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

[hickups]

forgive me for being a moron and this is probably wild speculation but, does this mean that fallout 4 when it does come out will require me to download all mods through the steam workshop?

 

Is this where this is going because that would be mortifying, and my favourite modders are going to start nickel and diming? me dear god i want to cry.

 

please someone tell me im way off base?

 

i mean for dota 2 TF2 i didnt really mind since all that stuff was pointless cosmetic nonsense.

 

but for skyrim i love the pointless cosmetic nonsense, i dont know if that makes me a hypocrite.

 

Furthermore im seeing a nightmare scenario, imagine that you want to change body types, does this mean after spending 5 bucks on a theoretical FO4CBBE if i wanted to switch to FO47BASE id then have to spend another 5?.

 

What about things such as armor conversions how is that going to work? ugh my head is hurting me.

Edited March 20, 2015 by hickups

[dafoose]

Good blog. I understand your point of view.

[Brigand231]

The place I foresee the most trouble with all of this is the intersection of paid mods, free mods, and conflicts.

 

Some of the most flashy and "impressive" mods are overhauls that drastically change vanilla assets and/or restructure the way in game scripts or lists behave.

 

Folks may buy and enjoy them greatly until they try to run it with another mod and hit a conflict. [i apologize for the generalization, and if this does not apply to you, you are not part of my target audience] We've already got folks begging for patches between mods X, Y, and Z, with support for four different body types. I envision this becoming an explosive issue once someone discovers their paid content is not compatible with another piece of their paid content. Who are they going to demand a refund from? Who is the onus on to create compatibility patches in a paid environment?

 

Depending on the answers to those questions, it might not be enough to simply create an amazing mod that changes the world and then sit back and let your commercial mod go IF there is an obligation to continue to support it as long as it remains commercially available, up to and including supporting integration with any other mods, body types, or formats.

 

[again, apologies for folks this does not apply to] We know how demanding mod users can be when it comes to support for issues pertaining to their personal hardware or load orders. Will paid content advance the attitude of entitlement? I could actually support that idea when it comes to paid content. Could that possibly give hobby modders like us more "power" when stating that our mods are free and to be used at the user's own risk and responsible for their own support?

 

I think it's rather telling that so far the only games to have these options available are those that accept [only] simple skins and model injections. It's a lot like Minecraft on console, one can buy DLC that PC users have access to many versions or alternatives of for free.

 

Ah... perhaps that's the key right there. If this concept is more or less limited to console-style games and ports I don't see much changing around here or anywhere that affects PC modders for the most part. If it's limited to things that are more or less micro-transaction material I don't see much of anything changing at all.

 

Edit: Also, as these "commercial mods" would be endorsed by the developers, they would need to be 100% lore friendly. After reading all the previous posts nobody has mentioned that yet. One potential way to "protect" a modder's assets from showing up stolen in paid content would be to make them incompatible with the game's lore. Far from an optimal solution, but it's there.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Brigand231

[drmmrdude22]

In response to post #23596219. #23596384, #23596664, #23597949, #23599274, #23599649, #23600629, #23601894 are all replies on the same post.

I think Forli has an interesting point: the idea of crowdsourcing mods to develop a UGC (love this term, btw) economy and help give financial support to authors that could really use it. This system would need to be REALLY fleshed out, and I know crowdsourcing is a point of contention for many people (I definitely don't see it as the end-all-be-all myself), but for a modding community I think the concept could carry real weight when compared with the proposed alternative. This would be especially true if Bethesda and other mod-supporting developers supported this idea and didn't make mods a strict pay-all-or-nothing system. Now that I think about it though, I can't really think of any benefits a crowd-funding system has over a purely buy-to-play but I do think the concept warrants consideration as an alternative.

[RayV12]

Can't help but think, Modding as my 9 to 5. wow the possibilities are endless.

 

Ok.. now back to reality.

 

 

[Nightasy]

I look at it like this, if it is the work of the author then it's at the discretion of the author how their product can be ascertained. If someone develops an armor mod and they will only allow others to use it through payment then that is and should be their choice. Modding takes a lot of time and some people feel they should be paid for that time. I would not hold it against someone else if they wanted to be paid for their mods, they made them and it's their choice.

 

Now I personally have never been one to sell my mods for a game like Skyrim. I have never done that, not once. When I make mods for games I typically make them because I wanted them for myself. I mod for selfish reasons and my creations are things that I wanted in my game. Sharing them on the Nexus is just a friendly gesture and I consider it charity. I have however freelanced quite a few gigs and developed models for payment (not for Skyrim of course but in general.) It's a trade that I make money doing. When people have come to me and asked me to make something specially for them for Skyrim I have, for the most part, told them no and then pointed them towards my tutorial series. I've helped a countless number of people fix their mods but teach a man to fish and all that is how I see it when it comes to making anything from scratch.

 

I've never asked for anything from people that seek my help with modding. My door has always been open to questions and my knowledge poured out willingly. I've always shared all of my tutorial videos completely free of charge on YouTube. Yes, I do make a bit of side change through the commercial advertisements but that's a very small amount of pocket change and more of a perk then my reasoning behind sharing my modding tutorials. I do it because I like to see what people can make with what I show them. I do it because I enjoy using other people's mods too. I do it because the things they create with what I teach them I get to use myself. My reward is what they make with what I show them. This is because I know that most of the time they will share their mods on the Nexus and it will be free for me to download. That is the beauty of a cash free modding community but I can not sensibly deny a simple fact, people have bills to pay.

 

As I said before, when I make mods for Skyrim, I make them for myself. Sharing them on the Nexus is charity. I'm not sure how I could honestly say that if mods were being sold instead of thrown up freely that I might not take a jab at making a few bucks. I imagine most of us modders would because the majority of us are paying bills. I mean, who wouldn't want to get paid doing what they love to do? Though, if this ever were to come to pass I do encourage people to still offer knowledge freely. Don't ever horde it for an upper hand because while I do believe that people should be allowed to get paid for their creations I do not believe anyone should ever horde knowledge regarding the development of modding.

 

That is the kind of thing that concerns me. If mods are being sold then the tool developers that allow for models to be exported and imported could very well hold a golden key. People, such as myself, with knowledge regarding the processes involved with mod creation could very well keep it to themselves thus blocking out competition on a money driven market. It could be quite destructive to any modding community. Rest assured though, if ever those days were to come to pass, I would not be one to hold knowledge hostage and I implore others to share these sentiments in such high regard as I do. As I say this I am reminded of the joy that I have cherished playing Skyrim using mods that people learned to create through watching my tutorials. If for nothing else, always share knowledge freely for the reward that comes from others creations.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Nightasy

[Devmarta]

Mods are free meaning users of those mods will not demand or expect things from authors - unlike the paid developers of the gaming industry. Users who want to show monetary appreciation for mods can donate to the authors.

 

This is the way it should be. Don't bring modding down with the antics of business.

Edited March 20, 2015 by Devmarta

[Devmarta]

In response to post #23601304.

Couldn't agree more.

[JetSteele]

I agree with Brigand231, I just released my first race mod for Skyrim about a week or so ago and I got at least 7 different races that people want me to make compatible with my mod. And its all fine now that everything is free, but if people pay for a mod like mine and then incompatibilities show up between mods; users will be complaining and maybe begin ranting because of the incompatibilities (and to an extent rightfully so, if you pay for something even I want it to work without a hitch).

 

But as mod authors know, their will always be a conflict somewhere or maybe something doesn't work for 1 person while everyone else is fine. I've had 2 people that came and said that the mod doesn't work for them and I have no idea why since I always extensively test something before release so those lets call them 'ghost' incompatibilities will become a WAY bigger issue if money gets involved.

 

I see the point though, where mod authors who spent months on a mod could get some compensation for all their hard work but there are so many ways that this could go wrong.

 

In my experience people are relatively friendly to share certain assets from their mods as long as you tell them what you want to use them for and credit them for their creations; in a paid environment you'll have to strike some legal deal to split the money, most probably sign a contract and a bunch of legal legwork needs to be done. Something that was done as a hobby now is made infinitely more complicated. And what if a free mod would like to use an asset from a paid mod? Will the authors need to sign some sort of discloser agreement? Like I said complicates the entire modding scene.

 

Also what about those mods that require other mods to run? I see a huge problem happening to mod authors because of it. What? I need mod X to run your mod? So I need to pay for 2 mods to get yours working? Naw, I'll stay away from that.

 

Or if people actually do get both mods then their spending double or triple to get everything working. In a way modding will become like paid dlc, some mods in Skyrim require Dawnguard or Dragonborn and if you don't have it too bad you can't run the mod.

 

And what about theft? People uploading stolen content say for 1 week, then someone finds it reports it and it takes another say 3-5 days for the content to be removed. Well that person still got paid for 12 days. There's got to be some sort of repercussions besides an account ban for that since copyright will be taken to an even greater extreme since money gets involved.

 

Like I said earlier it has some advantages to the mod author but there are 101 ways this thing can blow up in a negative light.

 

For games like CS:GO Battlefield, this system could work but for games like Skyrim and Fallout. I only see this going REALLY wrong and possibly crippling the communities of these types of games. So I pray that curating mods doesn't happen to games like Skyrim and Fallout since I could see gigantic problems happening.

 

Is curating mods a good thing? In a way it could be but in other ways it could be the worst thing to happen to modding. I mean think about this; a basketball player plays the game for the love of the sport, he gets into the NBA and now all he cares about is money, he lost the love for it (I'm generalizing here but you get the picture). What was once something that was done for the love of modding; for some; will become something done for the money. Meaning that the quality of mods can decrease since I'm more worried about making a quick buck.

 

And to those who will tell me that people vote for Curated Mods that doesn't matter, I could make the most average mod ever and go up against a top quality mod and if I have the better PR system in place then people will still pay for my product and vote it better than the other one. Look at any fast food restaurants, since they have an awesome PR system in place that is why they get all their customers; not because of their burger recipe; because they don't have the best burgers in the world. The PR gets them all the primary business, the burger is what keeps them coming back but the PR is what keeps the product at the forefront of the people's minds, but I'm getting off topic now...

 

This sector should be something that remains free, personally I find modding relaxing; and everything I create is because I do it with a desire to do it and not because I want to make a quick buck. I see too many things going wrong with this to be able to support curating mods, the only thing I would change about modding is allowing mods on consoles; but that is a conversation for another topic.

 

I think I went on a little rant myself...

[JCDNWarrior]

Oh man, this really seems like it's going to be terrible for modding. If Valve actually goes through with this, I'm not going to forgive them. Modding is what kept gaming alive for me and if they're going to open it up to such horrendous abuse, theft, and overall insanity, this is going to be absolutely terrible for all involved.

 

Modding is one of those really amazing things that shows a very positive side to people as a whole, sharing content freely to celebrate a game, to celebrate the medium. When money gets involved, it gets corrupted and messed up beyond recognition.

 

I'm very happy that the Nexus is at least not going to fall so easily.

Edited March 20, 2015 by JCDNWarrior