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Re: Should mods be free?

#17
cfhd wrote:I kind of disagree with this actually.

I think the reason modding for Elder Scrolls games or Fallout is so popular is specifically because it is free and that Bethesda provides a solid modding tool with their game (for free).

Throughout the years I have added tons of mods to the games and used them for like a day and then removed them because I didn't like it or just wanted to try something else. If all of a sudden the mods cost money then there would be less trying random mods like that becuase every kid who makes a subtle mod that changes barely anything would be charging some amount of money for it. The fact that they are all free makes it so you can just try whatever one you happen to find and if you don't like it then it cost you nothing. That is specifically why its so popular.

The modding groups can get donations as mentioned before, so they can be compensated by people who think they deserve it. I don't think modding games should be considered a new carreer path for people. If anything, if you want to break into the games industry then you can use it as a tool to make a good portfolio to apply at games companies or just to learn game design and then make your own game. This has actually worked for some people in the past. I remember someone doing a conversion mod to FO and getting a job at a game company based on it.
You got it backwards: the only reason the new Fallouts and TES games are not horrible buggy train wrecks is that people immediately expect to mod them to hell and back. That 'free' SDK takes all copyright to the mod you make with it and transfers it to Bethesda, plus it sells their game in massively larger volumes than it would otherwise. Who's generous now?

99 cent mods wouldn't crash the market, just like how you find free, freemium, and paid apps for every platform still. The whole fact that you are not allowed to monetize your work in any way is more of a problem. Donations are far less effective than a mandatory price for something you perceive as great value for the money. And I just find "oh it's not earning you money but it's great exposure and looks good in your resume" a really appalling phrase, should it apply to any kind of software of traditional media artist.
BFett wrote: If all or most of the quality mods are expensive fewer people will be able to enjoy those modifications.
After a multi-hundred dollar computer and a few dozen bucks for a game, a handful of cents for a quality mod is prohibitively expensive? I'm not saying mods should immediately jump to a DLC price.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#19
Mistycica wrote:
BFett wrote: If all or most of the quality mods are expensive fewer people will be able to enjoy those modifications.
After a multi-hundred dollar computer and a few dozen bucks for a game, a handful of cents for a quality mod is prohibitively expensive? I'm not saying mods should immediately jump to a DLC price.
The computer is an investment that allows you to do more than just play games on it, a game is not. Ten dollars for a mod that goes with a 30 dollar game is expensive. I'm not going to pay one third the price of a game for a user made mod regardless to how long it took to get developed. If we are talking about prices that are ranging from 5 cents to a dollar with a year or so worth or work put into them, then I might not be as opposed to the idea.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#20
N810 wrote:
Dinosawer wrote:
N810 wrote:I think you are confusing Mods with expansion packs and DLC. :|
I'm not. :?
My point was that the best mods have so much content they could have been expansion packs or DLC.
I just meant that if you are selling your work, then the name of your work changes.

the term Mod insinuates that it is free.

If you call it an unofficial expansion pack or something like that, you could probably get away with charging for it.
(with joshes permission)
The term mod to me indicates that it is a modification of a game, and nothing more (because that is literally what mod means ;) )
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Re: Should mods be free?

#21
BFett wrote:
Mistycica wrote:
BFett wrote: If all or most of the quality mods are expensive fewer people will be able to enjoy those modifications.
After a multi-hundred dollar computer and a few dozen bucks for a game, a handful of cents for a quality mod is prohibitively expensive? I'm not saying mods should immediately jump to a DLC price.
The computer is an investment that allows you to do more than just play games on it, a game is not. Ten dollars for a mod that goes with a 30 dollar game is expensive. I'm not going to pay one third the price of a game for a user made mod regardless to how long it took to get developed. If we are talking about prices that are ranging from 5 cents to a dollar with a year or so worth or work put into them, then I might not be as opposed to the idea.
At a level where you play most games enjoyably that's just an excuse, as far as the computer goes. It's a luxury article, and so is a game, a DLC, a mod, a double strawberry cappuccino, and as such they lose value in turn for enjoyment over time. I never said a mod should be ten dollars, I was mentioning current app market prices, since that would make sense. I'm plainly answering that it's an insubstantial cost compared to the base investment to be able to play that mod at all, and so it's not really gonna prohibit anyone from getting it.

Large mods, like Killing Floor and DayZ are getting monetized, so I don't really see any reason against a smaller scale ones doing the same, with comparatively lower prices.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#22
Mistycica wrote:And I just find "oh it's not earning you money but it's great exposure and looks good in your resume" a really appalling phrase, should it apply to any kind of software of traditional media artist.
Modding games isn't meant as a job or a way to sell things. Games and tools that come with them that allow you to mod aren't the same as game engines you buy or programs artists buy so that they can sell their work. So, yes, in this case if you want to get into the games industry and you don't want to shell out thousands of dollars for a legit game engine that is used to develop games then you can use the free tools that come with a game to sell your skills to a potential employer. You aren't doing free work for the employer here. You are providing a mod for the gamers.

If you want to become a digital artist you buy a Wacom tablet and you buy photoshop and you spend years learning them to produce your art and then you sell your art based on what you can produce with those tools that you paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for. You don't buy a game that happens to have a tool in it that allows you to draw in the game and then think youre going to get paid for the drawings you do that can only be viewed in that game.

With Bethesda games, you aren't buying a game engine for $60. You are buying a game to play that you can develop content for using their tools and their rules. If you were buying the rights to use their Gamebryo engine or Creation engine or whatever its called then Bethesda would be charging you an initial cost of thousands of dollars for the rights to use their engine. You are buying a game not the rights to an engine.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#23
Poet1960 wrote:Hmm. Mods have pretty much always been free. So let's see. There are generally two types of people who mod, ones who do it for fun and/or to learn how to code, and ones who feel they should get paid for it.

Now I am not opposed to rewarding someone who puts in effort to make something fun, but as far as mods are concerned, I think it should be a situation where they can take donations if people are so inclined, but not to force them, because there are some people who might be willing to pay for it, and others who never will.

If you want to get paid for coding, then perhaps you should either create your own game, or go work for someone who makes games. Just my thoughts on it.
You maybe need to digest my op, as you appear to have missed the point of "challenging" the existing thinking in order to benefit everyone.

My goal was to get to market the mods I would want, and would be happy to pay for.

However to play devils advocate, lets go with the "I want a career as an indie developer" side of things based on your viewpoint, and what I do for the next 6 months.

Your way: I cannot get any revenue from modding LT so I will go use Unity/Construct2 or similar and make my game. I release it on the app stores and come back here and say "Hi, I just made this excellent game you can buy it here" (blatant advertising rule aside)

Challenged way: I write my game in LTSL using state of the art PCG engine. In 6 months I come back here and say "Hi, I just made this excellent game/mod which will really enhance your LT experience if you enjoy [subject] elements to your game - $3 - and its on try before you buy"

As mentioned in the OP, donate buttons wont cut it from what I have read from Skyrim modders, its a nice gesture and gets a bit of revenue, but not the level to attract indie devs to switch to providing top quality content in LT.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#24
I don't know... I'd rather not have the modding community become commercialized. If I was the developer who spent a long time preparing modding tools for my community to create their own additions to share amongst each other, I'd feel pretty upset to see people taking advantage of my hard work and my community's money by monetizing mods.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#25
This entire discussion revolves around what type of license Josh releases the LTSL under. Even though he is going to retain sole rights to sell the game (engine) itself, creating mods will be completely done though the scripting language. If LTSL is released under the standard creative commons license I dont believe it will be legal to sell things created with it, but it could also be released with an open license. The problem with an open license is that Josh would see 0% from mod sails, the problem with CC is that modders will be 0% (since they couldnt charge at all). Im sure there can be some type of middle ground here.

As has been discussed before, there will probably have to be some central mod website setup, or a subsite on the official LT page to facilitate people finding new cool mods, and also a way to rate the mods to make sure there is no malicious activity going on. If Josh sets up an official mod clearing house, he will be able to do whatever he wants, up to and including adding the ability to sell mods. That being said, all a mod will consist of will be some plain text scripts, so mod piracy will be trivially easy, copy/paste. I think the idea of selling mods sounds cool, but in the long run the hassle involved would be too much to justify setting it up. We would need DRM which everyone hates. TBH people are going to come up with some crazy cool mods just for the heck of it, and the over head to make it possible to sell them would be so high that its probably never going to happen.

I foresee LTSL being a blast to play around with, and expect lots of people who are otherwise gainfully employed spending their free time hacking it to make space fish empires and simcity colony management without ever needing to make money from it. Most of the people who have the skills to program giant plants that eat asteroid ore can probably get a job that pays well enough to allow them to spend time making crazy LT mods just for fun.

That being said maybe we could have an official LTBucks bank, where people can give props to the makers of cool mods, just not with USD. Lets be honest LTBucks are way more valuable then $$!
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Re: Should mods be free?

#26
Cornflakes_91 wrote:I'll just re-use one of stallman's ideas here:

The mods themselves are free, and next to every mod download theres a "dontate" button (maybe even pre-loaded with an euro/dollar/whatever) with a small number input field bekow it
I'm for this. Don't charge for mods, it's not fair to anyone.

Still, it can't be enforced, so I'm sure it'll just develop in its own way. Which I'm also fine with.
Last edited by Talvieno on Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#27
Cornflakes_91 wrote: Whats the difference between a DLC which takes 6 man-months or a mod which took 6 man-months?

Both of comparable quality and size.

But one has an official tag on it and another not.

Wheres the conceptual difference?

Why should the modding team not be allowed to ask for some monetary compensation?
The difference is that the modding team accepted to do the same work for free, for fun and because it is their hobby when they started it out, the developers did not.

The modders win because they have fun, learn alot of useful stuff and so on ( and if not they are free to stop anytime they want and no one have any right to blame them )
The players win because there is more content for the game.
The developers win because the game becomes more widespread and they get extra sales.


As others have pointed out, everyone is free to contribute donations to modders they feel have deserved it as well, so I don't see where the problem is.
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Re: Should mods be free?

#28
Long time user and small time modder here.

I disagree.
The principal sound good and everybody agrees that work should be awarded.
I have used donations on the mods I think are something special and that I think make the game become something I wanted.
If I am part of a modding team and the idea of taking payment for the mod comes up (it never has so far, in my circles) I would say no, and would they choose to take that path I would leave the group and take claim to all the assets I have done.

There have been topics on this before, check Bethseda forums, and allot of good arguments of why mods should be free has been compiled.

If one wants to make a great work one should go through the publisher and get there approval and get the "mod" subjected to peer review in gaming magazines (online etc).

In fact, if modding turned head on heels and started charging for every little thing I would stop playing games or mod them extensively myself (but there is only me then) because most games don't entice me until I have modded the crap out of them.

I love mods and I love modders; I donate to those I feel is above par but I would never donate to someone who tells me to.

This is a badly written post, I apologize. I just wanted to put into some words what I feel before this thread gets 200 pages :P

Cheers!
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Re: Should mods be free?

#30
cfhd wrote:
Mistycica wrote:And I just find "oh it's not earning you money but it's great exposure and looks good in your resume" a really appalling phrase, should it apply to any kind of software of traditional media artist.
Modding games isn't meant as a job or a way to sell things. Games and tools that come with them that allow you to mod aren't the same as game engines you buy or programs artists buy so that they can sell their work. So, yes, in this case if you want to get into the games industry and you don't want to shell out thousands of dollars for a legit game engine that is used to develop games then you can use the free tools that come with a game to sell your skills to a potential employer. You aren't doing free work for the employer here. You are providing a mod for the gamers.

If you want to become a digital artist you buy a Wacom tablet and you buy photoshop and you spend years learning them to produce your art and then you sell your art based on what you can produce with those tools that you paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for. You don't buy a game that happens to have a tool in it that allows you to draw in the game and then think youre going to get paid for the drawings you do that can only be viewed in that game.

With Bethesda games, you aren't buying a game engine for $60. You are buying a game to play that you can develop content for using their tools and their rules. If you were buying the rights to use their Gamebryo engine or Creation engine or whatever its called then Bethesda would be charging you an initial cost of thousands of dollars for the rights to use their engine. You are buying a game not the rights to an engine.
Second Life does the exact same thing you're saying it shouldn't - monetizing tiny content, only viewable in their environment, for minor amounts of money. It works. People do their things, learn a lot, have fun, get exposure, and still get paid for their trouble. Not to mention that they didn't buy Linden's environment either, just do stuff in Ps and Blender, like modders usually do, and pay their share to the devs when they earn something.
I don't see how that's fundamentally different from selling a set of Skyrim armor or an LTSL script for ten cents, how it suddenly becomes more immoral or less viable.
Emiliano wrote:I don't know... I'd rather not have the modding community become commercialized. If I was the developer who spent a long time preparing modding tools for my community to create their own additions to share amongst each other, I'd feel pretty upset to see people taking advantage of my hard work and my community's money by monetizing mods.
Why not? You get paid after release for part of what they earn with your tools you put so much work into. They get paid for their projects. Or not, if they elect to play 'nice'. Creating things with a tool someone else made, paying your fair share, it's all good.
Gamers are just awfully stingy and feel entitled to the huge free market of mods of incredible quality. I think they could 'have their money taken advantage of', if that means appreciation to content creators. They are only consumers after all, and worse yet, non-paying consumers.
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