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

[sesom]

In response to post #23607584. #23645249, #23647084, #23650264 are all replies on the same post.

Looking at what happens in the Skyrim "community" in this regard already... It will be fun if mods get commercialized.

Be prepared for the army of hate trolls nexus.

[Guinefort1]

 

In response to post #23607584. #23645249, #23647084, #23650264 are all replies on the same post.

Looking at what happens in the Skyrim "community" in this regard already... It will be fun if mods get commercialized.

 

Be prepared for the army of hate trolls nexus.

 

Joke's on you then. They're already here. :dry:

[Arthmoor]

In response to post #23644599. #23646929, #23648494, #23650844, #23650964, #23651009, #23651369, #23652049 are all replies on the same post.

We're not even allowed to offset our own costs, but we're obligated to put up as "professional level material as possible" and continue to do so.

This right here I think is the big point to consider. The mod consuming public is expecting professional level material out of people who simply can't afford to spend money to actually provide that. The end result? Endless complaints about low quality voice acting, poor quality 3D artwork, and poor quality textures. Well, that's going to happen when one cannot afford to spend hundreds of dollars to hire professionals to do this level of work.

Honestly, I'm not sure what happened, but users of Skyrim mods seem to have ridiculously high expectations that simply did not exist in prior games. If you release a mod with dialogue that doesn't have voice acting, people jump on you for it. Prior games? No problem, issue silent filler files and you're golden. The burden of finding voice actors alone is a HUGE deterrent from releasing major quest mods, and at this stage of things, even for your average new village mod or something. And that's just one example of many.

As a prime example, I have a village mod where everything is done except the dialogue. I have been very unmotivated to start writing it because the attitudes of people are so dead set against unvoiced content that it just seems like too much of a hassle. Were I able to charge an appropriate price for this content instead, it would be easier to secure reliable people with decent equipment on the promise that they'd get a cut of the sales.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the community is bringing this on themselves. The ever increasing demand for higher quality free mods is going to run into a brick wall at some point, if it hasn't already.

[Draggannax]

Wise words. Mad world.

 

[Thaiauxn]

The burden of finding voice actors alone is a HUGE deterrent from releasing major quest mods, and at this stage of things, even for your average new village mod or something. And that's just one example of many.

 

Getting high quality voice acting is easy! Have you met your local stage actors? There are thousands of them in every city, and a lot of them are really good! Grab a cheap mic, follow this tutorial:

 

 

Now you want to talk about Quest Programming? Now that is a legendary pain! :p

[fadingsignal]

First of all, great post. I don't feel like your speculation is wild, or left-field at all, and you bring up some really good points that have my wheels turning about all of this.

 

As a mod author who has become mildly obsessed with doing this, I'll give some of my perspective. I'm giving away a bit of personal info here, but c'est la vie, I trust this community.

 

My background has always been in both art and technology. I worked for one of the largest websites in the world for over 7 years until November 2013, when the majority of the staff was finally laid off after a long uphill battle and defeat. Prior to that I had been with other tech companies since the mid-90s.

 

After such a long tenure, I decided to take a personal "creative sabbatical", finished writing and released an album (electronic music), have done lots of various freelance work, and also finally installed Skyrim in January '14. I held off on installing mods until I beat the main quest, but after installing my very first mod (SkyUI) I immediately was chomping at the bit to learn how to MAKE mods. I'm a product manager and an artist, so having a sandbox to adjust and control and create within just fired off on all gears. It's been an obsessive hobby ever since.

 

Cutting to the chase, I can't tell you how fulfilling it is to make something, be proud of the quality, and have it recognized positively by the community. My professional work at past companies has been seen by the entire planet, but this is just different somehow. I don't care about endorsements and attention, but having something hit the Hot Files, and be showcased by Brodual / Hodilton / etc. feels great. More than anything, firing up the game and seeing a tangible improvement just makes me keep wanting to do more.

 

There came a point about 3 months ago where I thought to myself "Man, I wish I could do this for a living somehow." I have a huge backlog of fully-fleshed Skyrim projects that are tremendous in scope, that I just don't have time for. DLC-sized content, characters, animations, you name it. I'm actually starting to think that my career should shift toward video game development, since all of my technology and art backgrounds would all apply.

 

Point being, I too have mixed feelings about mods possibly becoming for-profit. My motivation for every mod I make is simply noticing a deficiency, or a missing aspect of the game that I personally would like to have as part of my own experience, making it as best I can, and then sharing it with the rest of the community. I just love to create. Thinking about competing with others, or how to best monetize something would definitely sap a little bit of the creative process out of it. Not to mention the support that should be in place for users who are paying with money.

 

That said, if I could somehow turn making mods into a way for me to pay my bills, I would leap at that chance, solely because I am so passionate about this hobby. My gut feeling is that Bethesda is squeezing one more game out using this current engine, and that's part of why the CK is still on their radar. If TES VI or Fallout 4 are being released with an open way to mod the engine, you can bet your willy that on game day I will be poking around looking for things in the game to improve. I just love to create like that.

 

On the flip side, how many of these large mods that never see the light of day would suddenly get a huge boost in motivation if they knew they could make money? I bet we'd see a lot of these new lands come together.

 

If there does end up being a Curated Workshop system where mods can be purchased, I would likely end up making two types of mods. One, the kind I already do, which are isolated improvements, that would always be free on the Nexus, and two, larger DLC-type mods that would require a team, where financial incentive would definitely help the project. I have managed large teams on extremely high visibility projects and have no worries about the implications of needing to do that in this type of scenario. It essentially turns mod teams into indie game devs in some sense.

 

Not sure that really adds to the discussion, and I may have wandered around topically, but just wanted to throw some additional perspective out there.

 

Either way, I'm on Nexus 4 lyfe :)

Edited March 21, 2015 by fadingsignal

[silvericed]

In my unability to write long texts, I'll just add that non-end-user things (frameworks, like SKSE) would never be created. While now it's clear that SKSE is one of the most downloadable mods, it wasn't at the beginning. I'm not sure that such 'capitalized' community would be good environment, would bring developers who will spent their time making it.

 

And this is without saying that SKSE is a fork of NVSE and was developed by lot of people.

 

Edited March 26, 2015 by silvericed

[ilDuderoni]

In response to post #23644599. #23646929, #23648494, #23650844, #23650964, #23651009, #23651369, #23652049, #23654544 are all replies on the same post.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the community is bringing this on themselves.

Funny how a man I follow on Twitter, only a day ago, had an interesting thing to share about such a perspective.
"Blaming a "community" only encourages hostility from the group that feels they are being blamed for things they didnt do as individuals."

I've never demanded and pretended I could demand higher quality from a modder and in fact I am very content with the current quality available and was content with that quality 10 years ago. I'm a pretty grateful guy, I'd like to think.

What 'I' am getting at is that you are blaming the actions and words (or yelling, more like) of the vocal minority on the entirity of the community.
Please don't do that. It's not just once I've palmed my face to such a thing. Edited March 21, 2015 by RJ the Shadow

[MaximumUtmost]

In response to post #23660344.

lolwut nice Gramamr

[sheson]

What is worse? Taking your money or your firstborn?

 

I am not even going to tell to how long it took to debug Skyrim and find that memory fix. Not a chance I would have asked money for it - even though I knew I could make a decent buck out of it.

 

Why? IMHO modding has its root in hacking - the good old sense of that term. You do not hack for money, but for acknowledgement by your peers. If I needed money I would ask for donations. Chances are you can make more not having to give a large share to the man.

 

Second, for my sanity.People who paid are entitled to support and they will devour your sole with their inability to read.

 

I do not care if there may be mods for money, as long as there are mods for free by modders who think alike. There is no amount in the world that will make me deal with Steam users. You know what I mean.