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The Rebirth of PC Gaming? Bring On the Modders!
Deathspawner writes "The future of PC gaming is oft-debated, but one thing's for certain: modding has always made it better. With that, wouldn't it make sense for developers to focus more on giving the community the modding tools it needs? Further, couldn't publishers look to modding as a way to increase revenue, by allowing modders to sell their sanctioned creations? Valve already offers robust community options in its Steam platform — and already has payment processing in place. Is this the natural next step for PC gaming?"
So why is TF2 the most valuable game to Valve, when it allows modding, and also puts them on sale?
Looking back over 25 years of computer gaming modding has pretty much always improved sales. From the days of the original Civ games to Wolfenstein to Doom to NeverWinter Nights vs NeverWinter Nights 2 examples abound. Those games that support the community readily modding them have pretty much always had better sales than those that didn't.
Simple example would be NeverWinter Nights vs NeverWinter Nights 2 for an example in point. Embrace your user community and you will be rewarded in sales for years to come. Pull a Sony and you'l end up with a (what was the name of their PSP replacement again?)....
Hi! Obese leech basement dweller (neckbeard) here!
Or I must be since I make maps and mods for video games. We are basically level and game designers (mostly amateur) who have a real passion for creating content and perhaps more importantly, creating good content. We're basically like a whole team of content designers that don't actually ask for anything in return but a handful of tools to help us do it. That's a small price to pay for the huge amount of content we can really churn out, note that the competitive maps that really made Starcraft what it is today were designed by us, not Blizzard.
Oh, and I'm skinny, live on the ground floor, and don't receive one cent from my parents.