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Developers Ever More Encouraging Of Modding

Posted by simoniker on from the make-my-game-for-me dept.

Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter for its column discussing game companies' continuing encouragement of 'modders' for content creation purposes. Valve's Doug Lombardi points out the obvious advantages his company received from modding: "In the typical scenario, even if a game is a mega-hit, within eight to 12 months on the store shelves, it's gone. But, in the case of 'Half-Life,' our revenue stream increased year after year for the first three years of the game's life. I attribute a lot of that to three mods -- 'Day Of Defeat,' 'Team Fortress,' and 'Counter-Strike.'" It's also mentioned that modding is starting even before a game hits the shelves, since Vivendi Universal has "even licensed an outside team that is building a mod, 'Starsiege 2845,' using the [as yet publically unreleased] 'Tribes Vengeance' engine."

2 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. It just goes to show. by Inoshiro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, it's the content that drives gaming.

    Half-life is a wicked game. You get that and the engine when you buy it. Most of the rest of the expansions are free, and this is good because it allows Valve to get higher ROI in the engine. Because the same engine was used on Half-Life, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, Counterstrike, etc, they kept raking in money because people would buy Half-life to access these. Doom had a similar start -- since everyone could release content for it, wonderful wads were made for it, and allowed it to continue to have strong sales longer than most games. Best of all, towards the end, the true cream of the crop became bundled (Final Doom -- with TNT and Plutonia wads).

    What does this mean? Half-Life 2 is all well and good, but if Valve is smart, they'll have contests for modders. Best mods get official distribution and licencing, which allows the modders to get money, Valve to get more return on their HL2 engine, and keep interest high in HL2 technology games. Win-win!

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  2. Mods vs Free Games by Deliveranc3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I still can't figure out for me why users create mods instead of free games.
    There are many brilliant engines out there and teams which support development practically at the level of modding but allow the team more freedom and if successful can be distributed to the user base for free!

    Why put in all that work to make someone else money?

    Please teams before you start a mod look at the resources available to everyone for free! You can find something that might eventually have 100% Mac/Linux/Windows penetration for free!