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Chief Savage Man posted:How long until a modder decides to leave their mod off the paid store and somebody else reuploads it and claims they made it? Already happened. Apparently 2000 mods disappeared on the Skyrim Nexus because of assholes.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:12
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Groogy posted:It is actually a quite generous cut in the gaming industry. I think Johan wrote somewhere that before they went publishers themselves and before Steam was even a thing they would be happy if they could even manage to weasel out a 25% cut. Again though, in this case the developer makes the product itself and not something supplementary to it. The publisher here does get a large cut, but they also fulfil an instrumental role in making the product a reality, they are in charge of marketing, in charge of getting the product to a customer base, or distributing it - here in this case steam does all that work, and maybe the game studio itself can participate by promoting some mods, but even then the relationship between the content creator and valve and the publisher is deeply different from that between a publisher and a developer. The relationship between developer and publisher is essentially that of a partnership and cooperation to jointly make a videogame happen, and I don't see that in the case of monetising mods except in exceptional circumstances; and you, Paradox, has had those cirucmstances happen, and they have given us good things (For the Glory, Arsenal of Democracy, Darkest Hour) and souring disappointments (Magna Mundi, EvW). And in those exceptional circumstances, well, there was a way of making it happen, mod monetisation didn't need to happen for it. Hell if it did we probably would have gotten East vs West and Magna Mundi the Game, in all their "so badly made they failed the QA tests" glory. And given they were rejected, I don't think that's something you'd want to see happen, or if you do you won't want Paradox's name on it, so again the cooperation that exists between publisher and developer is lost when we move to publisher and modder.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:17
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Riso posted:Already happened. Apparently 2000 mods disappeared on the Skyrim Nexus because of assholes. Modder drama with profit motive added, this will go well.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:21
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And PI has had more than enough trouble with modder drama already.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:27
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Alchenar posted:Bethesda does have a big modding scene, but in the context of the overall market the impact of 'modding goodwill' is tiny. Nobody buys a game on the basis of whether it's moddable. The buy it on the basis of whether or not it is a good game. I'm honestly curious here - does Bethesda maintain any statistics on how many users mod the game vs how many don't? Or does Paradox, for that matter? Comparing the total number of modded games to the total number of games sold would be a pretty good starting point for figuring out how many units were moved by mod-friendliness, though there'd obviously still be a lot of wiggle room. Alternatively, comparing the total downloads of the most popular mods might get somewhere, but that's kinda problematic given that not everybody wants the same thing out of a mod and there's no telling how heavily they overlap.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:33
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I know Paradox runs statistics, and I'm fairly certain that the overwhelming majority of (EU4, at least) players play vanilla.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:35
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Tomn posted:I'm honestly curious here - does Bethesda maintain any statistics on how many users mod the game vs how many don't? Or does Paradox, for that matter? Comparing the total number of modded games to the total number of games sold would be a pretty good starting point for figuring out how many units were moved by mod-friendliness, though there'd obviously still be a lot of wiggle room. I dont know of any directly published stats from Bethesda about mod-usage but for reference Skyrim sold ~20 million copies (Console+PC) in its first 6 months, steam doesn't release digital sales numbers but games tend to sell better on consoles by healthy margins, but even a conservative estimate would be 15+ Million PC copies sold by now. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/topalltime/?adult=0 (this direct page is SFW but click any further links at your own risk) The most downloaded mods have between 2 and 9 million downloads. There are a lot of problems with this. No hard sales numbers. Downloads tracked are not unique and count people installing multiple updates to the mod as they are released. But it gives you an idea of just how huge a slice of the overall playerbase the modding & mod-using community is.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:43
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Colombia is a seriously good country to do an immigrant boom with in Vicky. Probably because they start out as a democracy. Not pictured: me owning Brunei and Madagascar, as well as half of Brazil and the Federal Republic of Central America after they were dumb enough to attack me.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:55
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Did Vicky 1 have those little leader figures for every country? Adorable!
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Apr 25, 2015 17:57
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Yeah, they only showed up on the victory screen IIRC, but they were cute. I miss them like I miss the throne room in Civilization.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:59
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Did Vicky 1 have those little leader figures for every country? Adorable! I suddenly realize what Victoria 2 is missing and what Victoria 3 needs - pictures of dudes with ridiculous amounts of medals and gold braid strapped to them. Get on it, Paradox, V3 will be game of the year as long as you give everyone enough medals to give them back injuries.
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Apr 25, 2015 17:59
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Phlegmish posted:Colombia is a seriously good country to do an immigrant boom with in Vicky. Probably because they start out as a democracy. Yeah, Colombia is a good country to play as in general. In Rickey or V2, the majority of the games I play are in South America. It's fun down there, even if the game kinda needlessly shits on you in terms of stuff like... actually having sources of iron or coal.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:01
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Tomn posted:I suddenly realize what Victoria 2 is missing and what Victoria 3 needs - pictures of dudes with ridiculous amounts of medals and gold braid strapped to them. Being able to put names and faces to the countries loving with you in, e.g., Crusader Kings II really does make things a lot more immersive.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:02
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Back when I played V2 with PDM, having a "leader" that gave actual bonuses to your country was a really nice immersive touch, even if it was mostly random. I think a slightly more formalized version of that would be cool.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:05
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How long until mods get monetized into console DLC?
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Apr 25, 2015 18:11
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I can't wait until modding piracy becomes a thing.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:22
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I've realized the feature that Victoria 2 is missing, that Paradox/a modder should monetize asap. Dynamic American flag with the correct number of stars for the number of states it has.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:38
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vyelkin posted:I've realized the feature that Victoria 2 is missing, that Paradox/a modder should monetize asap. VIP had that, didn't it?
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Apr 25, 2015 18:40
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The feature that V2 is missing is V3.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:42
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Demiurge4 posted:I can't wait until modding piracy becomes a thing. Already happened. All the paid skyrim mods are up at torrent sites already
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Apr 25, 2015 18:43
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Demiurge4 posted:I can't wait until modding piracy becomes a thing. Already happened. The Skyrim UI mod is now warez.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:44
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Riso posted:Already happened. The Skyrim UI mod is now warez. Sort of. The current version is still free, though I don't know if the mod maker will keep it that way, and I doubt anyone who wants to sell a mod dependent on it is going to make a potential customer buy the upcoming version.
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Apr 25, 2015 18:47
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edit: thought this was the Skyrim modding thread!
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Apr 25, 2015 18:53
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Alchenar posted:e: the situation is more analogous to you setting up a coffee stall in a large bookstore. The store has the right to insist on any division of revenue you make it wants, or to just throw you out completely. No, because it that case the bookstore is actually giving something meaningful up. By the way, the fact that the store has the right to do something does not mean that anything they do is just. But of course people are so desensitized to the constant rampant injustices of capitalism that it's hard to remember that sometimes. Groogy posted:It is actually a quite generous cut in the gaming industry. I think Johan wrote somewhere that before they went publishers themselves and before Steam was even a thing they would be happy if they could even manage to weasel out a 25% cut. A generous cut in the gaming industry? Wow! Because the gaming industry certainly isn't one of the most infamously exploitative industries in the developed world! Saying that some kind of exploitation isn't bad because other exploitation is or was worse is a silly argument. "Boy, those modders should be grateful! After all, it's not like they're literally being enslaved!" Johan is right that there are costs associated with having a digital distribution platform, but those costs scale slowly. The money Valve will be getting off of paid mods will be almost pure profit. They own the platform, and so they have monopolistic power over developers who want their games on it. They use this power to get a cut that is not proportional to their actual work (this is why Steam is so profitable). This is basically capitalism 101. If you don't think that's exploitative, well, that's fine, but you're wrong. It's the same or even worse in Bethesda's case, where they're really not giving anything up at all.
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Apr 25, 2015 19:00
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I have no problem with them giving modders the opportunity to sell their stuff. It's not like the modders are forced to demand money and no longer give the mod out for free and the 25% cut is more than fair, seeing that any mod builts on the game itself and the stream distribution platform. Would I buy a mod? Depends on quality of the mod and the team behind it, but probably only for high-quality total conversion mods with a track record of getting swiftly updated.
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Apr 25, 2015 19:04
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Rincewind posted:Being able to put names and faces to the countries loving with you in, e.g., Crusader Kings II really does make things a lot more immersive. Yeah, CK2 is my most played game for this reason alone. I find it weird that unique leaders disappear after that period in Paradox Games - if anything, the more time progresses the more singular people shape history, on a global scale. You don't need the family or marriage schemes but give us a different person every election/coup/monarchy change at the least and have it affect some things. If a dictator of 40 years dies it should change things.
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Apr 25, 2015 20:11
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Tomn posted:I suddenly realize what Victoria 2 is missing and what Victoria 3 needs - pictures of dudes with ridiculous amounts of medals and gold braid strapped to them. I think the basic unit of gameplay being entities with unique appearance or personality of some kind is a great idea. Regiments in Vicky 3 should have permanent records of the wars they fight in, the battles they win, and the forts they storm. They can maybe be bulked out by conscripts to division sized units when you mobilise for a total war (instead of getting a whole bunch of chaff you don't care about). That way the Victorian ideal of prestige becomes something the player is interested in for its own sake rather than it just being a number in a scoreboard. In the same way you start to care about your vassal counts and dukes in CK2.
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Apr 25, 2015 21:58
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Phlegmish posted:Colombia is a seriously good country to do an immigrant boom with in Vicky. Probably because they start out as a democracy.
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Apr 25, 2015 22:01
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I don't have a problem with the concept of monetized modding in and of itself, it's just that there are so many things that could go wrong with this sort of thing.
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Apr 25, 2015 22:19
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you give people money for them to possibly make a game, you pay to play a game in "early access" that stays in "early access" for five years charging full price and releasing DLC, you pay for extra content that sometimes it's so minimal that it's just basic code changes, you pay for the privilege of using mods. it's funny how there's an absolutely lack of quality control and consumer protection in video-games. Vidja gaems are a billion dollar industry, you'd think there be some regulation nowadays. what we need are protraits of Hayek, Mises and Pinochet in HoI4
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Apr 25, 2015 22:55
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The fundamental problem with monetized modding is that in most modding communities, mods build on each other. There's an Elder Scrolls modder Wrye (of Wrye Bash) who puts it nicely with his analogy of cathedral versus a parlor. When modders work together, share their work, scripts, events, files, etc, the community builds more and more complex mods and progress gets made, akin to the community construction of a medieval cathedral. When modders become greedy and refuse to share their work, mods stagnate. Every mod has to recreate the wheel, and mods break up into little parlors into which you're invited but not allowed to build on. By adding a profit motive to mods, Steam/Bethesda are going to cause a transition in the community from a cathedral to a parlor economy. And that could very well happen to Paradox modding as well. How many mods include events from others in compilations? Or use the framework of an event for their own? Or repurpose scripts? Or graphics? All that stuff would go away. The Minecraft modding community faced the same problem, where mods became closed source and a few select ones became very territorial. Goons and the larger Technic launcher community led the push for more open source mods to help a new generation of modders learn. And the current generation of minecraft mods for version 1.7.10 has flourished. Mods are already monetized. People are buying CK2 to play the game of thrones mod. They're buying more DLC or are playing longer, getting more value out of their purchase, and spreading more goodwill. Paradox has already profited off mods. Directly selling mods is going to kill the golden goose of community creativity.
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Apr 25, 2015 22:57
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Medieval 2 still sells decently i think and lol if you think anyone plays the lovely vanilla campaign instead of the amazing mods.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:02
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Hell, the only reason people would even buy the original EU: Rome is for Wiz's mod now.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:07
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Cantorsdust posted:Directly selling mods is going to kill the golden goose of community creativity. I don't think it's going to kill it, but it will probably fundamentally change it. For example, I'm going to start a crowdsourcing site but for mods (original idea do not steal) where people can fund other people mod ideas that may or may not be made.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:09
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In the end I say gently caress the modders. We don't need money.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:21
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I don't understand.. Is Paradox doing this? Or are you just discussing the possibility of Paradox doing it because Bethesda is doing it.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:50
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Randarkman posted:I don't understand.. Is Paradox doing this? Or are you just discussing the possibility of Paradox doing it because Bethesda is doing it. No they're not doing this. Everyone just insists on making GBS threads up every single pc game thread with the same lame arguments.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:52
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Randarkman posted:I don't understand.. Is Paradox doing this? Or are you just discussing the possibility of Paradox doing it because Bethesda is doing it. The latter, and Johan seems to like the idea.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:52
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Kavak posted:The latter, and Johan seems to like the idea. Ok, so it might happen, maybe.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:56
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Viscardus posted:No, because it that case the bookstore is actually giving something meaningful up. You are acting hysterical.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:59
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