Is there a future for modding

[Monte Carlo]

I think it's fair to say that a big part of the CRPG scene for the past ten years has been modding and, latterly, toolsets.

 

I had high hopes for Dragon Age: Origins in this respect, but the modding scene has been uninspiring compared to many other games.

 

Thinking about this, it seems clear to me that DLC and modding are clearly at variance... why encourage folks to make stuff you could make them pay for?

 

What do you guys think, are modding and toolsets as dead as old-skool tactical gameplay and party-based games?

[Slowtrain]

Modders always seem to be a lot more creative with the tools then the developers though, so I don't know if it's really a direct either/or competition.

 

Often it seems the most popular mods, or at least key ideas from them, are incorporated into the next version of the game. Certainly this ahs been the case with Bethesda and its ES/Fallout rpgs.

[Nightshape]

Modders always seem to be a lot more creative with the tools then the developers though, so I don't know if it's really a direct either/or competition.

 

Modders certainly make the best of the constraints they have placed upon them, but its mostly because they're working within constraints. Alot of what Modders do, are basically HACKS, developers don't like hacks, they introduce an element of risk.

[213374U]

Thinking about this, it seems clear to me that DLC and modding are clearly at variance... why encourage folks to make stuff you could make them pay for?

 

What do you guys think, are modding and toolsets as dead as old-skool tactical gameplay and party-based games?

I don't think you have to encourage players to do anything... they will do it if they like the game well enough. I think also the growing number of releases per year is a factor too - modders have a finite number of leisure hours, and may prefer to spend them playing new titles than modding old ones, regardless of the quality of the tools at their disposal.

 

That said, you may be on to something...

Edited February 27, 2011 by 213374U

[Slowtrain]

Modders always seem to be a lot more creative with the tools then the developers though, so I don't know if it's really a direct either/or competition.

 

Modders certainly make the best of the constraints they have placed upon them, but its mostly because they're working within constraints. Alot of what Modders do, are basically HACKS, developers don't like hacks, they introduce an element of risk.

 

 

Yep. Certainly modders can operate without worrying so much about breaking things or creating unintended resylts, since mods always come with an implicit "use at your own risk" attachment. Plus modders can work on only what they want to work on and ignore any content they arern't interested in. ANd they can operate very specifically in one area without worrying about the larger picture of the game.

 

SO, I'm definitely not saying that modders are superior to developers when it comes to creating content, but rather that they can work in a way that allows more freedom to be creative and push the tools further than was neccessarily intended.

 

Which is why I replied to Monte's post by saying I don't really think mods and dlc are in direct competition. They are two pretty different things, although they could probably both be classed as "additional content" or at least "altered content".

[Big Bottom]

Half-Life was the king of mods...I guess maybe the way that every game now supports mods has made the talent a bit more scattershot. I don't think there were so many games back then that could be modded the way you could with HL. Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat, Natural Selection...all quality games that spawned their own products in recent years. I don't think I've ever had so much game for so little money.

[Orogun01]

I think it's fair to say that a big part of the CRPG scene for the past ten years has been modding and, latterly, toolsets.

 

I had high hopes for Dragon Age: Origins in this respect, but the modding scene has been uninspiring compared to many other games.

 

Thinking about this, it seems clear to me that DLC and modding are clearly at variance... why encourage folks to make stuff you could make them pay for?

 

What do you guys think, are modding and toolsets as dead as old-skool tactical gameplay and party-based games?

Personally I don't see both fields opposed, based on the fact that some games aren't "moddable" enough. What you say about DLC is true, and it has been one of my biggest issues with the quality of most current DLCs. I'm hoping that once sites like the Nexus gain more of a mainstream popularity with the casual crowd, DLC's sales wane enough to make developers realize that they need to step up their game and surpass the modders. I too was sorely disappointed by the DA modding, it was one of those games that didn't lend itself to drastic changes. Probably because BW only intended to see campaign, and aesthetic mods and not animation replacer or new classes (even though there has been some success in modding those 2).

With sites as the Modb and the Nexus it's hard for me to believe that modding is dead, maybe it won't make a breakthrough into the mainstream any time soon. At the same time it has never been something for everyone, definitively not for the casual crowd who only wants to pop in their discs and play right away with no trouble.

[Bos_hybrid]

Well Skyrim is getting a toolset, so beth obviously feel mods aren't in competion with DLC. IMO mods help DLC, people making/playing mods keeps them playing games longer and therefore gives devs more time to sell DLC.

[Lexx]

Mods are helping Oblivion, Fallout 3 'n stuff a lot. It keep the community busy and the game in the news. So it really would be a strange thing if Bethesda would not release some modding kit.

 

 

 

Though, even if some folks don't release modkits, in many cases - and if the game is popular enough - people figure out some ways to edit stuff. That's pretty cool. Remember Stalker that was a bitch to mod before... now people are creating new maps and quests and stories and what not. Same goes for other games too.

[Monte Carlo]

I think Slowtrain's point about the increasingly hectic number of releases degrading games longevity is pretty important. I'm still left wondering why, in the current climate of rampant DLC / micro-transactional content, how releasing a toolset or encouraging modding is in anyway of benefit to the developer or publisher.

 

I'm just saying that I suspect that modding has had it's golden age and will go back to what it was, a niche hardcore type of activity.

[Nepenthe]

the increasingly hectic number of releases

 

 

More seriously, not seeing this at all, certainly not when looking at the "big" publishers. More like scaling back.

[Niten_Ryu]

I don't think there's future for larger mods, as even with great mod tool, creating those take years and years. Mini mods like textures, new items and models are here to stay, no matter if developers support it or not.

[Walsingham]

It occurs to me that in a business sense one ought to make a 3rd way. Keep tabs on good moddersm, and cream off the best and most popular into subcontracted mini studios. You obvioulsy rape them on the rights in exchange for revenue and the use of the less inspiring parts of the process like QA.

[Orogun01]

I don't think there's future for larger mods, as even with great mod tool, creating those take years and years. Mini mods like textures, new items and models are here to stay, no matter if developers support it or not.

I'm going to disagree with you here, total conversion mods of older or substandard games have been prevalent in the last few years. Team Fortress was originally a mod of Quake and DOTA also became a game. I don't think that there is much initiative from the industry to incorporate great mods into their IP but that fault lies mostly in the publisher's side, IMO.

[213374U]

More seriously, not seeing this at all, certainly not when looking at the "big" publishers. More like scaling back.

This is probably as rigorous as you can get without shelling out some dough for professional market data, but a quick search at Gamerankings returned these results.

 

http://www.gamerankings.com/browse.html?pa...10&numrev=3

 

http://www.gamerankings.com/browse.html?pa...01&numrev=3

 

Take that as you will. Not even the 2010 economic crisis has been able to reverse the tendency of increasing numbers of released titles per year. Not making any statements on the overall shape of the gaming industry; what is pertinent to this topic is how more games released per year means potentially more time spent playing games than actually modding them.

Edited February 28, 2011 by 213374U

[CoM_Solaufein]

DLCs are sub-par compared to a lot of mods out there. Mods are what keep games alive not DLC or official expansions. Just look at the life that is still in the Baldur's Gate series games, a game that is over ten years old and still has a pulse. I can't think of playing Fallout 3 without my favorite mods. The game isn't all that interesting when its just the game and its expansions. Same goes with Oblivion and FNV. Developers learn a lot from modders and even borrow their ideas. I recall once that some of the Bioware developers said it was easier to use some of the modder tools to edit Baldur's Gate compare to the toolset that they had for the Infinity Engine.

[Nepenthe]

Take that as you will. Not even the 2010 economic crisis has been able to reverse the tendency of increasing numbers of released titles per year. Not making any statements on the overall shape of the gaming industry; what is pertinent to this topic is how more games released per year means potentially more time spent playing games than actually modding them.

Oops, guess my gut feeling was wrong. Will be interesting to see if the trend continues to this year.

[WorstUsernameEver]

DLCs are sub-par compared to a lot of mods out there. Mods are what keep games alive not DLC or official expansions. Just look at the life that is still in the Baldur's Gate series games, a game that is over ten years old and still has a pulse. I can't think of playing Fallout 3 without my favorite mods. The game isn't all that interesting when its just the game and its expansions. Same goes with Oblivion and FNV. Developers learn a lot from modders and even borrow their ideas. I recall once that some of the Bioware developers said it was easier to use some of the modder tools to edit Baldur's Gate compare to the toolset that they had for the Infinity Engine.

 

DLC and mods do fairly different things. I still haven't found a quest mod for Fallout: New Vegas that can be so much as compared to the "average" Dead Money. And mods are good when it comes to learn what's popular so you can apply it to the next game, yeah, though I feel like some modders get far too entitled about this fact (I've seen some modders on the Nexus outright insulting the New Vegas devs, claiming that they know how to do their work better). And frankly? The mods for Baldur's Gate suck, for the most part. There's a couple that are good, as in, they add challenge for those that replayed the games thousands of times, but that's it. The ones that add dialogue are a bad imitation of Bioware's worst melodrama. Yick.

So yeah, mods are cool, but some modders should probably be thrown in therapy as soon as possible. Let's fix those entitlement issues

[Niten_Ryu]

I don't think there's future for larger mods, as even with great mod tool, creating those take years and years. Mini mods like textures, new items and models are here to stay, no matter if developers support it or not.

I'm going to disagree with you here, total conversion mods of older or substandard games have been prevalent in the last few years. Team Fortress was originally a mod of Quake and DOTA also became a game. I don't think that there is much initiative from the industry to incorporate great mods into their IP but that fault lies mostly in the publisher's side, IMO.

 

Quakeworld Team Fortress was done under 1 year in 1996 and Wacraft 3 was released 2002 and already 2003 first version of DOTA was out. Those days are long gone as development times and budgets are much higher nowaday. In theory one could invent some simple multiplayer only mod that none of the professional developers haven't figured out, but it's been years since that kind of mod have gained any mainstream popularity. Multiplayer mods need to happen when the original game is still popular and in the age of yearly Call of Duty games, it's about that one year.

 

Half-Life 2 was released 2004 and Black Mesa, one of the few singleplayer mods that haven't been cancelled, ain't still out. Mod team could have created their own game or multiple games for iphone in that same perioid of time.

[Orogun01]

Quakeworld Team Fortress was done under 1 year in 1996 and Wacraft 3 was released 2002 and already 2003 first version of DOTA was out. Those days are long gone as development times and budgets are much higher nowaday. In theory one could invent some simple multiplayer only mod that none of the professional developers haven't figured out, but it's been years since that kind of mod have gained any mainstream popularity. Multiplayer mods need to happen when the original game is still popular and in the age of yearly Call of Duty games, it's about that one year.

 

Half-Life 2 was released 2004 and Black Mesa, one of the few singleplayer mods that haven't been cancelled, ain't still out. Mod team could have created their own game or multiple games for iphone in that same perioid of time.

I don't think that modders work exclusively for personal recognition, maybe it's just me being naive but I actually believe that when you spend that much time working for free, and for a limited amount of recognition has a love for games. Plus being a dev in the original DOTA or any other large scale mod looks better on a resume than "developed a 100 Iphone games" even though it is a growing market I don't see it as a high accomplishment.

Also on this day and age we have great mods like Stalker' L.U.R.K. and some of the mods around the nexus.

My guess as to the lack of mainstream popularity would be a combination; of both the reasons aforementioned by you (development time being extensive) and an over saturation in the mod world, which requires a constant following to dissect the bad from the good.

[Maria Caliban]

Thinking about this, it seems clear to me that DLC and modding are clearly at variance... why encourage folks to make stuff you could make them pay for?

It's not clear, actually.

 

Mods extend the life of the program on a PC and the game's mindshare. The longer someone plays with a game and the fresher it is in their minds, the more likely they are to buy DLC or expansion packs.

[Monte Carlo]

^ It's about content. DLC = content. Mods = content. One is free, one ain't. That's where I'm coming from.

[Tale]

It's hard to tell how much of which is which. I think they both sound like decent arguments. I'd like to see (or do, that'd be awesome) a study.