Monetizing mods

As much as I would like to see good modders rewarded I can't shake the feeling that monetizing mods is like messing with a finely tuned ecosystem. It's more likely to screw everything up than lead to anything good. All we really know about UGC is that it tends to flourish in the absence of monetization. All the good mods so far have been free - all those millions of man hours of volunteer work that have guided the game industry for over 15 years, have grown out of this paradigm of totally free mods. We have no evidence of monetization ever improving any mod scene; on the contrary there are strong indications that monetization not only drastically lowers the output of quality content but poisons the community. Paywalls are obviously bad - would DOTA or Sorian AI get so popular with a paywall? - but even a donation system, benevolent as it sounds, should raise a big red flag, because the dynamic of the community is totally changed when you introduce any kind of money to the equation. Simply put, people will be less likely to share their work freely if they or others can profit from it. It could easily turn into a haven for scammers, Zynga style cloners, litigants and greedy fucks in general, and the atmosphere of greed and paranoia could scare away some of the best creators. Just look at the Sims community now, it's like you had these Indian tribes living in (relative) harmony, and then the white man came with his shinies, and the tribes were torn apart by greed (EA!! :x).

This NexusMods moderator makes a lot of good points:

I'm not saying all of this stuff will happen, just suggesting the team think out ways to make sure it doesn't, and be ready to bring everything back to the old style if it doesn't work out. I'd prefer if everything was done as in the old days, and I believe that's the best model for players, devs and modders alike. But off the top of my head here's some thoughts about how you MIGHT monetize the mod community without poisoning and destroying it EA style (although that may very well inevitably happen when you bring money into it):

-All mods should be DRM free; none of them should be UberNet exclusive
-No paywalls. All mods should be free and then you can optionally reward the creator
-But then how do you determine who is the creator? What if a mod builds on other people's work? (See how much of a headache this is already turning into?) Please think long and hard about this. Perhaps there's some kind of creative commons license that you can make all modders accept that solves these issues, that lets you keep that open source spirit of sharing without introducing IP, patent trolls, infringing clones and all the other delightful features of for-profit software development.

let people post their paypal address, if someone wants to donate that's great.

monetizing user content is horrible for the community even if you have all the resources and lawyers in the world to make it kosher, see: starcraft 2

I second this. Donations are fine. Buying stuff for a game you've already bought seems stupid... (I'm looking at you, EA)

Modding, fan works and all kinds of derivative creation should be a work of passion in all cases. Minecraft's modding community is downright poisonous because of monetization.

No money ever.

If only we could all be kids again... Alas, money makes the world go round.

If someone wants to charge for their mod based on Uber's game, then they won't get very far with it. That sort of thing requires permission and the community is typically hostile against what is basically paid DLC. But if their efforts are good, it could still reap plenty of donations and desires to pay.

Well, we can't tell modders how they want to spend their free time. If they only want to work on something in reward for money, that's entirely their choice.

I also reserve for myself the right to never ever pay for mods (or any form of DLC).

I don't like the idea of Uber crowd-sourcing DLC. I can only assume they would take a cut of the profits as well, which would be the primary reason to set-up such a system.

If we had to pay for mods, there would also be a huge disparity in popularity between mods. People wouldn't invest money in less popular mods if there was nobody to play them with.

Once again, a fine example of people jumping to the worst possible outcomes when we know next to nothing of the system and how it'll work.

As a Modder, I'm curious to see Uber try to tackle this, I think between not only the game being built to be moddable, but also that they plan to create 'content' specifically with the goal of improving modability post launch and actively encourage it puts them in a very unique position.

If anything I think they plan to really sell the Engine itself to modders and really support Total Conversions. Think about what they did with Far Cry Blood Dragon, then had an existing engine, but made something 'new' with it and sold it as a stand-alone.

I doubt Uber is going to FORCE the monetization of Mods, give them some credit, they're smarter than that.

They will likely have a features to leave reviews and such for mods that are monetized and it's entirely possible that Modders could create 'Lite' versions as a trial, Uber might require a video that displays the quality and such of the mod.

There are just too many unknowns to make any claims right now.

But, as a Modder know that I will be watching Uber like a Hawk for this, because frankly, I love modding, and if I have a chance to make it such that it can help support me, and give me more time for modding, I'll take it very seriously.

Uber isn't in this to make a quick buck, if that were the case they'd make a Modern Military FPS and call it a day. More likely is that they'll take a cut to pay for creating and upkeeping the shop, those kinds of things aren't free you know.

Mike

Eh, if a modder makes a mod that reaches the quality of standard product, sure, I'll pay for it.

Unfortunately, there are very few mods that even reach the level of quality of indie games (often because modders themselves don't have acess to the engine themselves, limiting what they can do significantly).

Additionally, I personally doubt it that one could make any significant income on mods for a game like this. It works with Team Fortress II for example, since that game is massive with a huge audience that has gotten used to pay for items (that have a good work/reward ratio, ie. not that expensive to make compared what you can get for mass selling them) in a free to play game.


But, if Knight's speculation is right and its more about giving access to the engine itself great stuff could come out of it but yeah... I dunno. Total conversions require tons of work and would the market really be big enough for it?

And the answer is.......Unicron.....no wait! xD

Really it depends of a LOT of things, frankly, few games even acknowledge the ability to mod, let alone encourage and actively support it. That in itself will bring in Modders. Frankly with the media Attention Uber got during the KS and how things are progressing, I think they'll be the talk of the time as release comes around and I think they'll do well in terms of sales, RTSs have been very drab lately and PA is truly unique.

Uber also must know that to get mods to succeed, it has to be communicated to as many players as possible that they're out there, there are lots of options for this kind of thing, from a weekly blog that highlights a mod to even giving mods "banner ad" space somewhere. It might seem like a brick wall, but I think that has more to do with no one really pushing it that hard before.

All we can do is wait and when Uber asks for help or opinions is to be ready and not make knee-jerk reactions and to really sit and think about it before chiming in.

Mike

Speaking about monetizing mods, what happened to Blizzards marketplace idea for StarCraft2?

I had heard of this idea for HoTS release but it doesn't seem to exist anymore?


(As for kneejerk reactions, its imo inevitable. I get very kneejerky when it's about DLC and monetizing whatever is monetizable since as far as I am concerned, nothing good ever came out of it. As a customer and gamer, I can't remember a single instance where DLC or some monetizion scheme added anything of value to my enjoyment of a game. But plenty of times were it hugely annoyed.)

But giving money to content creator, that's something I can get behind it. Just last week I donated 80 bucks to somebody that makes text-adventures because it was worth that much money. But the execution in how a content creator gets money, that ruins it most of the time for me.

Oh well, enough useless speculation of me 'till we definitely hear about the whole thing from Uber. (I'll go and silly speculate about other things now. :lol: )

Personally I'm fine with donations. If a modder spent a ton of time on a mod and has a link, why shouldn't he get some money?

About Uber mentioning the store kinda thing, I would be very very surprised if they meant it to literally be a paid store. It'll probably be much closer to KSP's spaceport or the Skyrim Nexus only officially supported. There might be an option for modders to promote their mods for a fee, which would realistically only be supporting the site and probably not really profitable per say.

Of course everything is only speculation at this point. So as far as opinions go, I would never pay money for a mod that's not official. I also only rarely have ever purchased DLC, so even if there were an official mod (or Uber makes some DLC) chances of me purchasing are less than 20%.

I'm not as against DLC as most are, alot of times post launch content can be truly worth it. I'm mostly against DLC which could have been shipped with the title, but was cut out just for an extra buck (Burnout Paradise, I'm looking at you). Though DLC has also extended the life of games which would have lost their appeal much earlier (Dungeon Defenders).

As long as a modder can maintain their mod 'store' page to include a link to donate through pay-pal or another system this will probably not be an issue. Uber could potentially make money by sharing in the profits of mod purchases, but are they that type of company (not to mention the logistics of including these features)?

I would love to see some total conversions of the PA engine; Populous Annihilation anyone?

I do wish the trend went back to a game having one or two major expansion packs rather than a few tiny DLCs. The size of most DLCs are so small they often *feel* like a cash grab (even though they often aren't since artistic content and levels in a typical game are often very time consuming to make). As personal preference I would rather wait a year or even more for a good chunk of content that keeps me busy for more than the 5-10 hours most DLCs do.

I know these 3 ideas are totally disjointed but I am trying to keep up with all aspects of this thread.

I bet 90% of mods will be free, with the absolutely excellent 10% being paid for.

I support this, Mod creators deserve recognition.

Once again a fine example of opinions masquerading as diplomatic middlegrounds.

Several examples of money turning the apple sour have been cited and not one instance of it not turning sour has been shown.

I'd say that great mods do get plenty of recognition, and they would probably get alot of voluntary donations as well, even to help fund new mods if they are already known & respected in the community.

Great mods like desert combat, DOTA and counter strike generally speak for themselves. Those in fact probably wouldn't have been possible in a monetized competitive scheme.

Eh, as I as kinda saying, Uber is in a unique position, they have a lot going for them that other set-ups didn't/might not have.

Look at Super Hero movies, for quite some time they kept being poorly handled and it wasn't until Batman/Iron Man that they really hit it out of the park, and nowadays they're some of the biggest hits every year. Prior Failure does not guarantee Future Failure, just as Prior Success doesn't guarantee Future Success.

Frankly, the fact that everyone cites prior failures and says that's why it can't work, despite the fact we know next to nothing about the actual system is pretty much exactly what a knee-jerk reaction is. Can Uber Fumble it? Of course they can, they can also do it right, and to state which turnout it will be based on what we know right now is foolish at best.

Mike

For the people of the people. Free mods if u post them This is a fan based game and I want to keep it that way.

Before you even get to talking about money at all, I think the issue of content ownership and how sharing code & assets between projects works and so on should be clear cut and defined across the board.

For example, what is the most open license that the majority of modders would be willing to work under? Can Uber make a common license we need to agree to, to post your mod in their mod store? If someone makes an awesome mod, and then disappears / never updates it, can we promote derivatives? And so on.