of time and/or resources.
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Stuff I've worked on: Carbot's StarCrafts Mod (2014-present) StarCraft 2 Hotkey Trainer (2010) | Mineralz Evolution (2011+) | Dungeon Legacy (2013+) | Phoenix TLMC 4 Entry (2014) Assisted: City of Tempest (2012) | BarCraft (2013) | Poker Defense (2014) and a few more.
I'm 20 minutes into that 2 hour long TotalBiscuit video and it's fantastic so far. Highly recommended.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Stuff I've worked on: Carbot's StarCrafts Mod (2014-present) StarCraft 2 Hotkey Trainer (2010) | Mineralz Evolution (2011+) | Dungeon Legacy (2013+) | Phoenix TLMC 4 Entry (2014) Assisted: City of Tempest (2012) | BarCraft (2013) | Poker Defense (2014) and a few more.
Has there ever been a case of a map being removed because of ingame paid rewards or banned players in sc2? I've seen some popular maps have ingame rewards and banning people for years already.
The problem with the modding model is that games themselves are more and more becoming mods themselves.
If you make a game on an engine, is it not a mod of an engine? Graphics are unique, sure, but the engine has certain characteristics.
I think the core question is, how far does "original work" go? Is there a difference between those that are "total conversions" and those that are not? I mean paradox resold Hearts of Iron 2 several times. The games they resold were about the same complexity as the mods...
Personally I don't know where to draw the line. But at some point the work put into a mod equates to a full blown game and SC2 mods can often get close to that..
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The biggest issue I have with it, is one that's been pointed out many times, currently many mods are out there to fix bugs left in by the game developers (ex: lady walking into ground in skyrim, air- walking). This does nothing to make developers want to fix their bugs, in fact it incentives them to leave them in so they get money from mods that are made to fix the bugs. Yes modders could release the bug-fix mods as a free mod, but i take it for granted that humans are inherently greedy.
Also in the short time it was up mods (such as skyUI) that were created as a basic mod which further mods changed and improved, were changed to paid, leading to the *free* mods that depend on it, to actually cost money (a sort of ingenious business plan actually). Basically the other complaint I have is that modders will release multiple mod packs, when they usually would have released them together.
Still alive and kicking, just busy.
My guide to the trigger editor (still a work in progress)
One thing that complicates software in regards to almost anything else is the lack of marginal cost. Uploading 1 app, or a thousand, has the same fixed cost (the time to develop them).
As for why paid modding is inherantly corrosive. Captiliasm makes the assumption that there are limited resources for unlimited wants, thus wants are mutually exclusive, if you choose to do X, you can not do Y. Mods... are not mutually exclusive, inherently. I can play 1 Starcraft 2 map, or a thousand, and the act of playing one does not preclude me from ever playing another. With paid mods, I now must fall back into the captialistic choice of pay for mod to the exclusion of being able to pay for another. Once I'm forced into that choice, as a user, I will become VERY selective of what mods I will use, drastically reducing the ones I'm willing to even try at all. This deprives a modder feedback, since how can a user provide useful feedback if they can't even try it at all?
From the dev side, I now have every incentive to block ANYONE from using my work without my explicit permission. This entails multiple lawyers and contracts now being obligatory, an expense that must be born by someone, either the modder or the host (Valve) or the original developer (Bestheda). Furthermore, as a modder, since mods are behind a paywall, people will have to waste time and effort reinventing the wheel (since to learn how X is done, I must pay, instead of just looking) instead of improving existing material. This is covered quite well in the Parlor and the Cathedral article I linked.
Imagine for a moment that upon buying the SC2, we modders had to pay to be able to even open the Blizzard dependencies in the editor. I imagine that would be a turn off for a fair amount of the crowd here.
@ArcaneDurandel: Go
I... what?
Capitalism does not 'make the assumption that resources are mutually exclusive'. In fact, I'd argue it's closer to the opposite: the neo-classical economics it is based on kind-of assume that there's always enough of everything: if someone's pricing too high, you go to a competitor that is - naturally - available. It makes the assumption that people will try and optimize their profit: or simply, get the most bang for their buck. The thing is, the fact that paid mods exist does not mean that free mods disappear entirely. The only place you will become 'more selective of what mods you use' is within actual paid mods. And this just means you do some research before trying any random thing. That's really no different than you not buying every single indie game out there.
At the same time, feedback is overrated: I'm willing to argue you can make a perfectly balanced and fun map or mod by using just a bunch of friends as QA, if you just dedicate yourself. I mean, entire games may not even have QA teams larger than 20 heads and you're telling me you need the feedback of hundreds of people to make your map balanced? Really?
You really also don't need legal matters for this at all, if there is some kind of company policing these things. Blizzard polices their StarCraft maps (although in a limited way). If Valve did the same for their mods (double checked with authors of free mods on Curse and such), I'm sure a mod marketplace could work fine. Again: the issue is Valve not being willing and/or able to do this, not some kind of inherent impossibility. The fact that people have already been making money of maps and mods for years demonstrates this.
I see so many of the same dumb arguments from people against the idea of a marketplace rehashed every time it is brought up. But so many of them make absolutely no sense or are deliberately ignoring solutions to problems they are proposing.
"99% of people will over charge their mods and so instead of them being highly popular and being able to earn a bit through donating, only 1 rich person will buy it and the mod will be never used."
But out of all of them THIS one has to be by far the dumbest one I've ever heard.
The whole idea of "donating" is silly since nobody donates. I've made close to 20 games over the last 5 years, some were pretty popular and I have received exactly $0.00 in donations. At first I thought it was because I was not advertising a way to donate to me properly so I put the way to donate to me on every single one of my maps descriptions and loading screens, nothing. I even have the way to donate on my youtube channel.
Streamers make money for playing games, Youtubers make money for playing/reviewing games, Modders make jack shit for enhancing games/making them.
/thread
@Bounty_98: Go
DarkRevenant would beg to differ, I think. Your issue may be that you've never managed to cultivate a strong and tight community surrounding one specific map. It's really not necessarily 'jack shit'. Modders and mappers do receive a shitload less compensation than Twitchee's or Let's Play-ers thriving on Youtube add revenue, though, there's no doubt about that.
@Mozared: Go
I'm glad you brought that up actually. The example of a few games receiving donations is a good example of why only having donations as a monetization option is detrimental.
Let's say there are two mods/games, Mod A being a single player game and Mod B being a multiplayer game. Mod A is a much better developed game with tons of replayability, depth and has a huge cult following. Mod B is a decently developed game with moderate replayability and a decent following. Mod A receives no donations simply due to the fact of it being single player and not exactly inspiring much of a community feel. Mod B receives tons of donations just for being multiplayer and inspiring a community.
Requiring a community is forceful on the modders and I feel it is unnecessary. I would much rather worry about making fun games and improving on others then managing a community. Players are more then capable of creating their own communities around games and a lot of the time, they do.
I feel this is wrong and is just one of many reasons being able to sell mods/games should be an option. Personally, I would like to see a "pay what you want" option with the ability to offer trial periods to give players a chance to see if its worth it.
You are very productive. And your games are inventive, sometimes use nice math, and usually barely fit the engine. You proved to be able to implement any kind of complexity, even though you use triggers instead of pure code. It's hard to understand, why you limit yourself inside modding. Your skills are beyond editor's horizon. Doing what you do in a game engine is much simplier. Doing the games you do in sc2 editor is like using a cycle on river instead of boat. Also, the playerbase is tiny here if we compare it to mobiles. And mobiles are not PC, their games are not that complex, they are like from the golden NES era, but are not limited with poor graphics, so you would be able to create a realy nice game every couple of months.
You simply have no right to blame modding for your $0.00 income. It's up to you to make that step to the area where you doomed to be successful. It's so simple: download unity, spend a month to transpose your skills from triggers to C#, and you are what you are born to be, a proud indie game developer.
There are two kinds of gamers. Gamers with money, and gamers with time.
Gamers with money are the ones who invest money in free to play games to save time, because they don't have a large excess of it. Gamers with time are the ones without much or any access to funds, directly, and have the time to voice their opinions regularly online.
When the idea of paying for mods came up in the skyrim community, the gamers with time, and no direct access to money, are the ones to speak up and voice their opinions. There are many of them, and they likely makeup the majority of the hardcore playerbase of skyrim, but they don't makeup the majority of the players overall.
This means that the majority of the feedback being read is from one side.
Donations are a very poor solution, this community has taught me that. The primary reason that the vocal ones in the Skyrim community suggest this as a solution is because they think it's a nice compromise, but they themselves won't ever donate anything and don't know the reality behind a donate button like this community does.
Having paid mods is a fantastic opportunity for not only the modder, but for the gamer too. The average gamer might not realize the potential until something great comes from a paid mod system. It's an undeniable fact that having more time to put into a project will result in the potential for far bigger and better mod projects. The majority of modders I know do it on the side while holding a job or going to school. Having the opportunity to work on a mod full time impacts the end result greatly. Something like StarCraft Universe wouldn't be happening without the funding it got from it's Kickstarter, at least not as ambitious of a version.
It boggles my mind that so many within the modding community don't support something like this. No one is forcing you to take advantage of the system if it were to ever exist, but to be completely against it is to deny there is any good potential from such a system, which makes no sense to me.
Stuff I've worked on:
Carbot's StarCrafts Mod (2014-present) StarCraft 2 Hotkey Trainer (2010) | Mineralz Evolution (2011+) | Dungeon Legacy (2013+) | Phoenix TLMC 4 Entry (2014) Assisted: City of Tempest (2012) | BarCraft (2013) | Poker Defense (2014) and a few more.
Which is a great argument if you're trying to say that a game will be better balanced and more fun if you have a larger group of testers. I'm not disputing that a bigger group of testers is better. However, that doesn't change the fact that I'm pretty convinced you can at least reach a certain standard with a small group. People on Mapster have long had a tradition of acting like they need way more feedback than they do. I've often seen it used as an argument explaining why the popularity system is shit: "people only play the popular maps so I can't test my map so I don't know what sucks and I can't make it better". Honestly, if you can't get it at a point where it's fun and mostly bug-free without having 10 or more testers, you're doing something very wrong. I made a single player map which I only personally tested and it still had decent balance and was fun to play through. Sure, once some more people started playing I got some pointers on bugs that allowed players to skip sequences and such, but I sure as heck didn't need more than a couple of folks to make it presentable.
I said potential. Will more time and resources improve the quality of any game or project? No, and Duke Nukem Forever is a great example of this.
Having more time and resources allows you to raise the bar. There are projects abandoned constantly due to lack of time and/or resources.
Stuff I've worked on:
Carbot's StarCrafts Mod (2014-present) StarCraft 2 Hotkey Trainer (2010) | Mineralz Evolution (2011+) | Dungeon Legacy (2013+) | Phoenix TLMC 4 Entry (2014) Assisted: City of Tempest (2012) | BarCraft (2013) | Poker Defense (2014) and a few more.
I'm 20 minutes into that 2 hour long TotalBiscuit video and it's fantastic so far. Highly recommended.
Stuff I've worked on:
Carbot's StarCrafts Mod (2014-present) StarCraft 2 Hotkey Trainer (2010) | Mineralz Evolution (2011+) | Dungeon Legacy (2013+) | Phoenix TLMC 4 Entry (2014) Assisted: City of Tempest (2012) | BarCraft (2013) | Poker Defense (2014) and a few more.
Has there ever been a case of a map being removed because of ingame paid rewards or banned players in sc2? I've seen some popular maps have ingame rewards and banning people for years already.
The problem with the modding model is that games themselves are more and more becoming mods themselves.
If you make a game on an engine, is it not a mod of an engine? Graphics are unique, sure, but the engine has certain characteristics.
I think the core question is, how far does "original work" go? Is there a difference between those that are "total conversions" and those that are not? I mean paradox resold Hearts of Iron 2 several times. The games they resold were about the same complexity as the mods...
Personally I don't know where to draw the line. But at some point the work put into a mod equates to a full blown game and SC2 mods can often get close to that..