In recent thread hijack a heated conversation about the gaming industry and monitisation got me to thinking.
I originally bought Skyrim on PS3 and completed it.
This year I bought it again, purely for the mods, to get another experience out of the same game, without just repeating what i did before.
Now, those modders spent many hundreds of hours of their time creating small items through to complete vast new continents equivalent to DLC from the dev. I was sort of lucky as I entered the PC market for Skyrim (5?) years after its release, so there were an abundance of quality mods there to choose from.
Is it fair Bestheda got 100% revenue from my PC version? Yes. For the engine.
Is it fair that the modders are not allowed to charge and their work is treated as hobby stuff that they are sharing with the community? I think not, especially when it was the mods that stimulated the purchase of the core game.
I am fully in favor of free mods being shared with the community, and generous modders who do it for free for the fun
But, lets think about and challenge this.
If a planned mod was going to consume 6 months of someones time, then assuming they need to make a living, so could only do a couple of hours a night on average, that would take many years to complete and very likely fall by the wayside and never transpire.
But if that modder can earn a living, or at least justify their time financially for the 6 months making the mod, in order to develop the mod (sound familiar?) then he/she will crack on full time and make the mod.
Professional developers would also be inclined to look at this rather than say do another phone app. More quality mods.
This benefits the community with an abundance of quality mods that are fast to market.
This benefits the modders, who can devote their time whilst paying their bills (at some point).
This benefits LT as it will help attract more sales.
This benefits Josh for LT sales, and a cut of the mod fee such as Valve or App Stores take.
Consumers get a trusted, tested mod, reasonably priced with controls by the LTstore so no nasty pay to win models or anything transpire. (pay to win on a SP game???? you know what I mean!)
My vision of this game is ultimately to land on planets and have a large GTA/Skyrim/Sim City type game depending on the planets level of advancement, and loads of mini games within those and further mods etc. Each planet.
This will take a huge amount of effort and multiple mods. I am looking to learn modding, but I can't tackle that on my own. I would however be more than happy along the way to support modders financially, if their mods helped me achieve this. Especially if it wouldn't happen otherwise. I don't think Paypal donate buttons will cut it.
On the flip side, if I put the effort in and my mods are well received and help other players achieve their dream game, and I could scratch a living playing and modding LT, wow. How many of you are thinking same? But this isn't about me making money off the back of LT, this is about me getting to market the ultimate game I want to play and more from the point of view of being the consumer.
Food for thought ...
Edit: Long thread, you can skip to my summary on page 9
Post
Wed Dec 03, 2014 11:02 pm
#1
Should mods be free?
Last edited by aspman on Wed Dec 10, 2014 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.