"wah, wah- I want money" post on Gamasutra

[RS13]

I find freaking hilarious that you're criticizing anyone's non-argument. I grade arguments for a living, and were this (or any "argument" I've seen you give) produced in a class of mine it would not sniff a decent grade.

[crawe1x]

 

 

What does Beth do for the Mod Creator?

.. Answer: Nothing.

Beth has ZERO Pre / Post -Costs for the Mod Creator to produce their Mod. Beth invests not 1 penny.

The most spectacularly dumb thing I have read this week.

 

 

Well lelcat, the most spectacularly dumb thing I've read this week is your comment. I mean, seriously, someone comes up with an intelligent and well reasoned argument, and your only response is a smug insult with no further explanation? C'mon that's just weak, not to mention disrespectful. By all means, disagree with him and argue the case against him. There are too many of these lazy responses - either say something worthwhile or keep quiet.

[jjb54]

 

 

 

What does Beth do for the Mod Creator?

.. Answer: Nothing.

Beth has ZERO Pre / Post -Costs for the Mod Creator to produce their Mod. Beth invests not 1 penny.

The most spectacularly dumb thing I have read this week.

 

 

Well lelcat, the most spectacularly dumb thing I've read this week is your comment. I mean, seriously, someone comes up with an intelligent and well reasoned argument, and your only response is a smug insult with no further explanation? C'mon that's just weak, not to mention disrespectful. By all means, disagree with him and argue the case against him. There are too many of these lazy responses - either say something worthwhile or keep quiet.

 

 

There is a saying my grandfather had:

 

"You can tell when someone has no intelligent thought to add to a dialog or debate; when the "best" they have to offer is nothing but insults and putdowns."

[crawe1x]

 

 

 

 

What does Beth do for the Mod Creator?

.. Answer: Nothing.

Beth has ZERO Pre / Post -Costs for the Mod Creator to produce their Mod. Beth invests not 1 penny.

The most spectacularly dumb thing I have read this week.

 

 

Well lelcat, the most spectacularly dumb thing I've read this week is your comment. I mean, seriously, someone comes up with an intelligent and well reasoned argument, and your only response is a smug insult with no further explanation? C'mon that's just weak, not to mention disrespectful. By all means, disagree with him and argue the case against him. There are too many of these lazy responses - either say something worthwhile or keep quiet.

 

 

There is a saying my grandfather had:

 

"You can tell when someone has no intelligent thought to add to a dialog or debate; when the "best" they have to offer is nothing but insults and putdowns."

 

 

Yep, unfortunately this is very true.

[Reneer]

 

Considering they were going to give us 25/45/30 (mod authors, Bethesda, Valve, respectively), I'll happily take anything above or equal to 25/75, since Bethesda cut Valve out of the equation. But I imagine the split next time around will be closer to 40/60. 50/50 would be amazing.

I found the 'arguments' for this to be beyond silly and lame.

 

First I heard the "RECORDING INDUSTRY STANDARD".

 

Problem 1:

I have a few friends / clients in that industry and they went, when they heard that:

"Jj, as you know, that has to be lamest 'reasoning' sales scam, given. Why doesn't Beth just say, "We want to rip you off?" Because Mod Creation is NOT even remotely like the "Record Industry."

 

Case point 1: Recording a Song.

 

Pre-Release of song:

1. Setup and Hire a recording Staff.

2. Setup and have background vocals - musicians.

3. Setup main Singer.

 

There is A LOT of pre-expenses just to record a song.

 

What does Beth do for the Mod Creator?

.. Answer: Nothing.

Beth has ZERO Pre / Post -Costs for the Mod Creator to produce their Mod. Beth invests not 1 penny.

 

The Mod Creator has to do their OWN WORK - FINDING VOICE ACTORS and all their own .. well work. They DO IT ALL AND BETH DOES ZERO TO HELP THEM.

 

Post Production Record Costs:

1. Commercials.

2. Printing.

3. Burning the CD.

 

What does Beth do to support the Mod Creator?

... Pay for commercials for the product?

> NO.

 

... The Mod Creator does his "commercials" - "printing" and such.

 

Does Beth, help in the Development of the Mod in any way, shape for form?

> NO.

 

The Mod Creator does his own:

.. Storyline.

.. Alpha and Beta Testing.

.. Art Design.

.. Programing. Pre - and Post, to fix any bugs or such.

 

So tell me again, WHY is Beth taking the largest cut of the Mod Creation, and be straight faced when you do, please.

 

Several of the Record Company friends, are gamers and when they heard that " excuse / rationalization " ... all they could say is, " WTF? Beth is preying on the ignorance of the Mod Creators, by feeding them this " line ". Like some how, the Mod Creator is in some " big debt " of gratitude for coming up with their OWN IDEAS - TEXTURES - QUESTS - and such. When Beth does, again, NOTHING to earn the largest cut of the Mod Profits."

 

So when this or other " rationalizations " are given. Just ponder for the 30 seconds - and what does - did Beth do to help the Mod Creator in any way?

 

If it takes longer the 30 seconds, ... well .....

 

Actually, Bethesda does a lot for mod authors. Here is a short and incomplete list:

 

1. They develop and release the Creation Kit. For free. Mod authors aren't charged a penny to use their IP or their game engine. Bethesda has to invest some money both into the development of the CK for internal use as well as further development to remove segments that they cannot legally provide to mod authors.

 

2. They create the game itself and all the things in it, like actors, voices, guns, projectiles, AI, etc. So, no matter what, mod authors for Bethesda games are using Bethesda's intellectual property. Even if the mod authors create a completely standalone game that doesn't require any Bethesda ESM / ESP files, they still need to use Bethesda's game engine and the CK to make that total conversion.

 

3. Bethesda now offers a way of hosting mods via Bethesda.net. Ad-free and for free. Obviously the Nexus has done this for years, but Dark0ne is only able to do this because of the advertising revenue the site generates.

 

4. Bethesda maintains the Creation Kit Wiki and fills it (slowly) with information regarding the different versions of the game engine as well as differences between Papyrus versions.

 

Whatever percentage Bethesda gives mod authors when they come around to allowing paid mods again will likely be higher than the 25% that we saw the first time around for this reason: vertical integration. Valve has been cut out of the equation, leaving Bethesda to do everything that Valve was previously doing, namely: hosting and other frontend and backend stuff. Now that Bethesda is doing everything aside from making the mods, they have the ability to save money because there is less overhead because another company (Valve) isn't involved anymore. Thus, Bethesda could (and I think should) pass that savings on to mod authors in the form of a higher percentage than 25%.

 

Understand that CK is for a reason: and up until now it was NEVER $$$.

 

Oh, what was that you ask?

 

To get people to put more interest into the Vanilla game to "Keep it alive and thriving..." so people hopefully more people will buy the game.

 

From what I understand, what we get is a Scaled Down Interface that they use, to create the Vanilla and DLC's. They have a FULL BLOWN FEATURE and we get the "scaled down version".

 

Again, this is what I was told by a few well named Mod Creators, when I first started to play with mods for SKYRIM.

The reason we get a scaled-down version of the CK from Bethesda is because some of the 3rd party tools they use in the internal-development CK cost ridiculous amounts of money and Bethesda wants to release the CK for free rather than making mod authors pay money for it.

Edited August 4, 2016 by Reneer

[jjb54]

@ Rener ....

 

But, and sorry - obviously this is not a big $$ issue with Beth, as they have been putting out various versions of CK - GECK and such, for users since, well, I see a 2003 date, for the Morrowind Creation Kit, though it was not called that, at the time.

 

If there was that big a $$ outlay on CK ... they would not have been putting it out FREE for over 10 + years.

[Reneer]

@ Rener ....

 

But, and sorry - obviously this is not a big $$ issue with Beth, as they have been putting out various versions of CK - GECK and such, for users since, well, I see a 2003 date, for the Morrowind Creation Kit, though it was not called that, at the time.

 

If there was that big a $$ outlay on CK ... they would not have been putting it out FREE for over 10 + years.

It costs X amount of money to put out various versions of the CK / CS for mod authors to use. Whatever amount of money X is, Bethesda could get that money back by charging for the CK. But they don't.

[Arthmoor]

Odd that inzanity didn't provide a link to the blog, don't you think? It argues AGAINST paid modding, heh.

No, it actually doesn't.

 

Regardless, zanity is just posting more conspiracy laden drivel from an anti-choice standpoint.

[jjb54]

 

@ Rener ....

 

But, and sorry - obviously this is not a big $$ issue with Beth, as they have been putting out various versions of CK - GECK and such, for users since, well, I see a 2003 date, for the Morrowind Creation Kit, though it was not called that, at the time.

 

If there was that big a $$ outlay on CK ... they would not have been putting it out FREE for over 10 + years.

It costs X amount of money to put out various versions of the CK / CS for mod authors to use. Whatever amount of money X is, Bethesda could get that money back by charging for the CK. But they don't.

 

 

 

.. but they 'don't and did not' .... which is the point. Now the not so fine print. I'm not so against Beth getting some of the "cut" of the pie. I'm not, do not get me wrong. But, as I pointed out in my other post - the "cut" is fully ripping off the Mod Creators in no small way.

 

Even if it was 50 / 50 Beth would still be making a more than fair even if it was 60 % Mod Creators and 40 % Beth - Beth would still come out ahead.

 

See, again - it's not about the $$$, it's about being fair to the Mod Creators, instead of playing "Strong Arm" and wanting to rip off the mod creators. That is my point.

[Reneer]

.. but they 'don't and did not' .... which is the point.

I have to say I'm confused as to your argument. I'm saying that Bethesda would certainly be in the right to charge for the CK, but they don't. That they don't charge for the CK is a good thing for mod authors.

 

Now the fine print. I'm not so against Beth getting some of the "cut" of the pie. I'm not, do not get me wrong. But, as I pointed out in my other post - the "cut" is fully ripping off the Mod Creators in no small way.

 

Even if it was 50 / 50 Beth would still be making a more than fair even if it was 60 % Mod Creators and 40 % Beth - Beth would still come out ahead.

 

See, again - it's not about the $$$, it's about being fair to the Mod Creators, instead of playing "Strong Arm" and wanting to rip off the mod creators. That is my point.

Ok, let's talk about "fair share".

 

We'll first look at what is likely one of the closest analogies to modding: writing books in already-established universes (Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, etc). Now in the traditional publishing industry as a whole, often the author of an original novel will get somewhere around 20% royalties on the sale of the book, while the publisher will get 80% (see here). This is because first the author will get an advance against royalties from the publisher, whereby the author will sell a license to their book to a publishing house with an advance of $5,000 against royalties of 5%. What that means is that the publisher gives the author $5,000 immediately and when the publisher has sold over $100,000 worth of books, the royalty starts kicking in and the author will get 5% on any additional sales the publisher makes. Again, this is all for traditional publishing with books on print.

 

Things get a little bit more complicated when you add in tie-in (existing universe) licensing. Now the author has to share their royalties with the company that owns the universe (say, Disney for Star Wars or Microsoft with Halo), and often the author will get 2% royalties while the licensor (Disney / Microsoft) will get 6%, for a total of 8% (source). Again, this is all within traditional book publishing. The rough percentages might be different, but you get the idea.

 

If you want to sell your book on Amazon CreateSpace, Amazon is the publisher and you can calculate roughly how much you will make when you sell your book. As an basic rule of thumb, I used the tool to calculate that selling a 200-page 5x8 book for $10 nets the author $2.75. If we do the math, we find that the author is getting 27.5%, while Amazon gets the rest (you can play with the numbers here).

 

When we get into electronic books, things get turned on their head. The risk that publishers take is much less than with traditional book publishing, which in turn gives authors a greater advantage. As an example, you can earn up to 70% royalties with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing when you self-publish an electronic book but you have to meet certain restrictions - your book must cost more than $2.99 and can't cost more than $9.99 and download fees are subtracted from your royalties (think manufacturing costs). If you want to have a different price point or don't want the download fees to eat into your profits, you only can get a royalty of 35% (see here).

 

And this isn't even getting into the issue of using an existing universe. So lower the royalty percentages a bit more and, surprise, you get right into the 20-30% range. Which, surprisingly enough, is what mod authors were being given the first time around.

Edited August 4, 2016 by Reneer