When Beth wins, and mods cost money...

[cossayos]

 

 

Market, as in being paid? Or sharing free of charge?

 

 

Free of charge. There are torrent sites out there that provide cracked versions of console games, which are in turn playable of "jail broken" consoles.

 

 

Yeah, that's not exactly news. It's as old as computers, DVD players, consoles or mobiles, for that matter.

[gamingunderscoreogre]

This would likely drive me away unless done very well. Especially if there is actual censorship happening.

[iXenite]

 

Not questioning that there is a piracy scene for console games. It's also difficult to quantify the degree of piracy that takes place on any given platform but I think it's not a stretch to say: it is much easier to pirate a game on your PC than it is on your console. In the former version you torrent the game and hopefully it doesn't have viruses. In the case of consoles we're talking about a higher barrier to entry as you usually have to hack your console into cooperating with you. I'll recognize in advance it's not difficult but it tends to be "dangerous" enough that a lot of console users will just steer clear to avoid bricking their box.

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by DLC contamination but I can try to talk about the potential pay model for mods. I don't see why they can't take the same pay model, honestly, provided their pricing is a lot more reasonable and accounts for the fact that they're not being distributed by a reputable company but instead by an independent author and that their end users are taking a significantly higher risk by comparison. If paid mods take a reasonable pricing scheme I could see them working, i.e. $0.49 to $4.99 depending on scope and content, I could see myself paying for them if Bethesda is actually giving a reasonable portion to the mod author. Otherwise it's hard to justify paying for the content.

 

 

 

As to your final point, I think I mostly agree. I think console users will still purchase mods, but I think they'll get frustrated when they start having bad experiences and having to deal with the technicalities of modding. Not meaning this in a "console users suxx they can't do anything because they is simpletons" kind of way so much as that they won't really have the tools to fix it. Something breaks? You don't have the developer console to fix them. You don't have as powerful a set of tools to handle your saves. You don't have the ability to download utilities to help fix it. You're just stuck.

 

 

I look at DLC as something that can be good, but has now contaminated the games market with a lot of nonsense. You get a lot of half-finished games because of DLC. You end up getting games way over the normal $60 price if you want the full game. It's nonsense, and it's ruined the games market. I much prefer the days of buying a game and knowing I have the full experience right there. But as time goes on more and more content ends up being cut out of games because of rushed development and DLC.

 

I agree with you about the piracy thing. It is easier on PC, whether it be the cracking of the game, the distribution or the use of these pirated products, it's all very easy on PC. Consoles are a lot more involved and are generally taken down a lot faster.

 

 

I sincerely believe that paid mods will not work because they are not from trusted developers. I can install all of developers DLC and not worry about those DLCs conflicting with another or causing other problems you see with mods. This isn't to say mods cannot be high quality, but I think addressed that aspect pretty well in the previous post. Ideally it could potentially create a niche market and do okay, but I don't think this is the ideal world. I agree that it is not an intelligence or skill level that prevents console gamers from using mods and dealing with their issues, but it is something they would likely not want to deal with. This assuming we're talking about people who have never gamed on anything but a console of course.

[PoliteRaider]

 

 

Out of curiosity what is your opinion on non-direct price point monetization? I personally think it could be possible for Nexus to force a video add to play before the download starts and then give that add revenue 100% to the mod author. I dont know exactly how add revenue on websites like this works but if its similar to youtube in anyway the video add itself would be a separate stream of revenue and I think most people would be willing to watch an add before each download so long as it wasn't super egregious and they knew that money was going to the author.

 

 

I'm all for creative solutions, but ad revenue is becoming a strained business model across the internet. A lot of ad websites aren't very trustworthy, there have been times where the ads on websites give my anti-virus software a good work-out. Nexus has enough struggles finding reliable ad companies to use for the site and Dark0ne doesn't have the market clout of google or other big names. Relying any more heavily on ads than the site already does is likely to be unworkable and making him into our personal banker managing individual revenue streams out of each page is going to up his costs in a lot of ways. I don't really see that happening. Besides, that's how the majority of freeware mod authors are currently making money anyway. Their modding clout translates to views on a linked youtube account.

 

Personally, I don't see the point in dancing around and trying to frantically divert revenue streams through hundreds of indirect approaches rather the plain simple honesty of "it costs a dollar, would you like it?" or whatever. Besides, most mod authors by nature are going to have brains that are good at manipulating systems because that's how you make mods. If you have to watch a video every time you download a mod with the proceeds going to the author, wow... why do all mods suddenly come released in three parts, with a new update each time for the latest patch and a new plug-in to download to change little options about the mod. The more money is forced to be made through indirect means, the more manipulated the mod release will be to take advantage of the indirect means. At least if they just cost money, the release will be (in most cases) based around professionalism to turn it into a market-ready product.

 

Just to note, even though I support paid modding that doesn't mean I'd charge for my mods. This is a hobby for me and so I put in a hobby level of time and investment into my mods. If paid mods came out I'd continue to release mods like my current ones for free, but I'd strongly consider putting in the time it would take to make a much larger mod with higher production values in order to make one for money.

[AsmodesReynolds]

I would actually consider sitting down to make some complex story mods, I have lots of ideas, and programming skill. I just lacked the artistic skill, which means I will have to pay for the models and textures, not to mention voice acting, which I’d be willing to commit to if I would make money off of it.

 

However, I do not trust the current team at Bethesda, not to mention their owners, at zenimax.

 

All you have to do is look at the way they handled paid mods the first time; how they rolled out bethesda.modTheft; and the fact it looks like they’ve been stealthily removing features from their upcoming DLC after people have bought it. (https://community.bethesda.net/thread/46828) I wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw them. They would pretty much have to replace the entire upper management before I trust them. Which won’t happen.

[Alexotero1219]

 

 

I'm all for creative solutions, but ad revenue is becoming a strained business model across the internet. A lot of ad websites aren't very trustworthy, there have been times where the ads on websites give my anti-virus software a good work-out. Nexus has enough struggles finding reliable ad companies to use for the site and Dark0ne doesn't have the market clout of google or other big names. Relying any more heavily on ads than the site already does is likely to be unworkable and making him into our personal banker managing individual revenue streams out of each page is going to up his costs in a lot of ways. I don't really see that happening. Besides, that's how the majority of freeware mod authors are currently making money anyway. Their modding clout translates to views on a linked youtube account.

Presumably a paid modding model would come from bethesda and zenimax in some form so maybe they would be able to have greater marketing clout than the nexus? Additionally with console mods now being a thing there are a whole ton of new users in the community so perhaps with the increased number of users and the marketing clout of larger companies there might be greater incentives for advertisers but idk.

 

 

 

Personally, I don't see the point in dancing around and trying to frantically divert revenue streams through hundreds of indirect approaches rather the plain simple honesty of "it costs a dollar, would you like it?" or whatever. Besides, most mod authors by nature are going to have brains that are good at manipulating systems because that's how you make mods. If you have to watch a video every time you download a mod with the proceeds going to the author, wow... why do all mods suddenly come released in three parts, with a new update each time for the latest patch and a new plug-in to download to change little options about the mod. The more money is forced to be made through indirect means, the more manipulated the mod release will be to take advantage of the indirect means. At least if they just cost money, the release will be (in most cases) based around professionalism to turn it into a market-ready product.

Well firstly its not as plain, simple and honest as you might think it is but thats not really the fault of the modders thats entirely bethesdas fault. Saying "hey this costs X do you want it?" might seem honest on its face except when you consider that the thing that costs X is a fix to the broken original product you were sold or made with assets and functions that were disabled in the original product you were sold that otherwise should have been there ect. ect. Its actually quite dishonest if you think about it but again thats not the fault of modders its the fault of bethesda. Oh and dont forget beth is going to make some money off of each of these purchases, its actually hugely dishonest coming from a users perspective but again thats nothing on you guys and 100% on bethesdas plate.

 

Im against the direct price point for the above reasons but also because I simply think that users wont really accept it. They especially wont if its implemented into fallout 4 or an already released game. Maybe in a new title bethesda could try but im skeptical. Charging directly for mods is starting off on such a bad foot with the very people that will be your future customers it just seems much more worthwhile to explore alternate revenue streams.

[PoliteRaider]

 

Well firstly its not as plain, simple and honest as you might think it is but thats not really the fault of the modders thats entirely bethesdas fault. Saying "hey this costs X do you want it?" might seem honest on its face except when you consider that the thing that costs X is a fix to the broken original product you were sold or made with assets and functions that were disabled in the original product you were sold that otherwise should have been there ect. ect. Its actually quite dishonest if you think about it but again thats not the fault of modders its the fault of bethesda. Oh and dont forget beth is going to make some money off of each of these purchases, its actually hugely dishonest coming from a users perspective but again thats nothing on you guys and 100% on bethesdas plate.

 

Unless you're specifically talking about the unofficial bug fixes (which is a very small portion of mods in general) then no, most mods aren't just things that are fixes. No, mods aren't just things that were disabled out of the original product.

 

There never was a US Marine power armour colour scheme in Fallout 4, I designed that texture myself. Up until Wasteland Workshop DLC, there wasn't any settlement decontamination options. I wrote the script for the decontamination booth myself in papyrus. There wasn't any faction based underwear until I designed it and made the textures myself. There was no toggle for survival mode's fast travel, until I built one. Yes I plugged that work in to various vanilla formats, assets and programming languages built into the game, but that's why .esp files are called plugins. That's how they work.

 

Even if you're talking about Homemaker in terms of activating vanilla objects, you're completely disregarding the huge amounts of work it takes to add a large number of vanilla assets into the game as a constructable item, requiring work on navmeshing, snap-points, construction recipes and design to figure out where to place them in menus to keep it all usable. I did that for just sixteen items for my own personal game and I'm never doing it again it was that frustrating and tedious to do.

 

And of course Bethesda's going to make money from it. My product can't exist without theirs. It would be wonderfully charitable of them to give me complete permission to mod their work for my own profit and not give them any money, but I'm certainly not expecting it.

 

I'm actually insulted. The mods I make are my work and pardon the hubris but they do require some creativity and skill to create. The time I spent painstakingly painting textures pixel by pixel was me creating and adding to the game. I'm not just patching holes in something (meaning no disrespect to the amazing programming work done by people writing bug fixes) I'm making my own content. They may be small additions but they come from my own ideas and inspiration.

 

Edit: I don't mean to imply that I wrote the first mod to do fast travel in survival, only that it wasn't in the vanilla game. There was at least one before mine that I'm familiar with.

Edited July 11, 2016 by PoliteRaider

[Arthmoor]

The last 10 EA games I bought were awesome. And are you sure Origin forces you to repurchase games every 2 years? Because I do not see that.

You wouldn't, because the backlash against the original clause that appeared when Origin first became a thing was removed. It's no longer there. So there hasn't been this 2 year limit thing for a very long time now.

 

Being the internet, nobody ever bothered to correct their tumblr screeds and blog posts when EA changed it :tongue:

[Alexotero1219]

 

Unless you're specifically talking about the unofficial bug fixes (which is a very small portion of mods in general) then no, most mods aren't just things that are fixes. No, mods aren't just things that were disabled out of the original product.

There never was a US Marine power armour colour scheme in Fallout 4, I designed that texture myself. Up until Wasteland Workshop DLC, there wasn't any settlement decontamination options. I wrote the script for the decontamination booth myself in papyrus. There wasn't any faction based underwear until I designed it and made the textures myself. There was no toggle for survival mode's fast travel, until I built one. Yes I plugged that work in to various vanilla formats, assets and programming languages built into the game, but that's why .esp files are called plugins. That's how they work.

Even if you're talking about Homemaker in terms of activating vanilla objects, you're completely disregarding the huge amounts of work it takes to add a large number of vanilla assets into the game as a constructable item, requiring work on navmeshing, snap-points, construction recipes and design to figure out where to place them in menus to keep it all usable. I did that for just sixteen items for my own personal game and I'm never doing it again it was that frustrating and tedious to do.

No, Im in no way disregarding the amount of work it takes to do these things. I dont even know how you came to that conclusion tbh. Its the same reason that people are disasstisfied with the whole wasteland workshop stuff especially the first one. You ask yourself why these assets weren't just added in vanilla and the glaring answer is that bethesda wanted to sell them for more money. Take the combat zone stuff for example. So bethesda puts all this stuff for the combat zone in and then leaves it unfinished for launch. Well now some modder comes in and puts in the work to bring it to the game and sells it and bethesda gets part of the sales. As a consumer you see that you've been nickle and dimed yet again because beth failed to finish their product and they're benefiting from doing so. So not only does beth release buggy and unfinished games but they have a financial incentive to do it now. Look at how barebones fallout 4 is on release as compared to other games like the witcher. Now consider that with direct price point mods the consumer is essentially paying 60 dollars minimum for the world and, say mods cost on average 50 cents, could end up paying another hundred dollars just for the content. Irregardless of the work it takes to create that content consumers aren't going to happy with that system and simply wont buy it. Im not against mod authors making money im against trying to do it in such a way that just pisses off the customer.

 

 

 

I'm actually insulted. The mods I make are my work and pardon the hubris but they do require some creativity and skill to create. The time I spent painstakingly painting textures pixel by pixel was me creating and adding to the game. I'm not just patching holes in something (meaning no disrespect to the amazing programming work done by people writing bug fixes) I'm making my own content. They may be small additions but they come from my own ideas and inspiration.

Dont be. As said above im not saying what you do isnt cool and doesnt take work. Same as during the first paid modding attempt and this is the problem. Yes what you do takes a lot of work. So does making youtube videos and running forums but neither of the other two charge directly for their work because it simply would not work. Consumers would be driven off by what would come off as blatent nickle and diming. Imagine if people charged 10 cents for every youtube video you wanted to watch. Youtube would be dead in a month.

 

Opposition to directly charging for mods does not mean that I think you work is easy or you dont deserve to make some money from it. Please dont jump to conclusions like that it really doesnt add to the discussion.

Edited July 11, 2016 by Alexotero1219

[midtek]

 

Mods are a bit fussy, and many console players will not be willing to pay money for something that will give them trouble. Remember, they bought a console for its simple plug and play mentality. Troubleshooting things, especially something they paid for, isn't really going to fly. Even really popular and high quality mods need compatibility patches and conflict with other popular mods. Paying for that experience is a lot to ask for, and I doubt many (even on PC) would want that. Just saying.

 

This is peculiarly a good point. I will add more details about the expectation.

What they want from modders regarding paid model system is console user friendly. Clampack will be the most encouraged type since it unloads burdens and issues from user side. It is necessary for successful console environment. While individuals can self-provide own mods collection(already they are being persecuted by console users to create all-in-one even more than before since the net), team projects like Nevada will be the preferred stock for paying.

Companies make such movements in the basis of optimistic prospect. If they focus more on demerits like pessimistic users, they become lukewarm to the changes and that's the point companies start to slip on. Even there's a risk, they are only allowed to venture forward. bethesda.net is concluded as a success as it has boosted s*** ton of console customers with positive reviews. In their brightest vision of paid mod, modders will start organizing themselves more than kickstarter and turn it into self venture of DLC leveled contents.

Of course not everyone share the same prospect. Some will prefer free modding. Some do not agree this is a win-win relationship and will refuse to be exploited by the company. And many users will seek their own way to pirate paid mods. That's the point paid modders will voluntarily request for consolidating mod environment to game engine itself. Monopoly is not the exact word to call it.

Still, even insiders won't be sure about paid mod concept. But when it comes, users are not in the negotiable position to interfere company's policy. That's why I didn't bother to read initial Wishlist posts. The present discussion is a lot more interesting thanks to guys. It's fun reading.