Is technology killing mods?

[feather240]

No, I don't believe they're too complex. Instead, I just think that developers would like to have more control over their products, and they feel they lose some of it by letting modders tinker with their games. There's no market for DLC, for instance, if modders can just make everything they make for free.

"The licensing agreement for the middleware allows us to use that code in specific products, on specific platforms.
If we want to release editor + pipeline, we need to license the middleware specifically for this. How much would that be? Perhaps $1M-$3M. I'm guessing wildly here."

That's quite a bit of cash to shell out.

"The pipeline also uses some code that is under GPL. Given that we do not want to release the full source code for the editor + pipeline, we would need to replace the GPLed code with other implementations."

"Both the pipeline and the editor takes in all content in its raw, original form. Anyone who is to build any content needs the full 80GB of raw data on their machine. We are not comfortable giving out all our animations, meshes etc in raw form."

You don't expect them to release the source code do you?

"I just think that developers would like to have more control over their products, and they feel they lose some of it by letting modders tinker with their games."

You would be correct. They wouldn't want people messing around with their source files if they could help it.

There is a thing about time. I have followed some mods that have just been released this last year or two for games that came out in 2003. And the mods starts in 2005. These are big TC mods. However the amount of time its taken? Half of these mods are killed due to the amount of effort and time for a group of people that said one day "hey lets made this mod for this game!"

Mods nowadays are more often tweeks or added content. Total Convertions are rare.
Such as Oblivion. Mostly its to add or take somthing away to change the game. Or add a new type of sword and armour. Which the one person will make a few sets and be done.

There is the High Def mod for GTA4 just coming out. Thats high detailed work and alot of effort.

Big mods are for smaller games like Minecraft.

There is an Oblivion overhaul mod. It's called 'Nehrim'.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

I think that's a false reason or an idiotic understatement. It does hamper the ease of modding (which is why Marathon 2 from 1996 is still my favorite game to mod) considerably, but people can get together, and can be surprisingly dedicated in these things.

 

[Korten12]

I'll repeat what I said last time.

From what I've read about the Frostbite engine this isn't because they think it's too complex, but because they can't allow mods without releasing the same tools required to develop the game, and they aren't going to release those. I've read horror stories about maps taking a week and 80gb of memory space just to compile.

Here's the article if anyone's interested.
http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/1350772-so-how-about-modtools.html

(Yes, it refers to BF:BC2, but it talks about BF3 and I doubt they would remake the engine starting with BF2.)

Good read, sadly most won't read it and go on making false acusations against the developer.

 

[ChupathingyX]

I'll repeat what I said last time.

From what I've read about the Frostbite engine this isn't because they think it's too complex, but because they can't allow mods without releasing the same tools required to develop the game, and they aren't going to release those. I've read horror stories about maps taking a week and 80gb of memory space just to compile.

Here's the article if anyone's interested.
http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/1350772-so-how-about-modtools.html

(Yes, it refers to BF:BC2, but it talks about BF3 and I doubt they would remake the engine starting with BF2.)

Well that explains it better, still having a very moddable game would've given it the edge over CoD seeing as how that seems to be their biggest concern.

Still a feature similar to Halo 3's forge would have been good but it's too late for that.

 

[ColeusRattus]

Well, I do think that we're past the "golden age" of modding, that ranged from Half-Life until UT2k4.

The reasons I see for that are as follows:

1) Graphical fidelity: To make a mod successful, it has to look good enough. A sad truth. But nowadays, to produce convincing graphics, at least if ylou go for a realistic presentation, is the most expensive and time consuming part of developement. Thus, it has become unfeasable for most mod teams.

2) Fractured playerbase: In the "golden age", there were 3-4 games that everyone played, and thus had a large enough community to spawn a healthy modding culture. Also, those games were played longer, so modding teams had more time to develop it. Nowadays, more games are coming out in shorter timeframes, so people rather get a new game than downoad a mod, or get interested in modding.

3) As the OP stated, the lack of proper modding tools: In the golden age, many games came with modding tools, nowadays many don't.


But I don't think it's sad, because while we do see a decline in modding, we do also see a rise of indy gaming, and I think that's where the modders basically went - into independent game developing.
So now, you don't have to pay for a game to play mods, you can purchase experimental games free of charge, or for a small amount.

So conclusively, I think it's better for both the players and the devs.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

If an engine is really too complex to make mods, the it's too complex to make games.

 

[DigitalSushi]

I call bullshit on the idea of developers using an engine that's "too complex" to mod. If you've ever been around anyone from the mod community, or participated in the community yourself, you'll know how dedicated modders are, and just how phenomenally good many of them are at what they do, almost to the point of being as good or in some cases maybe even better than the professionals in some aspects of game design with the mods they create.

You make a valid point Dirty Hipster, modders can overcome just about anything when it comes to "their baby" as it were, like the guy who made UnWheal a racing game using the Unreal engine, it caught Epic games completely by surprise.

But as technology gets more complex so to does building game engines, more and more developers are having to license third party software to put into their own game engines, these are the parts they can't give out to the modding community, because they don't own it hence they would have to rip it out.

Does that make sense?, sorry my brains in multilingual mode.

Back in 2001 I think Warren Spector envisioned the future of game developing as one company creating characters, another creating the physics, another creating the dialogue.. so on and so forth

As an example, I'm pretty sure Frostbite 2 uses Maya, which DICE do not own the rights too.

edit: I believe I got NINJOWNED!

 

[Canid117]

No its just that devs are too lazy to support the mod community with tools so they make up these "Oh its too complicated for you guys so we aren't going to bother" lines that are utter bullcrap.

 

[Zac Smith]

A game can't be to complex or to powerful graphically, each leap in generations the modding community have kept up in producing some fine quality work. Given some time after BF3 release, I'm certain some groups will begin churning stuff out

 

[cfb_rolley]

no doubt every time there is a technology leap, there will sometimes be a lag in available mods until the modding community gets a handle on that tech.

That said, I reckon it's a load of shit, it's their way of saying "we couldn't be arsed supporting modders/ we want to release this asap to make loads of $$$". And, if it really is THAT complex, I think dedicated modders will be able to eventually start cranking out mods for BF3 anyway.

 

[zehydra]

Why do people care about mods anyway? I never really understood the appeal of fanfic-quality attachments to otherwise professional games.

 

[mcpop9]

No. It's like a new console: takes time to get many things.

 

[feather240]

I'll repeat what I said last time.

From what I've read about the Frostbite engine this isn't because they think it's too complex, but because they can't allow mods without releasing the same tools required to develop the game, and they aren't going to release those. I've read horror stories about maps taking a week and 80gb of memory space just to compile.

Here's the article if anyone's interested.
http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/1350772-so-how-about-modtools.html

(Yes, it refers to BF:BC2, but it talks about BF3 and I doubt they would remake the engine starting with BF2.)

Well that explains it better, still having a very moddable game would've given it the edge over CoD seeing as how that seems to be their biggest concern.

Still a feature similar to Halo 3's forge would have been good but it's too late for that.

Yeah, they've really dug themselves into a hole with the Frostbite engine. They make a console based spin off (Bad Company), and now they need to reuse the technology from it for BF3 to save money and man hours.

 

[ColeusRattus]

Why do people care about mods anyway? I never really understood the appeal of fanfic-quality attachments to otherwise professional games.

Because, while admitedly most mods don't ever see the light of day, and most released mods are not that good, there are some that are great. even to an extent where they change gaming in general, like Counterstrike for example.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Why do people care about mods anyway? I never really understood the appeal of fanfic-quality attachments to otherwise professional games.

You obviously haven't sampled a lot of mods for different games.

Bethesda games have some great examples of complete overhauls and great content mods, the guy who created the OOO mod for Oblivion was even hired by Obsidian to work on New Vegas.

Also Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War has some amazing mods that include more content than the vanilla game and are balanced, fully voiced, include new textures, new AI and even some new gameplay mechanics.

 

[Monsterfurby]

To comment at this point: Firstly, I agree that a select group of modders will always find a way to change a game by regular or irregular means. At the same time though, modding has become less accessible. I remember the days when game magazines would release double-cd-issues filled to the brim with Half Life mods just a year or two after the game's release. The reason they could do that is simple - because everyone could pick up modding and mapping with relative ease.

These days, to produce something worth of distribution, many games require you to have a skillset and enough time to qualify as professional, full-time game developer. Certainly, some series continue to provide the right tools to their gamers - Europa Universalis and its brethren come to mind - and if I recall correctly, the Crytek games are attempting to support modders as well.

On the big scheme of things, however, there has been a decline in modding. ColeusRattus has summarized the apparent reasons pretty well. Mods are not impossible to create for any game, but with ever increasing complexity, graphical quality and obviously party of the game encrypted for licensing reasons, it takes longer and longer to mod games.

And with time, modders lose interest. There is no doubt about the fact that, the longer a development takes to produce results, people in it only for the fun of it will find it harder to stay on board. In addition, with growing recognition of the INDIE development community, I believe it can't be stressed enough that many people who would otherwise be modding are now moving into professional game development as independent developers. Just check ModDB's indie-to-mod ratio over the past few years to see what I mean.

The result remains: the modding community at large is, I believe, hitting a few road blocks these days. The thread title may be provocative, but the direction of movement the modding community is taking is clearly not a good one.

Edit: More indie games are of course a good thing. The previous text looks at the development from a modding perspective.

 

[Korten12]

I call bullshit on the idea of developers using an engine that's "too complex" to mod. If you've ever been around anyone from the mod community, or participated in the community yourself, you'll know how dedicated modders are, and just how phenomenally good many of them are at what they do, almost to the point of being as good or in some cases maybe even better than the professionals in some aspects of game design with the mods they create.

You make a valid point Dirty Hipster, modders can overcome just about anything when it comes to "their baby" as it were, like the guy who made UnWheal a racing game using the Unreal engine, it caught Epic games completely by surprise.

But as technology gets more complex so to does building game engines, more and more developers are having to license third party software to put into their own game engines, these are the parts they can't give out to the modding community, because they don't own it hence they would have to rip it out.

Does that make sense?, sorry my brains in multilingual mode.

Back in 2001 I think Warren Spector envisioned the future of game developing as one company creating characters, another creating the physics, another creating the dialogue.. so on and so forth

As an example, I'm pretty sure Frostbite 2 uses Maya, which DICE do not own the rights too.

edit: I believe I got NINJOWNED!

Yeah, that was in the link feather240 posted:
http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/1350772-so-how-about-modtools.html

They mention how they have 3rd party software in their enegine that they aren't able to give out unless they payed a LOT.

 

[Smooth Operator]

No not the technology the greedy publishers do, if you allow user content to be made who will buy your DLC?
BC2 had free maps, I assure you that won't happen anymore.

And mod tools require extra work that doesn't pay, why the hell would anyone in the corporate world still do that.