If Beth/Zen Pulled the Plug how many Mod Authors Would Still Mod?

[Fkemman11]

"So, the vast majority of mods are made for Bethesda games?"- me

"The majority, yes. In the past, Nexus was called TESNexus because it only featured Bethesda games. If you visit this page (http://www.nexusmods.com/games/?) and you sort it by 'total files', you will see that the first 7 featured games are Bethesda games (well, Fallout New Vegas is technically an Obsidian game, but it is subject to a Bethesda EULA)."

 

"Considering that the site grew from 7 officially moddable games to a total of 417 games featuring some degree of mod support, I think modding is definitely gaining momentum, but the process is not without setbacks (e.g. BioWare dropped mod support (officially) when they switched to the Frostbite engine)."- LadyMilla in Jan of this year.

 

So the question is would you still make mods for games if "they" stopped supporting free mods? Is it that hard to make mods for other games? Or are other games not as interesting? Most of the modding community here seems to be centered around FO4 or Sky. Is it just because more tools and info is available for these? What other popular titles either released or in the works would you like to see mod support for? Because it does seem that the modding bug is biting more ppl- especially with them available to consoles now. Modding games will grow far beyond the constraints of any one company or series of franchises. How does a Title "catch fire" and become the next community project?

[Ethreon]

I cannot follow the reason people think this. I just cannot.

[Fkemman11]

I cannot follow the reason people think this. I just cannot.

It's not that I think they will- because I don't. What I am thinking is that why just Beth games get so much attention? You are a much mentioned author and have been doing this for some time. What games have you made mods for if you don't mind me asking? Have they just been Beth games?

[cossayos]

 

I cannot follow the reason people think this. I just cannot.

It's not that I think they will- because I don't. What I am thinking is that why just Beth games get so much attention? You are a much mentioned author and have been doing this for some time. What games have you made mods for if you don't mind me asking? Have they just been Beth games?

 

 

Far as I see it, it's rather a tool/engine problem than based on preferences.

[Evangela]

Beth holds the distinction in the modding category for offering a tool that allows huge portion of the game itself to be edited to one's liking. I can't think of other editors out there that are similar, including the Divinity Engine.

 

However, if Beth one day stopped allowing free modding of their games, and I think it's realistically reasonable to consider such a thing unlikely from a business point of view, no I do not think that would stop mod authors. Would it significantly cut the amount of mod authors vs the past, perhaps.

[Rooker75]

I've been modding games since the days when publishers were stupid enough to send cease & desist letters to anyone hosting mods for their games. It's nice that they've mostly all stopped doing that and even give us official editor tools now, but we don't really need them to mod our games. Bethesda refused to release the Fallout 4 CK until well after their DLC started coming out and we modded it anyway. They attempted to disable those mods in their first patch and we circumvented that and kept modding it anyway. If they tried to put a stop to modding, there'd be 10 million new people flying the black flag almost immediately.

[flatbush71]

I was just looking the list of "Handles" or names of people who have already made financial agreements with the CC. Its a shame really.

 

I spent 50 years in the corporate / government world and what they are doing stinks to high heaven.

It all boils down to greed, power and control.

 

This is also why nobody on " The Street " as in Wall Street, takes these gaming companies seriously.

There top level management is a joke.

 

Chris Weaver was booted from operations, but is still the largest stock holder and therefore there is still hope.

 

Buck

[RangerDulann]

Couple of people who joined the CC:

 

Elianora (Party Hat)

TroyIrving (Settlement Supplies Expanded)

Gambit77 (Armorsmith Extended)

Expired6978 (RaceMenu Skyrim)

 

Some quotes:

“I can’t speak for everybody, but if I was part of it, it wouldn’t stop me from working on the bigger picture stuff.” -Expired6978

"I’m spending a lot of my time to do this and get almost literally nothing out of it. What's wrong with getting paid for it." -Gambit77

[thunderlord2200]

p

 

Couple of people who joined the CC:

 

Elianora (Party Hat)

TroyIrving (Settlement Supplies Expanded)

Gambit77 (Armorsmith Extended)

Expired6978 (RaceMenu Skyrim)

 

Some quotes:

“I can’t speak for everybody, but if I was part of it, it wouldn’t stop me from working on the bigger picture stuff.” -Expired6978

"I’m spending a lot of my time to do this and get almost literally nothing out of it. What's wrong with getting paid for it." -Gambit77

plain and simple greed.

i dought they get paid that much since from what i can see none of the mods they offer in the CC are even close to being worth what they are asking, i bet the moders only get paid hrly or one lone-some check per mod.

 

not like they even get 50% or more of per mod bought. i dont think they get anything out of it per item bought at all.. its sad really. if i had money to give to my fav mod authors i would of done so.

[metaphorset]

However, if Beth one day stopped allowing free modding of their games, and I think it's realistically reasonable to consider such a thing unlikely from a business point of view, no I do not think that would stop mod authors. Would it significantly cut the amount of mod authors vs the past, perhaps.

Regarding the load of serious spanking they received during the last two years with the steam debacle (which I still believe was some sort of community reaction test) and now with Horse Armor 2.0 it's still possible that they take a complete u-turn on modding no matter what they were telling us about it. In comparison to other game studios they have time on their side. People don't expect them to release new TES or Fallout titles on an annual basis.

 

The Creation Engine (which is in its core still based on GameBryo) either needs some serious overhaul or gets replaced with whatever can handle the type of games they want to create in the future. The Engine itself is buggy as hell (despite the huge amount of work they put into it to make it modular and replace outdated stuff ) and the Editor is just horrible to use. In any case, there is a huge amount of work to be done.

 

 

The thing is that with every new Bethesda Title a new generation of gamers is there to play them. If the next game is decent enough but has no mod support at all, they might lose a whole lot of the old customers but in return will gain a whole lot of new ones. It's the same as with the term "RPG". If you ask me, an RPG is more than choosing the race and the gender of your character, assigning a few (more or less meaningless) stats and being thrown into a (more or less) open world chasing McGuffins and performing fetch quests. The average 13yr old console gamer might go completely mental (and verbal) about my arguments, because they never experienced something different. And those are the valuable customers of tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by metaphorset