The Creation Club - How to make it helpful to the Modding community, not destroy it

[MrJoseCuervo]

What is it that makes it so obvious that CC will be a death blow to modding?

You say "our" community, but who owns the modding community? Last time I checked the modding community consisted of thousands of individuals with individual opinions, even on exciting topics such as Youtube and paid mods. There's no betrayal in that.

 

As they are now donations are a joke. If donations were implemented in a way that made it more easy to use and available it could become more popular, even in the modding community, but I have my doubts. I imagine Reneer's numbers to be pretty similar for most modders, and they show just how few donate today. If you in addition to that look at how few actually endorse and comment, which is completely free and just takes 3 calories or so, I don't have any high hopes that people will donate in the future, even if it is made easier. What do you think works best: a Kickstarter campaign building up to the release of a game, or a free game with optional donations afterwards?

 

Well keep in mind, people usually download lots of Mods. I have 247 running right now. Lets say that each mod had a price of at least $1. Who is going to pay $250+ to run mods?

 

My analogy of the American health care system and Charging for mods is spot on. There are only a small minority of people pushing for this. Will CC happen? Sure. Just like the last incarnation. Can we make it crumble in an ash pile? Yup just like we did before.

Edited June 20, 2017 by MrJoseCuervo

[MightyZ0G]

What is it that makes it so obvious that CC will be a death blow to modding?

You say "our" community, but who owns the modding community? Last time I checked the modding community consisted of thousands of individuals with individual opinions, even on exciting topics such as Youtube and paid mods. There's no betrayal in that.

 

the thing with modding is that a lot of people are self taught and they rely on the more experienced members of the community to teach them.

sharing the mods they create is a thank you to the community that helped them get to the position where they are able to create and share mods.

[JoyTrooper]

You think being motivated by money is bad for creativity? The movie, book, video game and music industry says otherwise. Every artist want to profit from their creative work, trying to shame mod authors for desiring to sell their work is beyond petty, selfish and not least unrealistic. I can not begin to fathom how someone believes it's the other way around. Stop basing arguments on a pipe dream and instead face the uncomfortable truth; mods belongs to the mod author and you have no say in how it's destributed or if it's distributed in the first place.

[Alexotero1219]

You think being motivated by money is bad for creativity? The movie, book, video game and music industry says otherwise. Every artist want to profit from their creative work, trying to shame mod authors for desiring to sell their work is beyond petty, selfish and not least unrealistic. I can not begin to fathom how someone believes it's the other way around. Stop basing arguments on a pipe dream and instead face the uncomfortable truth; mods belongs to the mod author and you have no say in how it's destributed or if it's distributed in the first place.

technically the assets belong to the mod author but the ability to monetize them belongs to bethesda.

 

So in a way he actually does have a say in how or if they are monetized. Look at the first paid mods attempt. The consumer voiced their displeasure with the system and valve backed out of it. So there is, to some extent, consumer agency in regards to whether or not mods are monetized (if beth feels no one is buying them and the CC is causing them too much of a PR headache to deal with it they will bring it down.) he has as much right to voice his displeasure with the system and to vote with his wallet as mod authors do to participate in the system.

 

That being said I dont think shaming each other (users shaming authors for being "greedy" or authors shaming users for being "entitled") is very productive at all and we would be much better off coming together to petition bethesda for a solution that works well for everyone. But maybe thats a pipedream at this point lol.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Alexotero1219

[MrJoseCuervo]

You think being motivated by money is bad for creativity? The movie, book, video game and music industry says otherwise. Every artist want to profit from their creative work, trying to shame mod authors for desiring to sell their work is beyond petty, selfish and not least unrealistic. I can not begin to fathom how someone believes it's the other way around. Stop basing arguments on a pipe dream and instead face the uncomfortable truth; mods belongs to the mod author and you have no say in how it's destributed or if it's distributed at all.

 

Are we living in the same reality? The arts in this day and age are sheet. Everything is done by a formula to maximize profits. Movies are judged by how much cash they rake in. How many Mummy, Beauty and the Beast remakes do you need to see? Don't even get me started on music...

 

Inject money into mods and have them filtered , curated and Bethesda-ized , what do you think will happen? Do you think they will push the envelope and come up with something outside of the formula? They have systematically dumbed down the franchise for maximum profitability. I don't think they are capable of being innovative anymore, I believe this is part of the reason they want to hijack our community.

 

It takes modders like Kinggath to fix their profit driven after thought of a settlement system. It takes the Unofficial Patch crew to touch up and fix bugs that Bethesda to this day will not fix. Its all about money now with them. The artistry of gaming only exists for the grunts doing the actual art and even they are stifled and their creativity forced into a mold.

[Chiaro22]

 

What is it that makes it so obvious that CC will be a death blow to modding?

You say "our" community, but who owns the modding community? Last time I checked the modding community consisted of thousands of individuals with individual opinions, even on exciting topics such as Youtube and paid mods. There's no betrayal in that.

 

the thing with modding is that a lot of people are self taught and they rely on the more experienced members of the community to teach them.

sharing the mods they create is a thank you to the community that helped them get to the position where they are able to create and share mods.

 

 

I agree sharing things for free is a good thing, but...lots of people are self taught and/or learn from Unreal, Unity, Maya, Blender tutorials etc too, but not many expect them to release free games, materials and meshes because of that. Many game devs would never finish a game without community content, but there's not 1 million gamers lined up to tell them they are whores if they don't.

 

Also you can't take a portion of the modders, the "thank you'ers", and make their motivations valid for all.

 

Still, the paid mods vs free mods debate isn't a 0 and 1 situation, where one option will exclude the other; that only happens if Bethesda says so. With the Creation Club paid mods as such will probably not happen to TES or Fallout any time soon.

[MightyZ0G]

You think being motivated by money is bad for creativity? The movie, book, video game and music industry says otherwise. Every artist want to profit from their creative work, trying to shame mod authors for desiring to sell their work is beyond petty, selfish and not least unrealistic. I can not begin to fathom how someone believes it's the other way around. Stop basing arguments on a pipe dream and instead face the uncomfortable truth; mods belongs to the mod author and you have no say in how it's destributed or if it's distributed in the first place.

 

yes, the INDUSTRY which is only concerned with profit.

the publishers force developers to release games before they are ready.

the publishers force developers to lock out parts of the game so they can sell them as DLC. in some cases the DLC is actually in the vanilla game (or is included in a patch) but you need to pay to unlock it.

[Chiaro22]

 

You think being motivated by money is bad for creativity? The movie, book, video game and music industry says otherwise. Every artist want to profit from their creative work, trying to shame mod authors for desiring to sell their work is beyond petty, selfish and not least unrealistic. I can not begin to fathom how someone believes it's the other way around. Stop basing arguments on a pipe dream and instead face the uncomfortable truth; mods belongs to the mod author and you have no say in how it's destributed or if it's distributed at all.

 

Are we living in the same reality? The arts in this day and age are sheet. Everything is done by a formula to maximize profits. Movies are judged by how much cash they rake in. How many Mummy, Beauty and the Beast remakes do you need to see? Don't even get me started on music...

 

Inject money into mods and have them filtered , curated and Bethesda-ized , what do you think will happen? Do you think they will push the envelope and come up with something outside of the formula? They have systematically dumbed down the franchise for maximum profitability. I don't think they are capable of being innovative anymore, I believe this is part of the reason they want to hijack our community.

 

It takes modders like Kinggath to fix their profit driven after thought of a settlement system. It takes the Unofficial Patch crew to touch up and fix bugs that Bethesda to this day will not fix. Its all about money now with them. The artistry of gaming only exists for the grunts doing the actual art and even they are stifled and their creativity forced into a mold.

 

 

Speaking of how money destroy all art; why don't we just abolish capitalism, go live in a cave somewhere, and paint on the walls? Like in the old days?

[AGreatWeight]

 

literally everywhere else in the gaming industry donations work perfectly fine.

 

The problem with modding is that mod authors and donations are a bit tied in terms of creativity, advertising and support for things like patreon.

I agree that we are hand-tied by Bethesda with regard to being allowed to use Patreon, as per Dark0ne's post, but... we have a donation system implimented into Nexus, and even with that,it appears that the majority of users don't actually use it to donate to mod authors than those who do.

 

As mentioned by someone else in this thread, we see a similar situation whereby a much larger portion of users don't even endorse the mods that they like & use (I can give you a highly recognizable instance of this, for example the youtuber MxR has endorsed less than 20 mods in all the time that they've been on the Nexus, although being objective & fair, I can also state that we see the exact opposite in the case of the youtuber Oxhorn, who appears to endorse all the mods he uses) Not only that, but endorsement rates currently tend to average at between 7-10% of downloads. If someone doesn't even possess the inclination to visit the page of a mod that they like & use, to simply click a button to show appreciation for that mod (and by extension the mod author) than how do you think that this person will actually donate a small portion of their income via donation? That's not a problem caused by Bethesda is it? Don't misunderstand, this isn't a complaint in any shape or form; it's merely an observation of behaviour.

 

 

I clearly said if your interest is purely monetary driven, then no, the donation system may not be your first choice. If however you want to maintain the creative atmosphere and the free flowing of information on modding, resources and assets etc then the donation system will be the way to go.

 

It's like health care in the US. We know that a Single Payer program is the most efficient cost effective and accessible form of healthcare, but a few people want to make a buck so they are willing to let these thing go as well as let b people die to do so. Modders wanting to monetize mods are essentially doing this to the modding community.

 

So, it all comes down t what you are after. I admit that modders could make more money monetizing mods...but at a great cost.

 

Since we have a working community that as I have shown is producing quality work, I think the burden is on you to explain to us what exactly will the average gamer gain from having our community hijacked by greedy people and mods monetized..

 

Hmm, as someone living in the UK, I'd have to strongly disagree with your sentiment regarding the US health care system (regardless of what the current UK government are attempting to do with it) plus I don't think you can make a valid comparision between something that is an utterly essential service, and something which isn't essential.

 

You're making assumptions about something which hasn't happened & is not part of reality, so no, the onus is clearly on you to back up your initial statement with actual facts to validate your claim, or we can easily dismiss it as a falsehood. If you can't actually do that, attempting to switch the burden of proof onto me (or others who disagree with your stance) for something which isn't true, is merely a smokescreen for you to attempt to save face and avoid having to provide evidence. The fact is, you don't know. You don't have any proof. No one knows. You have no evidence, so your argument is invalid. Nothing wrong with that, if you admit it or agree that your concerns are pure speculation. But arguing that this isn't the case, and that what you claim will happen is as sure as the moon sits in the sky, you're placing yourself in the position of that guy stood on a street corner with a placard proclaiming 'the end is nigh'.

[JoyTrooper]

 

You think being motivated by money is bad for creativity? The movie, book, video game and music industry says otherwise. Every artist want to profit from their creative work, trying to shame mod authors for desiring to sell their work is beyond petty, selfish and not least unrealistic. I can not begin to fathom how someone believes it's the other way around. Stop basing arguments on a pipe dream and instead face the uncomfortable truth; mods belongs to the mod author and you have no say in how it's destributed or if it's distributed at all.

 

Are we living in the same reality? The arts in this day and age are sheet. Everything is done by a formula to maximize profits. Movies are judged by how much cash they rake in. How many Mummy, Beauty and the Beast remakes do you need to see? Don't even get me started on music...

 

Inject money into mods and have them filtered , curated and Bethesda-ized , what do you think will happen? Do you think they will push the envelope and come up with something outside of the formula? They have systematically dumbed down the franchise for maximum profitability. I don't think they are capable of being innovative anymore, I believe this is part of the reason they want to hijack our community.

 

It takes modders like Kinggath to fix their profit driven after thought of a settlement system. It takes the Unofficial Patch crew to touch up and fix bugs that Bethesda to this day will not fix. Its all about money now with them. The artistry of gaming only exists for the grunts doing the actual art and even they are stifled and their creativity forced into a mold.

 

 

You can be a negative pessimist to your hearts content, completely neglecting all the great works of art that has been made just to make it seem like you got a point. I need only point to the fact that you're here discussing video games and enjoying all types of media and it should be clear as day that you're an unrealistic hypocrite only pushing an agenda.

 

So to answer your question; no, we don't live in the same reality.