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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?"
How much do I make off mods?
Nothing
And where are most of my sales?
On consoles.
And where are most of my pirates?
On the PC.
Who do modding tools benefit?
Only the PC gamers.
Does developing modding tools cost me?
Yes.
And remind me again how much I make off any given mod?
Jack and shit. And Jack left town.
I think I've made my decision.
pc games will never get back where they used to be. Why spend $2k on a pc rig, in order to play a game that I can play for free on onlive?
What do you mean rebirth?
PC gaming is in full swing..
The games companies really want to sell you DLC, often a simple extra map, a new vehicle, or different outfits for a character, maybe if you're lucky a full mini-campaign.
If you have fans providing these very same things for free then it's much harder to sell new content unless it actually has significant value. Also people buy new content when they run out of actual content, and if there is a new unlimited supply of user-made content, not under the control of the developer then that doesn't happen.
Unfortunately I see things becoming less and less modable, or your ability to mod things heavily sandboxed in terms of what you can do compared to what the actual game does with no ability to import the original levels, models, scripts etc. to figure out how they worked (because it would be locked down as per anti-piracy requirements of resources / DLC etc.)
I don't think I've ever found a better gaming experience then I've found with Gemstone IV.
Why spend $2k on a pc rig, in order to play a game that I can play for free on onlive?
Because OnLive will cause you to hit your ISP's monthly cap earlier. Or because not all games are on OnLive.
How much do I make off mods?
Nothing
I disagree. Would Valve have made as much money from Half-Life if there were no Counter-Strike?
And where are most of my sales?
On consoles.
If you're a sufficiently large developer. Do XNA games released on Xbox Live Indie Games outsell comparable PC games?
Does developing modding tools cost me?
Yes.
Developing level and scenario editing tools in the first place costs you. Why not continue to polish them and release them a few months later so that you can make a few bucks off players who will buy a game for the mods?
I think it is better in the context of hardcore players who wants that flexibility, which constitute small group of the players. Is it "better" for the gaming company? Is it "better" for most other players who don't mod? I'm not sure.
At least that's what the /. articles were saying back then. Maybe it's just FUD like the movie-makers in the 1950s who said TV would kill theaters.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Making mods or custom maps is only viable when you can run your own servers on which to play them. Nowadays most new games have servers that are run by the game publishers themselves, if this is the case how do you persuade the publisher to run the mod on them?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Endless Space (go look it up) is a new 4X game with much more in common with MOO2; though it is still amazing how much a sixteen year old game got right than anything since; but with snappy graphics and a lot of polish. They invite people to vote on upcoming changes and features as well. The game is delivered via Steam and is one of the most bug free games I have seen recently, it certainly is the best true 4X Space game I have played in ages (read: no real time silliness)
There is a small community already going at it, modifying tables in the game to bring balance where players believe its needed. There is even an early attempt going to change the whole universe into B5.
Will the developers incorporate good mods? Most likely, They already give credit to many for ideas and such. For most that is more than sufficient. People like to participate and even simple recognition on a forum is fine, but name in game credits does help too
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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?)....
When game developers start developing modding tools for their games, it seizes to be a PC-only advantage. They can just as well release those tools for other platforms, right?
Since when do companies like Nintendo, Sony Computer Entertainment, and Apple's iOS division allow developers to release modding tools?
I'm sure some company could make a good income from mods.
For example, take a game like NWN1 or NWN2 which allows not just for single player modules, but persistant worlds. Develop the backend so that the game company can provide a server backbone and the PW designers upload their areas and global scripts, and/or allow connections to private servers. The key is giving not just the ability to add customizable scripts (such as having an object be able to cross PWs with its own scripts attached like Enserric), but to also allow the usual database of a character, mobs, and objects to be extended as the PW makers see fit.
How can this make a company money?
1: The initial client.
2: Expansion packs of additional tiles, monsters, routines, spells, etc.
3: Use of the multi-player network.
4: Use of servers similar to mudhosting.net so PW designers do not have to keep their own boxes online.
5: Commercial modules.
6: If a PW maker wants to charge a small fee, they can have the revenue go through the software maker.
7: Websites for PWs, so if a PW wants to give players a way to show statistics/quest progression/achievements, that is possible.
Will this be a blockbuster? Nope. Steady income source over time? Yes. To boot, this model minimizes the need for DRM other than a CD key to get on the online servers.
if this is the case how do you persuade the publisher to run the mod on them?
The same way I persuaded Go Daddy to run MediaWiki on pineight.com: pay to rent space on a server to hold the scripts associated with the mod.
Keyboard and mouse support
The last time I checked, Microsoft still refused to make a mouse driver for Xbox 360. Or are you calling Kinect a mouse substitute?
Sufficient memory for editing tools
How so? Wii has 64 MB of RAM and 24 MB of VRAM.
Why let the modders create free content when you can create it yourself and charge for it?
I just realized that you appear to have forgotten a question:
Where do I find artists and programmers to hire for my next game?
From the modding community.
I'm a Rome Total War modder, so my knowledge of modding is mainly restricted to the Total War franchise, and how The Creative Assembly deals with modding.
But I think that it's probably the same thing everywhere.
When people think of mod tools, they often think of an editor which allows to modify textures/models and scripts, for the most part. While that's great because it allows beginner to easily mod a few things, that's only minor modding.
The problem is that while it's fun to change the texture of a horse to a bunny with a hat, it's not those kind of mods that TFA is talking about.
It's the total overhaul mods that make modding so good, like Counter Strike. And with the amount and diversity of modifications needed, no tools is going to be able to do it.
In RTW, most files are text files, which means that basically everything that is not hardcoded in the exe can be changed using Notepad. The only place where a tool is needed is for art ressource, as those are packed. And for RTW, it wasn't CA that released this tool, but a guy who reversed-engineering the packing system. In the subsequent release Medieval II Total War, CA actually released a tool to unpack things, because they had added protections.
The newer TW games however don't have the same major mods, because they changed the way data is structured. Things which used to be rather easy to do are now (almost) impossible, simply because no one can access the data in a useful manner. Because of the thriving modding community created by the previous games, there are a few people that are painfully trying to make sense of things, but HEX editing is a huge pain, and has huge limitations.
All of that to say that modders don't really need tools like editor (though they are quite nice).
What they need is a way to access and modify data easily (which can be through a tool like an unpacker, or a converter), and documentation/information to make sense of it.
I would think that this could greatly improve the value of console gaming as well.
Think about it: as a publisher, you get paid twice. (Once for the PC version and its deveopment tool suite, and again for the console version for testing.) The number of interesting DLC packages would be enorous. Many may even be free. It will greatly increase the desirability of your games.
"But won't it compete with our paid DLC?!"
Not if the community DLC requires it as a dependency for core functionality. Then the community DLC will actually add additional value to your paid DLC, and people will want it more.
So, why aren't you guys doing it?
It's good that Planetary Annihlation will have support for modding and Linux :)
So give them your voice and some of your cash by funding them on Kickstarter and then next year we'll all happily be destroying planets!
http://unfix.org
...about not seeing the GameMakerDom AC in this thread...
I bought Skyrim over Steam summer sale so I am a bit late to the game. The benefit of being late is that there are lots of completed, polished mods out there.
The mod community just blew my mind, offered things that are far beyond my expectation. It sometimes feels surreal that there are highly skilled people out there spending huge amount of time and effort to produce these insanely quality mods, for free.
Skyrim PC on itself is pretty good. But it has some stupid flaws (e.g. console centric UI). The smartest thing Bethesda ever did is to make it mod-able, let the community finish the things that developers are not willing to invest money/time on. With couple of mods plug in, this game becomes perfection.
EA and Bioware should learn a lesson here. I can only hope Dragon Age 3 would be similarly mod-friendly (given EA's track record, I am not holding my breathe).
I'm an MBA type (hence posting anonymously since all the hate towards MBAs). Every company wants a large market, and wants to make a product that meets the needs of it's consumers. One of the biggest challenges is understanding the needs of those consumers; even market research can fail because sometimes consumers think they know what they want in an ideal world, but operate differently. It's a real challenge. For video games, you have to create a game that works well (usually in the control of the developer) and is fun (completely in the control of the customer). Fun is subjectively defined and different for every person, so while it's a hittable target it's often very much out of the developer's control, and yet fully the responsibility of the developer to input into their product for it to sell.
Modding in my perspective reduces the developer's responsibility for fun, and shifts it to the customer, leaving the functionality aspect of the game, which the developer has a lot more control over, to them. Basically you're allowing the community to take your game and define the fun variable that they're after on their own terms, which would certainly appeal to a much wider customer base and increase sales. If Valve released the Source Engine as a game for sale with a decent game on top, but provided modding tools sufficient that someone with average programming skills and good storytelling could make a great compelling game with minimal effort, they would dominate the FPS market (I know that technically they did that, but the example is used just to illustrate the point).
I know people hate MBAs on this forum; this is a programmers'/engineers' forum and there's always tension between product developers and business people. However, good MBAs think like what I described above, and good game developers would think the same way.
There is just no way getting around it. The goal is to consolidate and forced conformity.
Modders will exist as long as these companies decide its worth selling parts to you directly. The entire computer industry is looking at Apple and thinking to themselves "lets copy them"
Apple is not friendly to modders.
The future is windows store, apple store... you will conform because there will be no choice.
CIV 5 has DLC and MOD's
PC gamers are just like apple users, they have an inferior product but will never admit it and use the same 2 or 3 arguments over and over and over and over again.
Sure pc has maybe a dozen good games for it but half of those have been out for man years like warcraft and the other few dont exactly make up for the fact PC sucks compared to console gaming.
I can buy what maybe 2 pc games that came out this year that are actually good that I cant get anywhere else vs the dozens of good console games to come out this year?
I can spend about 1400 bucks building a good gaming pc or for the same price buy a ps3 and dozens of games for it for a lot less money?
I can buy pc games where like 90% of them are on consoles as well?
I can play games online on my pc or on my consoles as well?
I can play my games on the nice big tv while sitting in my recliner with a nice sound system or sit in a chair and play on a 23inch monitor?
None of that having to search for a patch, wait to install a game, work around windows issues with the game and all that with a console cause I put it in and play it (aside from the cluster fuck that shit devs like bethesda put out cause they screw the pooch on every system with their games).
PC gaming sucks but pc gamers will never admit it or convert because they are just like those mindless apple zealots who refuse to accept the fact they are using a inferior product that costs a lot more than other options and love to be smug and pretentious about it any chance they can cause they have to justify themselves.
PC gaming was once great. Now its just for wannabe nerds and people with more money than brains.
I'll tell you what's NOT the future of PC gaming: "Free to Play".
I've never seen so much crap. It's a bad idea, executed badly, and if a game developer thinks that free-to-play is the way to go they need to look for a job in a call center somewhere.
I went into it with an open mind, but after a year of not being able to play any F2P game more than about 5 minutes, I'm convinced that it's an idea that needs to die a painful public death.
It's not that it's a good idea being done badly. It's a bad idea that actually encourages bad execution.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you play video games for more than a full work-week every month, that's another issue!
It has to share the cap with the other uses of your connection, such as web surfing, YouTube, and Netflix. And unless you live alone, it also has to share the cap with other people in your household.
OnLive the company died. It sold OnLive the service to another company, and the service continues to operate.
Because people who own consoles NEVER play PC games right?
I wouldn't say never, but PCs owned by people who primarily game on consoles are more likely to have Intel GMA ("Graphics My Ass") because they're bought for homework and Facebook and the like. Only recently did Intel graphics begin to match the graphical complexity of seventh-generation consoles, with Ivy Bridge running Skyrim at a playable frame rate.
1400 bucks building a good gaming pc
Hairyfeet disagrees with your figures. Buy a PC, a video card, and a Windows license, and you're out about half that.
I can buy what maybe 2 pc games that came out this year that are actually good that I cant get anywhere else vs the dozens of good console games to come out this year?
There are more than two good PC-exclusive games, and you still need to buy the PC if you plan to play them. Or are you trying to say you plan to just skip every game developed by a company that doesn't have a console license?
I can play my games on the nice big tv while sitting in my recliner with a nice sound system or sit in a chair and play on a 23inch monitor?
You know, you can play PC games on an HDTV too. Every PC since about 1988 has a VGA output, and most newer PCs have a DVI-D or HDMI output. Every LCD HDTV has an HDMI input compatible with HDMI and DVI-D video, and most LCD HDTVs have VGA in.
None of that having to search for a patch, wait to install a game, work around windows issues with the game and all that with a console cause I put it in and play it
Unless it's from a developer with whom the console maker declines to do business, in which case you can't put it in because it doesn't exist. What do you recommend that such developers do to reach customers like you?
Already pledged
Obviously the graphics are great, and the game play is some what better then the console versions. But with gaming companies using propaganda and false numbers over piracy, and alienating PC users as the cause of lost revenue, as-well-as there DRM/licensing bullshit, it is only going to squeeze out those that may be interested in PC gaming, and drive away those that know the benefits of PC vs. Consoles.
Linux is a not getting any closer to being a commercially viable (private user) OS, however having played with Linux, it is not difficult to learn Linux and the things one needs to learn to make it work. But people are to lazy or dumb to learn something fairly simple, because of this it will drive PC gaming underground. I do like the efforts of Valve, they are willing to move into another realm of OS, and devote time, smarts, and hard work into making it successful.
I have no doubt old and new makers will continue to make PC games, that is not a problem. The commercial gaming industry, will drive users of PC gaming away, and idiots like MS, and Apple seem too be headed out of the PC market. (please do not take that statement to heart, it just seems to be apparent)
Having said all that, there might still be some light at the end of the tunnel, these consoles are laughably priced at almost the same as a gaming PC. It a shame that more press outlets do not expose the pricing of a PC gaming, compared to consoles. But the X factor in this is still the game makers!
I am amazed no one has listed Minecraft as a testament to modding helping a game grow. It's one of the top selling PC games of all time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games and modding is almost an integral part of the Minecraft community.
in the '90s, Modding was huge, and then for a while, game devs started to put the kibash on modding. Look at the Need for Speed series. The first 5 entries in the series were known for their mod support. They even released tools to assist with this. Due to that support, the series had a huge fanbase. NFS6: Hot Pursuit 2 comes along in 2002, with lack of modding support, and sales aren't what they used to be. Up comes Underground, and all the other games, and the sales still arent' what they used to be. The community around the NFS games seem to die about a year or so after release, which is funny because there still is some stuff going on for NFS3: Hot Pursuit, NFS4: High Stakes, and NFS5: Porsche Unleashed (I recently saw work by people to get those working under MacOS, which is really a niche group). I guess that is why EA is now releasing 2-3 NFS games a year. Switch things over, a few companies like Valve, and a bunch of Indie games are supporting mods and are selling like hotcakes. Look at what DayZ did for ARMA II. ARMAII was a little known game, on the market for nearly 3 years before DayZ was released, and within the first 2 months DayZ was available, over 300,000 copies of ARMA II were sold. Team Fortress 2 has a fair amount of mod support, and still has a huge community based, despite being five years old. TF2, now has gone free to play, but is still one of the company's largest earners mostly in part to the joked "hat based economy" (people buying add ons, much of which now come from the community) Minecraft, which has tons of mods, has sold over 7.1 million copies (not counting Xbox, iPhone, or Android). So, from what I see, modding is really the key to a game having a lasting impact. I don't understand why EA and other big players don't realize that.
Some mods extend the lifespan of a game.
Then there are 'mods' that enable continued play when the official online game portal collapses.
E.g. FAForever is a community made lobby better than the original for the best RTS game ever; Supreme Commander / Forged Alliance.
urd
Or you can just use Spring: http://springrts.com/, which is FOSS, cross platform, and has a bunch of working games already: http://springrts.com/wiki/Games.
I've been out of the modding scene for quite some time, but the one project that made a long lasting impression on me was the Cold War Crisis, mod for C&C Generals Zero Hour. Aside from being a total conversion in the Cold War style (eg everything from game intro, the menus, the unit voices, ingame music, game mechanics were overhauled, they even added in a 'per map' AI which will whoop your ass quite some times before you can outsmart it, heck, they even introduced whole new SinglePlayer modes). That is my gold standard, and there's only a handful that can attain such a level.
hl1 would have been forgotten if it weren't for counter strike. because of cs they had the incentive to keep updating and to add licensing servers, online drm and eventually an online distribution platform for selling the thing(steam).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
They're doing it right. Awesome modding communities, and basically everyone who uses mods for those games eagerly awaits the next franchise release. Too bad the FPS folks care more about short bursts of DLC dollars than community tools. Case in point, the wicked awesome BF3. "No tools! Too many hackers already!" they cry. It's the diametric for Mil-sim & TES gamers like me: "Make the game we made even more fun!" they tell us.
You have persisted in insisting on working through the establishment rather than working around the establishment. I'm slowly trying to rearrange my situation in order to become able to work through the establishment, and all I can do until then is figure out how to work around the establishment as plan B. But you have told me in the past that it is a waste of time to try to figure out on what basis the establishment keeps control of the market.
Have you ever heard of Riivolution? It allows games to load content from SD or even over WiFi. It has been used to make custom race tracks for Mario Kart, with zero piracy implications since Riivolution requires the original disc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sSawr1ESLk
No one says you need to use the Wii to make mods, only that you need it to play them. I have seen someone make a conversion for Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World on the Wii that used the textures from precursor ToS on the GameCube.
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I'm aware of things like Brawl Minus. I'm under the impression that most people here are referring to mods that are an official part of the end-user experience, mods that Nintendo wouldn't feel like blocking in Wii Menu 5.
Natural Selection 2 (to be released shortly) comes with everything you need to create your own mod - and coding for it is about as easy as possible because it's in LUA.
It's practically unheard of that a developer shares the development cycle for over two years with it's fans, and includes *all* the game source code as part of the package. There are over 400 videos showing the progress from the beginning if you search youtube for NS2HD
http://www.naturalselection2.com/
http://play4dead.com/ns2
http://www.youtube.com/user/NaturalSelection2HD
Many members of the community are active developers, and have had their own mods officially included in the game.
I can't believe you left Neverwinter Nights off of the list! (well ok I believe it because it happened, but I'm appalled).
Neverwinter Nights had(has?) an amazing mod community that really only started to have the sun set when EA bought BioWare. The writing was kind of on the wall when NWN2 didn't get the same level of support from BW, but NWN1 had amazing support from bioware and the amount of community effort and support that went into the game thanks to bio's support and encouragement was astounding. Combined with the various persistent worlds that were developed and NWN rocks!
On this topic, a notable Kickstarter has just opened, for a game that started on a console aaaaaaaaaaaand now is PC only :)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/379129851/armada-online