There could be more advanced mods if skyrim would be open source?

[Deleted18267574User]

As the title says: there could be more advanced mods if skyrim would be open source or not? Just a personal curiosity.. :laugh:

[bben46]

I doubt it - there is no difference between mods whether the game itself is open source or not.

 

Open source implies free - meaning that the millions of dollars Beth spent on developing the game would not be spent. So far there have been no 'A' games made as open source because of the astronomical front loaded cost of creating these kinds of games. It is estimated that the up front cost ( before release) was somewhere between 8 and 14 million USD. And it took 5 to 6 years to make Skyrim. But the actual beginning of making it was probably about when Oblivion was released in 2006 - then some of the development costs were covered by using some of the Oblivion and Fallout3 assets and left over resources.

 

I'm not saying impossible, just not very likely.

 

Open source may work well for smaller games where the creators don't mind working for free though. :cool:

[Deleted18267574User]

Thanks! :laugh:

[Arocide]

Then there's the issue of all the middle ware Bethesda uses, they can't let that go open source so it would have to be taken out wouldn't be much of a game to mod left once that happens ;)

[lofgren]

I don't think open source implies free. They could release the source for the engine but require you to pay for all of the actual content – quests, NPCs, worldspaces, armors and weapons, etc. I know that would be worth it enough for me to spend the money. But I think the single biggest obstacle is that Bethesda doesn't own all of the technologies they used, and packaging the engine for open source distribution would be way too much of a hassle than it would be worth to them.