LaDestitute
Member
Going to be streaming some devwork for a project of mine, if anybody wants to drop by.
Post What's on Your Mind
- Thread starter Ellie
- Start date
Someone asked "why are digital games on console more expensive than PC?", unfortunately gamers don't actually want to know the reason why because it involves explaining how the market currently works for consoles, which is a sensitive subject for customers.ZenVirZan":3m19rgxc said:
There's a very good reason why no-one from the games industry discusses this.
Whats on my mind?
Thinkin I need some feedback on a crapton of scrips I just released. Too impatient for the weekend.
Yay! Heretic's Vehicles XP is out, but sadly, no one has tried it out yet as far as I can tell...
Thinkin I need some feedback on a crapton of scrips I just released. Too impatient for the weekend.
Yay! Heretic's Vehicles XP is out, but sadly, no one has tried it out yet as far as I can tell...
Oh, on the subject of things...
Paid Mods, yea or nay?
I think it was a great idea. I don't think they pushed it out right, but there is something there as they say.
It would encourage higher quality mods, and the market would speak for itself and eliminate the shitty mods that are scamlicious.
The only thing it's missing QAC on the backend for interoperablility over time...which requires people-hours and resources that doesn't interest Valve given their take on Greenlight.
Thoughts?
<3
Paid Mods, yea or nay?
I think it was a great idea. I don't think they pushed it out right, but there is something there as they say.
It would encourage higher quality mods, and the market would speak for itself and eliminate the shitty mods that are scamlicious.
The only thing it's missing QAC on the backend for interoperablility over time...which requires people-hours and resources that doesn't interest Valve given their take on Greenlight.
Thoughts?
<3
I think there are many sides to this.Injury":2u8yt2f4 said:
Fundamentally, I think the way the system worked, how it was presented and how it was delivered, was flawed and not friendly towards modders.
The 75% thing is the obvious one that everyone will point at, but more subtly the surprise unveiling of this caused a lot of content theft with people putting up mods for sale that they simply didn't own, there was no barrier so rampant theft occurred and with the very ambiguous licensing/legal terms around the system people didn't know how to react or what powers they had.
There is also the side of the entitled, as much as I don't want to say that word, there are a lot of people who feel mods should be free because they don't want to pay money as mods have been free for years. I think this is an equally valid side, especially if you look at the finer points (beyond "hurr durr mods be free you greedy cocks"); Paid mods could turn modding into a low-quality, high-priced cash machine where mod creators churn out hundreds of low-quality items just to make a living. That's all good for them paying the bills, but in the long run this may dilute the modding community and, well, destroy it entirely as modders seek for the best profit model rather than the best quality mod, which is not an attack against modders, this is how you would make a living, I feel this would happen naturally as a way to survive (We've seen something similar happen for YouTube channels).
You've then got the side of the industry, where paid mods with money going back to the game studios should encourage studios to open up their tools to the community, encourage modding and lead to new talent being found and hired out of the community itself. I think this is a good thing, but I believe the thinking here was "If we let people sell their work, they'll be encouraged to make high quality stuff and studios will see this and offer them jobs, win-win for all", if I am right and this was the thought process Valve went through then I think there was some jumping to conclusions, that's just one possible scenario, another scenario is that the market gets flooded with lots of very-similar low-priced mods to try and make the most money and now studios have hundreds of modders that all produce very similar content with no clear "this one is talented, let's give them a job". I know that I'm also jumping to conclusions with that one, that scenario probably wouldn't have happened either, but frankly I think Valve picked the most obvious path thinking it would lead to the solution without investigating alternatives. I believe this because looking at the ambiguity with the legal and licensing that caused some high-profile modders to squabble over this we can assume that this was a plan that was thought about for some time, but not planned very well.
There was also a ton of concerns from the customers; will mods break with game updates? Does this create some kind of guarantee? How much responsibility does the game developer have? Pretty much all these concerns were dumped onto the mod-authors, where I don't think they belong. If your mod breaks, contact the author and ask them to fix it, but they aren't obliged to do so. To the customer, they are buying the mod as a product, they expect the product, with support, to work and if it doesn't work, they have 24 hours to refund, but the support ends there. Everything else is done out of goodwill. A lot of people are saying a donation button would be better, I think that would solve this problem, it moves the mod from being a product to be bought to being a service provided by the author and by donating to the author you are supporting their service, rather than buying their product. It's very psychological, that would have changed it from being paying for mods to supporting mod authors and that's what I think people would like.
Then there's the side of the service, this looked like the workshop, but with great emphasis on the "shop" part of workshop. What was new here? Looked like the same, previously free, workshop but with new pay-walls erected. A lot of people will see it like that (and you can even find some people talking about it as if it were a "pay-wall", which it was not, however these people I believe are on this side). I think the service could have been done a lot different. Moving back to the changing it from buying mods to supporting modders, the service could have been flipped around so we see modders, not their mods, first and we see collections of mods they created. We won't see a wall of products, we see a wall of people who are putting in hard-work into their collections. I think this would lend a hand to the goal of getting modders recognised by studios in the industry, we will be putting them first before the content they produce. When they make an item, it's their passion and reputation that's presented to us, not the item and the price-tag. Rotating it around to be like this will remove the new pay-walls and turn it into a more obvious support-your-modders scheme than buy-your-mods.
I think paid mods is a terrible idea.
Updates would screw with them, there's compatibility problems, and the Greenlight-esque issue.
Modders should be able to be paid for their work but at the moment there are too many downsides to justify the change. Donations are the best bet right now.
On another note, I was really enjoying Dark Souls until I got Cursed. Holy fuck that's a terrible mechanic, who thought implementing that was a good idea?
EDIT: absolutely rekt by ninja xi
Updates would screw with them, there's compatibility problems, and the Greenlight-esque issue.
Modders should be able to be paid for their work but at the moment there are too many downsides to justify the change. Donations are the best bet right now.
On another note, I was really enjoying Dark Souls until I got Cursed. Holy fuck that's a terrible mechanic, who thought implementing that was a good idea?
EDIT: absolutely rekt by ninja xi
All agreed. The cut is never in favor of the modder.
Once again, they churn out the mods and the market will speak for itself...Low quality mods, no interoperability will always lead to bad place for them.
I like that you brought up the fact that it would encourage devs to open up their product to modding. I think that is the future. What is better than a great game? A great game you can add your own aspect.
From this, the big arguments are QAC, Pay-Wall and modder side interoperability.
I think the internet should have let it happen, and let Valve work it out over time.
Once again, they churn out the mods and the market will speak for itself...Low quality mods, no interoperability will always lead to bad place for them.
I like that you brought up the fact that it would encourage devs to open up their product to modding. I think that is the future. What is better than a great game? A great game you can add your own aspect.
From this, the big arguments are QAC, Pay-Wall and modder side interoperability.
I think the internet should have let it happen, and let Valve work it out over time.
Valve don't do a good job of working things out over time, historically (EDIT: okay, besides Steam!).Injury":27oriigj said:
I think the internet made the right move, even if I am a supporter of paid mods, I think Valve did it wrong because they thought they could copy their existing model into a community that's over 22 years old now.
The pay-wall argument is just so wrong to me, this isn't a pay-wall, but as I said in my paragraphs I can see why people (incorrectly) describe it as one, it's added money into accessing workshop content where there wasn't money involved before.
Gabe did a Reddit post where he was explaining that money is the deciding factor at the end of the day, he got down-voted to all hell but his comments are true, as much as people wish to believe different. But it isn't necessarily money that Valve gets out of it that's the deciding factor.
LaDestitute
Member
Gonna livestream drawing some Pokemon/Fakemon art in SAI on Twitch, I'll post a link when ready.
LaDestitute
Member
Going live in a few minutes, drawing some art for a project.
http://www.twitch.tv/ladestitute
http://www.twitch.tv/ladestitute
Xilef":2uocfxga said:
and how the $10k they made from the paid mods didn't deter the loss they suffered from furious emails pouring from their servers and staff having to deal with it costing them over $1 mil, or so it was said.
I don't see it as a pay wall.
Why did the internet not see that modders could charge $0 for their mod.
Just spent the last hour or so watching LaDestitute, don't really do the live stream watching thing, but yeah, thought I'd check it out, the three main things I took away from it are; skittles, fake Pokémon cards, and Digimon.
Bed time.
Anyone fancy shooting me so I don't have to work tomorrow?
Bed time.
Anyone fancy shooting me so I don't have to work tomorrow?