It's easier than you'd think. I've taken apart piles of broken ipods, I work in a certain technology support store... (almost all of which had 'dead batteries'). No harder than opening a Mac Mini, and a helluva lot easier/quicker than putting in a Mac Mini Airport card.:)
Yep. Quite a few times. Actually, I work at a certain retailer that sells computers in the US. (Can't think of any way to make that more obvious) The retailer I work for is an authorized Apple vendor, so it's not an Apple Store 'per say' but we sell Apple Products. Nuff said there:
"the most popular item is undoubtedly the ipod mini. these things sell not because of "value" or number of gizmos but for design."
True and false. When they sell, they do sell for that exact reason, pop-culture, hipster appeal. The iPod mini is probably one of the worst (definately not the worst) values available in the booming MP3 player market:
The 5GB Rio is the same price as the mini, with an extra GB of storage.
Creative's Zen Mini is the same story, with a blue backlit screen, and available in several colors (like the iPod Mini).
Disregarding software, and service, batteries and reliability, Apple is beat with the mini. HOWEVER I make more money per day selling 20GB iPod+HP's on average, because of uninformed or non-savvy customers coming in to the store specifically for the throw-away with pretty colors, than I would have if Apple had never offered the mini in the first place. Mr. Jobs is no moron, despite what I or others may say about him, he definately knows how to pull in a certain crowd.
Contrary to your thoughts, I actually DO see teenage girls picking up the Rio Mini and asking what colors are available, though I do sell very few of them, even compared to the iPod Minis. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing...
Anyway, to my point: The strategy is fairly simple here, but ingeniously devised. Let me break it down a bit, the way I see it:
iPod mini 4GB= $249.99 US
iPod/+HP 20GB= $299.99 US
Step 1 - Release Big selling product first, gradually increasing options, decreasing size, bulk, etc.
Step 2 - Devise another Gimmick - Color/Formfactor
Step 3 - Release lesser product, for not much less cost to the consumer
Step 4 - Raise demand by limiting supply
Step 5 - Profit
I don't doubt that it actually costs Apple less money to produce and support 20GB iPods, than it does to produce and support 4GB minis. The mini is an upseller. It sets up the customer with a gimmick, in this case, color and compact formfactor, but reduces the primary buying point for most customers (and allows an upsell opportunity for the salesman), storage space. When it doesn't upsell, Apple isn't losing much potential* revenue, $50 off the top, which they make back in repairs, and a virtually endless advertising campaign (for the customers using iTunes/iTMS on PC) that comes in the box: iTunes sells iTMS, which sells Computers which buys a user base. Jobs knows how to do business well, now we'll be upselling from a $99/$149/$199 Flash Drive iPod to a mini, or a 20GB, and all the while leaving the PNY's, Creatives, Lexars, etc collecting dust on the shelf.
The iPod will saturate every nook and cranny of the portable music market. From there Apple will trickle into our homes easier, quicker, and with less resistance from an otherwise Windows dominated world... think of the iPod as one of the Crowbars that gets Jobs back into the consumer market, to which he's been practically locked out of for 2 decades, in comparison.
Although, this whole thing could just flop too... meh... iPod Photo... pfft... what a joke. The only thing still locked up at the store that doesn't sell is the Photo. I'll buy it on clearance, like my 10GB, 1stGen firewire Apple (not PC) iPod.
iPod Video is long overdue... and I'm starting to think that I should develop an in dash Car Head/Deck Unit dock as a 3rd Party accessory distributer... someone's probably already writing up the patent papers right now... oh well.
Never heard of it, and the site is either down or deleted.
I'll continue to try to check it out, but even still... that's one opportunity versus the plethora of virtually limitless numbers of commercial engines available for use to mod, for only the price of the game itself.
Understandably, the draw for Consumer-Level game designers to use commercial games is much higher, if only because the number of [b][i]good[/i][/b] commercial engines available is huge, and the number of even bad freeware engines is small.
Seems like an issue of input/output... higher number of sources to input from yields higher number of finished products... baddabing.
"Only rarely do mods become entire games. The fast majority just add or tweak a tiny portion of the content."
I think it is important to understand that most people do not know what a 'mod' is, or means.
A mod, by most accepted definition, is any user created content that modifies or adds to the original game. That encompasses 'Total Conversions' which are actually quite the commonplace, despite what SmallFurryCreature believes. Check ModDB.com for instance.
There are actually a lot of single player 'Mods' that replace the entire game with something completely new... a full length game with a new storyline, voice acting, models, textures, levels, code, etc. My team is currently working on 2 such mods at once, one for HL2 and the other for Far Cry.
To answer the original question:
"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?"
We do it for fun, to put it blatently, for experience, and for practice. We do it, because we do not have to answer to any corporate idea of what will sell Q4 of [insert year here]. We have control over what we want to make, and as far as the teams I have been on, we all vote on any big changes to any aspect of our product.
As far as these free wonder-engines go, show me one. I have yet to find a free engine, with Valve-like support, Far Cry like technology, and and no-hang-ups licensing. All of the cross-platform freeware engines I've seen suck, with a capital S.
We get free engine coding, that has been play-tested, debugged, and has support, not just from the company itself, but the swelling community of modders out there. Game modding is practically a collective hive mind, we pool our info together as if our projects were completely open source... help each other out.
"...when 95% of PC users are technically naive, and when this is the very reason that Windows has spread to every corner of the PC market...
...Microsoft's core market consists of people who cannot install patches, who don't know the different between spams and real emails..."
I think you had a typo there... take out PC, and insert Mac.
To a point, I agree with you, however. Yes, the majority of computer users possess less knowledge about how to use their computers than is required to do so.
However, I don't think that this is strictly a "PC" problem, and I don't think it is strictly instegated by Windows, or Microsoft. It is a problem across the board for both Apple and Microsoft, but noticably more so for Apple.
Apple thrives on the ability to dumb-down their machinery, and software in order to cater to a populace that is unwilling to better themselves with the knowledge required to properly utilize the appliance.
Their ad campaigns state that easier is better; KISS (keep it simple [for the] stupid).
Maybe we need to start requiring people to have PC Operator's Licenses, if you can't pass the test, you can't use the appliance... much like a car, boat, or airplane. While it's doubtful that anyone can cause bodily injury to another while operating a computer, it would save us all a few headaches.
Before we go pointing fingers at the 'Windoze' users for being ignorant, keep that in mind. Yes, *nix is a different story, since, for the most part, the ignorant populace doesn't even know what it is... Thank God.
Slashdot Mirror
It's easier than you'd think. I've taken apart piles of broken ipods, I work in a certain technology support store... (almost all of which had 'dead batteries'). No harder than opening a Mac Mini, and a helluva lot easier/quicker than putting in a Mac Mini Airport card. :)
-Coffee
The 5GB Rio is the same price as the mini, with an extra GB of storage.
Creative's Zen Mini is the same story, with a blue backlit screen, and available in several colors (like the iPod Mini). Disregarding software, and service, batteries and reliability, Apple is beat with the mini. HOWEVER I make more money per day selling 20GB iPod+HP's on average, because of uninformed or non-savvy customers coming in to the store specifically for the throw-away with pretty colors, than I would have if Apple had never offered the mini in the first place. Mr. Jobs is no moron, despite what I or others may say about him, he definately knows how to pull in a certain crowd. Contrary to your thoughts, I actually DO see teenage girls picking up the Rio Mini and asking what colors are available, though I do sell very few of them, even compared to the iPod Minis. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing... Anyway, to my point: The strategy is fairly simple here, but ingeniously devised. Let me break it down a bit, the way I see it: iPod mini 4GB= $249.99 US iPod/+HP 20GB= $299.99 US
Step 1 - Release Big selling product first, gradually increasing options, decreasing size, bulk, etc.
Step 2 - Devise another Gimmick - Color/Formfactor
Step 3 - Release lesser product, for not much less cost to the consumer
Step 4 - Raise demand by limiting supply
Step 5 - Profit I don't doubt that it actually costs Apple less money to produce and support 20GB iPods, than it does to produce and support 4GB minis. The mini is an upseller. It sets up the customer with a gimmick, in this case, color and compact formfactor, but reduces the primary buying point for most customers (and allows an upsell opportunity for the salesman), storage space. When it doesn't upsell, Apple isn't losing much potential* revenue, $50 off the top, which they make back in repairs, and a virtually endless advertising campaign (for the customers using iTunes/iTMS on PC) that comes in the box: iTunes sells iTMS, which sells Computers which buys a user base. Jobs knows how to do business well, now we'll be upselling from a $99/$149/$199 Flash Drive iPod to a mini, or a 20GB, and all the while leaving the PNY's, Creatives, Lexars, etc collecting dust on the shelf. The iPod will saturate every nook and cranny of the portable music market. From there Apple will trickle into our homes easier, quicker, and with less resistance from an otherwise Windows dominated world... think of the iPod as one of the Crowbars that gets Jobs back into the consumer market, to which he's been practically locked out of for 2 decades, in comparison. Although, this whole thing could just flop too... meh... iPod Photo... pfft... what a joke. The only thing still locked up at the store that doesn't sell is the Photo. I'll buy it on clearance, like my 10GB, 1stGen firewire Apple (not PC) iPod. iPod Video is long overdue... and I'm starting to think that I should develop an in dash Car Head/Deck Unit dock as a 3rd Party accessory distributer... someone's probably already writing up the patent papers right now... oh well.
Never heard of it, and the site is either down or deleted. I'll continue to try to check it out, but even still... that's one opportunity versus the plethora of virtually limitless numbers of commercial engines available for use to mod, for only the price of the game itself. Understandably, the draw for Consumer-Level game designers to use commercial games is much higher, if only because the number of [b][i]good[/i][/b] commercial engines available is huge, and the number of even bad freeware engines is small. Seems like an issue of input/output... higher number of sources to input from yields higher number of finished products... baddabing.
Sorry Creature, that was supposed to read, "...despite what Deliveranc3 believes." I looked up and saw your handle, my apologies.
I think it is important to understand that most people do not know what a 'mod' is, or means.
A mod, by most accepted definition, is any user created content that modifies or adds to the original game. That encompasses 'Total Conversions' which are actually quite the commonplace, despite what SmallFurryCreature believes. Check ModDB.com for instance.
There are actually a lot of single player 'Mods' that replace the entire game with something completely new... a full length game with a new storyline, voice acting, models, textures, levels, code, etc. My team is currently working on 2 such mods at once, one for HL2 and the other for Far Cry.
To answer the original question:
We do it for fun, to put it blatently, for experience, and for practice. We do it, because we do not have to answer to any corporate idea of what will sell Q4 of [insert year here]. We have control over what we want to make, and as far as the teams I have been on, we all vote on any big changes to any aspect of our product.
As far as these free wonder-engines go, show me one. I have yet to find a free engine, with Valve-like support, Far Cry like technology, and and no-hang-ups licensing. All of the cross-platform freeware engines I've seen suck, with a capital S. We get free engine coding, that has been play-tested, debugged, and has support, not just from the company itself, but the swelling community of modders out there. Game modding is practically a collective hive mind, we pool our info together as if our projects were completely open source... help each other out.
"...when 95% of PC users are technically naive, and when this is the very reason that Windows has spread to every corner of the PC market...
...Microsoft's core market consists of people who cannot install patches, who don't know the different between spams and real emails..."
I think you had a typo there... take out PC, and insert Mac.
To a point, I agree with you, however. Yes, the majority of computer users possess less knowledge about how to use their computers than is required to do so.
However, I don't think that this is strictly a "PC" problem, and I don't think it is strictly instegated by Windows, or Microsoft. It is a problem across the board for both Apple and Microsoft, but noticably more so for Apple.
Apple thrives on the ability to dumb-down their machinery, and software in order to cater to a populace that is unwilling to better themselves with the knowledge required to properly utilize the appliance. Their ad campaigns state that easier is better; KISS (keep it simple [for the] stupid).
Maybe we need to start requiring people to have PC Operator's Licenses, if you can't pass the test, you can't use the appliance... much like a car, boat, or airplane. While it's doubtful that anyone can cause bodily injury to another while operating a computer, it would save us all a few headaches.
Before we go pointing fingers at the 'Windoze' users for being ignorant, keep that in mind. Yes, *nix is a different story, since, for the most part, the ignorant populace doesn't even know what it is... Thank God.