Future Of The Mods

[Susi]

First, this is just throwing idea in the air.

Year by year there is more and more work on makeing mods.
And even nowadays it took years to make one.

And today i was thinking what if developers (i dont mean particulary TWI-dews)
would accept mods to make some money by their products.
Not so many that it would attract real developers. Something like that
chargeable mods are allowed if the price of product is under 2,5 dollar.

As the common reason why mod doesnt never get from alpha or beta
to ready is that some point your motivation fizzle out. And you start to
thinking is there any sense at all to spent thousand hours of time
because of....because of....i dont know...

And maybe money would push mod teams to go on. Maybe even some
semi-pros would be interested to help mod teams then and we would
see even better and more shiney mods than ever.

In same time that money isnt away from the developers if they dont
plan to do expansion pack. Maybe it would even bring some more sales
to original game and at least good publicity in eyes of modders and gamers.
TWI-dudes allready got lot of that, even that we have little bit molest them
because of HERO-feature

But money isnt easy thing. First, building worldwide workable netstore to
mod isnt the easiest thing in the world. Or even if you could get your
game to steam (I dont know how that happens, but i think at least
it need probably lot of *** liking) you should need to do lot of things
to that money.

Like paying taxes and seding money arround the world to
mod team dev-members, decide who have earned how much and why.
Lot of complicated things on money, how ever i still think that will
happen someday.

 

[HobbStweedle]

The attraction of modding (to me) is modding itself. It's fun creating content that then gets put into a game engine that you can play around with.

Also, a lot of people use mods as 'training grounds' to build their skills and portfolio's so that they can get a hired by a real studio sometime in the future. I hope to attend an art school sometime in the next few years and focus on game-art. Working on a mod lets me build my skill set and see my work enjoyed/played by other people. Plus you get the experience of working with a team.

 

[Susi]

Removed that post myself, wrote it last night.
And maybe i got little bit too angry attitude

 

[Lucan946]

IMO, this is a horrible idea. The appeal of mods, to me, is that they are free and fun and improve on the master game. Not only that, but who would do this? No one. I've yet to meet a mod maker- and I've met a lot- that cares about money. Sure, they might (usually not) have a donations option, but that's it. Mods aren't supposed to be about money, they're supposed to be about fun. That's for me, anyway. If you want to make money, why not make a game? You'd make far more money that way than you ever would with a mod. Considering NO ONE would buy them.

 

[Susi]

How ever, so you are basicly saying that people wouldnt buy mods.
But they do buy expansion packs. So can you tell me whats the difference
beetween those.

Also even that maybe the main point in modding is improveing your skills,
i could spend few dollars to mod if its motivate modders to try even harder
and we could get even better mods.

 

[HobbStweedle]

the difference between an expansion pack and a mod, is that the expansion pack is made by proffesionals in a studio, and usually by the original game devs. A mod, however, is made by bunch of people in thier own homes scattered around the globe. That's not to say a mod can't be of proffesional quality, but an expansion pack will be more polished than a mod (at least in my perfect little world it should be).

 

[-[SiN]-bswearer]

charging money for mods, regardless of how good they may seem to be, is not a good idea because they are not made by TW themselves. if TW released official expansion packs, then that's a different story. however, i think TW is are not really big enough yet to quickly make their own high quality expansion packs because of all the stuff they have to take care of with their games as it is.

i'd much rather see the continued updating of the game than have them just release the game and start working on expansion packs. support is what makes TW who they are and i doubt they'd leave a buggy game just to make expansion packs to make more money. now if they grew more and there were more deicated people, plus the money for it, i'd love to see expansion packs that are at the quality level we'd expect to spend money on. mods should really left up to the community.

with mods, TW will probably just continue doing what they have been doing with RO. the game is released, we see continued support for it, and "amatuer" teams from the community add in new content and mods. once those mods are good enough, they get a steam release and a "tip of the hat" by TW where they feature the mod and put the original game on sale to promote both the game and the mod. i.e. Darkest Hour and Mare Nostrum. now DH was more successful due to first of all having more recognition, from TW, plus more content and that content updated in a more timely fashion that MN and CC, plus with CC it never had a seperate steam release. it really is a shame though that CC and MN were not as big because i really enjoyed them.

i understand the fact that TW will make money off of mods because people will have to buy the original game in order to play the mod and TW takes full advantage of that by promoting it and having a sale. it's a beneficial situation for both the devs, and the independent modders.

yes, the "amatuer" modders wouldn't get any money out of their work, but like Hobb said, for most it's more for the hobby and gaining experience in the art. now, i for think that most of the modders for RO at least, even now don't get enough appreciation for their work. it's one thing to get a steam release, and get some players, but i bet they all probably feel like there could be more.

what i'd love to see from TW is maybe a mod contest like they've done with mapping contests in the past where mod teams could actually get something in return for their work....perhaps a cash prize, or maybe even offered a job with TW. if the mod is good enough to get a steam release, i think it would be a good sign of respect for those modders to at least get some type of financial reward from TW as a "tank you for getting more people to buy our game" type of thing.