Monetizing mods

working at a company at what I presume is a fixed pay rate is significantly different and incomparable to what is basically a competition for dev grants

Not really. They are competing together for our hard earned bucks.

What if a Greenlight style Approval system was included as part of the initial application process? It'd help show what the community wants and would in theory filter out any obvious 'troll attempts' and help save Uber the trouble?

Mike

Here are my concerns about this.

How much it will cost at the max? I don't want to pay more than 5 dollars for a micro-transaction.
Will this split the community? We do not want to end up in a COD selection that the only way to get in is to buy the dlc.
If I were to buy new units and faction and other elements that effect the gamplay I would prefer of uber rounding up all the approved mod devs that want to sell the content and make an expansion pack out of it, sell it, while the mod devs get their fair share of the profits.
I do not want to spend on something that contains so little.

Do us backers get a discount? Pretty please?

Also can mod devs use ad revenue?

If I recall correctly, Valve had to institute a $100 greenlight application fee to filter out "troll attempts".

As with Greenlight devs, Modders can promise to deliver the most awesome mod of all time to garner votes, but I don't think anything should be allowed submission while still in the concept/alpha stage of development. Not every green-lit game has been a home-run either, many of them have launched in less than complete states due to the hype they garner accelerating them towards acceptance. I don't want to buy incomplete mods.

Uber's scope of what is acceptable pay-dlc is the important question here, along with the quality of it's content. What sort of things are they looking to accept beyond finely crafted total-conversion mods (and indeed how will even these come about without lots of free play-testing first)?

As to an actual rating system, I do think that should exist, along with user reviews, supplied on the store-page post release.

It all depends on the exact type/content of the mod. We can't provide anything more accurate with nothing to go on.

Also setting an arbitrary Max price is dangerous, imagine Mod A, lets say it has 20 units, this was set to the Max Price of 5$, but Mod B comes along later with 40 units, what do you do? You max is 5$, but unless you either cahnge the Max, or lower the price of Mod A, which essentially devalues Mod A. If you leave both at 5$ you still Devalue Mod A because Mod B has double the content for the same cost, .......

It's tricky, it really depends on the mods that make it in, we can talk about some kind of guidelines once we know enough, but it's really hard to say right now.

Where is this ad revenue from?

One of the differences here is that expecting the mod to be already 'complete' helps to counter this, part of the application could be having a video showcasing the mod, kind of like a sales pitch. Because this is meant to be a multi stage process the first layer doesn't need to be fool proof(and really can' be if it's primarily community driven), a small processing fee could help here as well just as Valve did. Basically the idea is to help weed out the chaff, not solely result in the best of the best.

Mike

We are NOT putting GEICO ads on billboards on the planet. ;-)

Oh god, Coke Commander.

Mavor product placement go.

This is incorrect. We will be setting the pricing at all times.

And again, nobody has to participate if they won't want to.

Make the planet.

taste the planet.

The more this thread goes into details, the more it sounds like the entire monetization issue is a huge red herring. And by that, I mean that 99.9% of the mods will be free and only some select very few will end up being paid content.

What we know so far:
1. Professional level quality required
2. Application Process / Uber review for inclusion as paid mod
3. Mod would need to be 'feature complete'
4. All mod content must be correctly licensed and attributed

How many mods from Supcom would actually meet all of those requirements? None of them. So to talk like people will be able to monetize their mods, or worse yet, to design the mod system around a store where people could buy mods would be designing a solution to 0.1% of the problem.

I believe it would be much wiser on Uber's part to take monetization out of the equation entirely. From there, they could set up the mod scene in such a way that future monetization for highly successful mods could be done relatively painlessly. One example would be to require a specific license in order to post your mod on the Uber Labs (GPL or whatever). Another example would be to implement a clear accreditation process so that content authors can share their content without getting ripped off, and still allow for hassle-free derivative works.

From that point, Uber would then be able to launch a completely separate sort of Greenlight process whereby a selected mod group would get the opportunity to work with Uber to polish their current offering, and add exclusive content and release it as a paid offering, completely separate from the mod scene.

One example might be something like BlackOps where Uber picks up the mod, and works with the mod team to make a new custom commander to fit. The free mod gets a professional level of polish, and the mod+acu package could be sold as a DLC in the Uber store, separate from the Uber Labs entirely.

I c

What you describe here is fairly accurate in terms of what we are envisioning. You are totally correct in that most mods will not make the cut for sale. That's ok, we want lots of diversity. When we select something it basically ends up being DLC in the store as you've said. The labs is the place to grow/experiement/show. Think about how the steam workshop works vs how content gets put into games.

As long as it's entirely up to the mod creator to monetize it or not, I see no issue with paywalls. Of course, having paywalls runs the risk of never making the mod popular in the first place.

Notaraxis

This approach is quite exciting, even in terms of non-paid content updates, - I can't count how many times in the past I've run into mods & maps that should have been integrated into the 'core' game, simply because of their quality. The devs hold a huge content distribution pipeline in terms of being able to say 'OK everyone THIS is the new base we all are working from'. It always seemed in the past that game companies were blocked from doing this for some reason...perhaps someone in the industry could explain why.

A clear guideline on what makes a mod reach that level of professionalism to be considered for inclusion as part of the core game would be so very good for the community too - It would have been nice, for example, to have map makers in FA have some motivation to add AI markers...

While I love seeing more content,
What I hope to see is a continued support.
What makes FAF great is that we are getting updates, even if they are small balance changes or bug fixes.


Neutrino, what are your thoughts on progressing PA past the initial stage?
Some mods will improve GUI, some will tweak unit abilities and some will add a bundle of new units?
I am hoping to see units added over time to the "official" pool and adopted for official tournaments and ladder play.
How do you see the mods marketplace helping to achieve that for your own team?

I can accept being wrong , but only because I read this on a Thursday, had it been any other day of the week I'd feel the need to flame. :twisted:

I was somewhat worried when I first heard of this idea, but thinking about it, if somebody wants to take the time to program a full conversion mod for a game like this then why shouldn't they be able to make money out of it?

I'm not against the idea, but it would have to be a pretty special mod for me to part with any cash. Something like mental omega I would happily pay for when the vanilla game gets stale (in PA terms I would pay £10 for a good single player campaign).