BLOG PIECE: Modding as a hobby versus modding as a career, and the position of the Nexus

[TheBlu3s0n]

I've been a member of this community for years,dowloaded thousands of mods,and i loved the fact that everything was free! Simply because i could dowload so many mods,test them and pick the ones i liked for use.If we have to pay for them,then you must ask: <how much am i willing to spendto make my game better 100-200 bucks?>Will anyone buy similar mods to test functionality and actually choose which one has more appealing features?What happens with game braking mods that are incompattible with other mods? From my humble point of view noone should be forced to pay for mods,donations are a personal choice for everyone and i support it for mods that deserve it,but ^Forced donations^ will ruin the modding community!

 

Finally if they have to make us pay for mods cant it at least be in the way of for instance 20 bucks grants us 3 months of unlimited mod downloads so we at least can pick and choose those we like without severe loss of money!

[nerdofprey]

The thing that worries me about a monetized channel for modding a game is that it will become an exclusive channel for it, that the powers that be will forbid competitors from working for free, and that will drastically limit our choices.

 

Part of what's great about game modding is that there are all these different places that host different stuff. Some of it is amazingly professional and polished, but then there are the weird corners where you find stuff that's silly, sexy, sarcastic, stupid... mods that would absolutely never pass muster if the game developers themselves have the final say, but they can still be quite clever and they make people happy.

 

More often than not it's the more ridiculous side of modding that gets people talking and sharing videos, and that ends up inspiring more and more people to try their hand at modding. And innovation can show up in the weirdest places; look at everything that's been accomplished with HDT since it moved beyond the jiggling flesh phase.

 

Without the ridiculous mods, the whole damn thing falls apart. The unauthorized channels NEED to stay open, because they're the primordial soup that gives rise to new life.

[griefmyst]

If the case is of something happening... why not simply choose to work with those who "mod for a career"? Allow them to career mod. Add a condition: "all assets must be original". Or, "must maintain a 1:1 ratio of paid:free mods".

 

I know if I had the potential to release professional mods, I would still release free mods. Many people would, because out of every 1 professional release, there are 20 - 30 things on the cutting room floor that are of benefit.

 

But the point is the demands from people increase more and more. People always want "better", and "more".

 

I'm investing my money modding... why shouldn't I be allowed to profit, when you essentially profit enough to be able to hire a full time salaried community manager? And please don't begin to think of me as dumb enough to think nobody else is making money off of this site, either. Money is definitely being made.

 

So if you're allowed to invest money and recoup costs, isn't it a tad shameful to try and attempt to shame people in to continuing to break their ass for free?

 

I mean, why do you have to pay a community manager then? Shouldn't you hire someone willing to do it for free in this case? Why should those positions be paid, but modders should work for free in order to enable that salary?

 

But of course, you want to attract quality employees. You want to pay someone because you expect them to take it seriously. You don't want someone who will "moderate when they have time". You are wanting to pay them to MAKE that time. Obviously. Just as modders have evolved to the point where I'm sure they'd love to finally be able to own legal copies of software. Or maybe that one guy really amazing with scripting would like to hire a stable and committed 3D artist that will take it seriously and not disappear.

 

Maybe some of us are at the point where that 25 hrs per week we spend working our craft would actually like to feel like we're getting something out of it beyond a pat on the back and the obligation of investing more to improve for the community.

 

I'm sure there are those who don't mind to do that, and that's fine. They can keep doing what they do. But to tell us you want to make this a site "away from money" and how we should all just "do it as a hobby" but only a week before make a post hiring a community manager for the website... well. I don't know what to say.

 

It's pretty disappointing to say the least.

Edited March 21, 2015 by griefmyst

[fftfan]

In response to post #23623379. #23623839 is also a reply to the same post.

This is a great point! I feel like we may never know until someone tries to take it into court.

[TarathielTorosir]

All this does is further Steam's monopoly and line their pockets off of other people's work, not to mention it just spits on the spirit of modding. Hell if I had to pay for every single mod I've downloaded I would be homeless now.

 

Last I checked you modded because you loved the game not because you want to get rich.

 

How can you call EA evil for their microtransactions when you are going around charging $5 per weapon in your weapon pack?

Edited March 21, 2015 by Tarathiel_Torosir

[TheInquisitor]

I think the ultimate step is when content that would otherwise be issued with a Cease and Desist order gets protected by this system.

[leatherneckjr]

While this topic does get my brain working it's rather late so all I'll is this for now. Knowing that creating content that I want, for a game that I love could net me some serious coin makes me want to learn how to do it myself. I think apart from all the other major points that can and should be made about this news, lets not forget what other good it can do. While there are many modders out there doing wonderful work, imagine all the others not focusing their attention on it because they think there's no money to be made on it.

 

It's true that money shouldn't be the sole motivator, and usually it's not, but it certainly helps. There are a lot of potential modders out there who simply can't afford to take the time to create, food needs to be put on the table. I don't know how many times I look through mods only to find that authors have stopped updating because of real life issues. Now imagine if some of those authors had a chance to make some of the aforementioned money at the time.

 

It's also true that not all modders are in need of money and generally aren't concerned with making money in the first place. The current platform on Steam as far as I can tell only requires people pay for mods that the modders themselves want money for. I don't see much of problem with this as long as the modding community at large doesn't try to initiate some sort of retroactive policy to get paid for all of their old content.

 

Perhaps if other websites/businesses could offer up similar services that are more devoted to just the modding aspect people would be more open as well.

[Thaiauxn]

Add a condition: "all assets must be original".

 

See, that. I like that. But I'd say that all assets need to be proprietary, and a hex code must check back that all assets are unique upon upload. Stat tweaks need not apply.

 

This is my final line of Thaiauxn Brand Devil Advocacy on the subject:

 

With Unreal, Unity, Cryengine, Source2, all of these excellent engines going free to dev, with a subscription or a "if you make above X, pay us X%" deal, then I don't see why GECK and CK can't go that way too. Just put a tax on paid content. Anything that's released for free, just ignore it like they always have.

 

To be honest, I can't understand the mentality behind the dozens of posts I just read. I hear all this, "money is bad, it corrupts everything."

 

Yeah, it corrupted the professional devs right into releasing tools that inspired you to make mods in the first place. Serial Murder and Piracy are corrupt, and the tickets are free!

 

Look at this:

 

3DsMax costs 1300$ for the professional version. Most of the top rated plugins are free, or rarely go for 5-25$. There are entire sites dedicated to it:

http://www.scriptspot.com/

http://www.creativecrash.com/3dsmax/downloads/scripts-plugins/c/

Look how many of these are free. 95%!

 

I use TexTools every day. Free. I've made thousands of dollars off of it. It's as ubiquitous as a screwdriver to me.

 

Look at World Machine. 90$ to buy the pro version, 225$ for studio. Plugins? All of them are free.

 

AfterEffects, another 900$ piece of software. Plugins are a multi-million dollar market for that software alone:

http://www.videocopilot.net/

Andrew Kramer - f***ing genius. Most of his software is free, ALL of his tutorials are free. He puts ILM to shame, and teaches you how to do it too.

 

Photoshop? Look at all that free stuff! Brushes, actions, textures...Red Giant and Quixel are expensive, but they just make something you can do in GIMP for free easier. Quixel's legacy version of DDo and NDo are now FREE.

 

I look at the GECK, the CK, and I see we paid for the base game. 60$ - and all the tools are free. So why can't 3 or 5% of the ultimate best be for-profit? Look at the past examples, now look at the tools we have. Where is the breakdown that I'm not seeing? Most of these tools are still free. Those ARE MODS. In a for-profit ecosystem. And they're still 95% free of charge.

 

Saying the Nexus would be worse off for having "professionals" competing all over would be like saying that Polycount is a den of cess because they are a mix of snobs hammering down the little hobbyist. But you go over there and that's just not true. People are genuinely really helpful, just like they are in the Mod Request or Tech Support forums here.

 

Do you think Millennia is a hobbyist? He's also working on Fractured Space. Does he withhold his knowledge and mods? Hell no! He posts how to videos on his mod pages!

 

What about Faalskar? Alex now works for Bungie on Destiny. Did he abandon us? No, he still regularly checks in.

 

What about me? I own Radian-Helix Media. I'm here all the time. I just spent 5 years on a mod I am releasing for free, with self-proclaimed hobbyists central to our success.

 

There are countless others. Josh Sawyer has a mod on ModDB for gods' sake. He's the lead developer of New Vegas!

 

Not all of us are hobbyists. I like hobbyists, they're awesome, and I owe them my career. But I'm part of a tiny dev minority that takes mods seriously, and right now I feel like our voice doesn't matter in the crowd although our work represents some of the top downloads on the site.

 

People want what we do, but we can't profit off of it, so we do it for free because we want to fill the dream and do what we love despite doing it at a personal loss. Doing our own Original Intellectual Property would require tens of thousands of dollars and just as many hours, but here we can express ourselves much more readily. If the Man says we can make money off that? Hell yeah, let's do it! If not, then we'll still do it for free.

 

But we could do it faster and better if there was a pittance attached. And we'd fail less often.

 

Now remember, this is coming from a guy who is very vocal about never paying for mods: http://www.moddb.com/members/thaiauxn/blogs/history-of-total-conversions-101-with-your-host-blee

 

So I know the rules, I'm still following them, and I'm saying it's a good idea what Steam is doing. Nexus should think about it.

Edited March 21, 2015 by Thaiauxn

[PCGirl]

I started modding and continue modding for the pure fun and joy of it. The sense of accomplishment you get from completing a project is more to me than getting paid for it. Who wants to pay for having fun?

 

I happily pay for my games, legally, and any membership costs that are associated with whatever sites I want to be involved in. My computer and any upgraded software/hardware needed to continue modding and to continue improving my skill level, all out of pocket money. This new concept smacks of putting a tax on the fun and enjoyment I get from doing this. Not to mention the fun and enjoyment I get from using other peoples' mods, resources and tutorials.

 

Will this new concept not only limit the mods creativity, but also the number of people that can use it? Most people can barely afford to purchase the DLC's let alone having to pay for the mods that they want to use. A perfect example of overlapping mods is the Adoption Mod put out by TM Phoenix, or the Unofficial Patches. When you have over 200 mods installed on your game, that extra $5 per mod starts to add up, don't you think? I totally support the concept of voluntarily paying for a mod, which is the current system in place for a number of mods, but it should not be a requirement in any form.

 

Yes, it may encourage some others to mod that have not been doing so because of the lack of monetary reward. However, I think we would loose far more of our current great modders than we would gain in a few new ones, not to mention gamers that would leave the communities. Ultimately costing us in resources and knowledge from those gamers. I am having difficulty in seeing the sense of any of this, in my opinion. Merely putting in my two cents for what it is worth.

 

Cheers,

[Saxonisc]

I will try to be brief.

I fell in love with video games in the 70's, Pong & Spacewar and such. Friends who's family could afford one of the early computers. So I can offer some limited knowledge.

When computer games began everything was new so it was easy to invent something not seen. It was very much an enthusiast hobby scene. The early Newsgroups BBS and early web were facinating and I didn't even need antivirus or firewalls and such. As such it was generally very friendly and exciting. Now we have trolls and phishing and whatever else that for me at least has taken the shine off. Atari and Amiga Tandy etc have gone and most of us now share one OS. The competition has gone and so has some of the fun.

Modding came along really with doom wads and such. I saw modding an incredible endless source of originality as people were not concerned with the bottom line as developers and publishers are today.

I worry modding will change like the internet and games becoming more about the money than originality like we see in the games industry today. My mod 2 (the sequel) and so on.

We have some great mods made by talented people but if they make a popular extensive mod will I have to pay for DLC for my mod so I can go on enjoying it?

Some people will stop allowing others to use their assets for free, so others may not be willing to pay when they realize their time is limited due to real life matters and so their mod may take years to come to fruition.

Look at the legal issues between developers and publishers over the years. If a mod doesn't do what "it says on the box" am I entitled to a refund? Who pays, Steam?

Also lets not forget that to get your mod out there you will now have to go through corporate headquarters. More and more others will hold sway on what gets allowed and what does not which is after all a form of censorship.

How many mods here would not be allowed by Bethesda's legal team or Valves? At some point they will have to wade in.

 

Some mods are amazing to the point that they surpass what the developer created so therefor i am happy to pay. But ultimately I think the old community spirit will wither the same as the the BBS and internet I fell in love with all those years ago.

Lest we forget. R.I.P days of old.

 

Saxonisc

 

Edited March 21, 2015 by Saxonisc