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Modders are people and most of them do it because they enjoy the creative process. Nobody enjoys doing customer support, especially if your mod becomes popular and you end up with the same moronic question over and over and over and over again.
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Sep 18, 2023 12:51
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Kafouille posted:Modders are people and most of them do it because they enjoy the creative process. Nobody enjoys doing customer support, especially if your mod becomes popular and you end up with the same moronic question over and over and over and over again. Yes, but does it work with CE?
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Sep 19, 2023 07:01
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And God forbid your mod is ever popular enough to get integrated into the main game or the like. I had a mod of mine for a popular roguelike get made into main game content and found there was an entire discord channel dedicated to hating on it/me. So I can sympathize with mod makers, although generally the best bet is to just not engage at all.
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Sep 19, 2023 10:23
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That's generally just how making/doing anything goes though. Like I dunno what you do for a living but I basically guarantee there is someone out there who absolutely hates your work.
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Sep 19, 2023 17:44
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Yeah for real If someone being rude was justification for being a catty bitch in a workplace we would routinely have actual murders in every office on the planet. The insults traded over stupid bullshit in any office are grievous and it is a plain rear end base expectation that professionals overlook and keep working regardless. Modders refuse to. Therefore they are not professional. Therefore, they will never get paid on any kind of normalized basis.
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Sep 19, 2023 18:15
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You got cause and effect reversed there, the professionals are polite because they are getting paid to take the bullshit with a smile.
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Sep 20, 2023 01:00
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You don't deal with other people's bullshit for free, ever
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Sep 20, 2023 01:18
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Kafouille posted:You got cause and effect reversed there, the professionals are polite because they are getting paid to take the bullshit with a smile. i did not.
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Sep 20, 2023 01:41
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Coolguye posted:Modders refuse to. Therefore they are not professional. Therefore, they will never get paid on any kind of normalized basis. Some of them are managing well enough with Patreon.
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Sep 20, 2023 09:17
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Coolguye posted:Yeah for real There are numerous examples of teams of modders being hired and becoming professional. Counterstrike was a mod.
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Sep 21, 2023 07:46
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Duct Tape Engineer posted:Some of them are managing well enough with Patreon. Kanos posted:There are numerous examples of teams of modders being hired and becoming professional. Counterstrike was a mod. correct. this is precisely why paid mods are not a thing in the larger sense, this entire phenomenon is so rare that when teams do end up being actual professionals, they functionally have to walk off and make their own game out of their mod. with blackjack. and hookers. patreon is the alternate pathway to that where they just become a studio in their own right. to remind, specifically what i said is that paid mods are not a thing because modders refuse to behave like professionals. stuff like counterstrike and dota 2 WERE mods.
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Sep 21, 2023 07:50
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Modders have patreons, some are quite successful with it. The mods they make are effectively paid mods. Your argument is missing the point that the modders that are professional often get hired to work on the initial game/go on to work on commercial products, so there are professional acting modders but they often go on to greater things. The loudest voices we hear about are the guys who couldn't have a courteous conversation with a traffic cone, the modders that act normally we just never hear about.
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Sep 21, 2023 12:52
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Sep 21, 2023 14:48
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machine translation error procgen AI insanity weird fetish all of the above?
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Sep 21, 2023 14:55
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When in doubt, it's always a weird fetish.
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Sep 21, 2023 15:00
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It's a mod with sliders so that you can set custom buffs/debuffs on women and/or men! So, Torrannor posted:When in doubt, it's always a weird fetish.
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Sep 21, 2023 15:06
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Carcer posted:Modders have patreons, some are quite successful with it. The mods they make are effectively paid mods. i'm missing no such thing since i said exactly this in the post literally above yours but if it's so critical for me to be so mistaken about an offhanded comment i made to prompt jokes and chuckles then alright buddies have it your ways Coolguye fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 16:56
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Congrats on turning earnest discussion into some sort of attack on you I guess 
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Sep 21, 2023 17:14
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I don't think "modders refuse to be professional" is a particularly compelling way to look at it because there simply isn't a framework in which that would function. Paid mods are a scam both on the player and on the creator, as are all forms of monetizing the creativity of the userbase because their primary concern is allowing the game developer to make moneywith minimal effort, thus they will not pay modders money they could take for themselves and they will also not provide support for the content they're selling the player, and that in turn is going to limit the number of people who want to pay for it. But because it's paywalled content it also completely annihilates the possibility of collaborative efforts and maintenence. The entire structure of the monetization systems discourages anything resembling "professionalism" because the people running the systems explicitly do not consider the mod developers to be worth paying properly and equally do not consider the content worth supporting, they are trying to find a way to extract more money out of enthusiasm, not give people a job.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:20
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OwlFancier posted:I don't think "modders refuse to be professional" is a particularly compelling way to look at it because there simply isn't a framework in which that would function. it's this, 'paid mods' aren't about ~professionalism~ or lack thereof, they're about extraction. the end. also: no one should ever feel compelled to tolerate entitled consumer bullshit, and it is one of the low key most despicable things about our society that we condition certain people's basic survival on their endlessly smiling servility while other people are endlessly empowered to act however they want and exclusively rewarded for doing so edited for preemptive waffle-hater caveat: I'm not saying "modders are always right" or anything, there are plenty of dumbass modders who do stupid, drama-bomb things, but there is also a lot of insane player behavior, and going "oh well, *pointing vaguely in the direction of steam workshop comments* that's why their labor isn't worth paying them for exploiting" is just 
hailthefish fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 17:24
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Yeah I think thats probably closer to the truth. Every attempt at paid mods so far has been monetization of modders at their expense and nothing else.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:26
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Also that yes, I don't antagonise my co workers in jest and nor would I accept it from them. It is not "professional" to either do that or to expect it.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:26
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Carcer posted:Congrats on turning earnest discussion into some sort of attack on you I guess i'm not sure how else to interpret it when someone just flatly ignores what i wrote and talks about how what i wrote is also a problem, directly after i had taken the time to politely clarify what i actually said. like, shrug buddy, but i'm not buying that i'm the weird one here for flatly ignoring large cuts in an "earnest discussion". maybe we can actually acknowledge what folks are saying to show that a discussion is possible? OwlFancier posted:I don't think "modders refuse to be professional" is a particularly compelling way to look at it because there simply isn't a framework in which that would function. i don't agree a lot of this, there's a number of potential frameworks that you can crib from other places and i think it's absurdly narrowminded to broadly call paid mods a scam. there's lots of games that have been massively increased in scope by their modding communities. and, for 100% certain, the vast majority of mods can't and shouldn't be monetized. of the remainder, a lot more should have free versions, for a bunch of reasons. but i think it's hard to look at stuff like VE and its massive network of cross-compatible mods and experiences and say "there is no way this can possibly be worth money." there's lots of ways they could absolutely work, valve's attempt at it actually made a lot of sense in theory. in practice they effed it up by making static splits. but in theory, simply saying "alright, this is how much this mod costs for a lifetime subscription to it and its updates, and that's gonna be shared between you and the game's base developer at X rate. the base dev sets X rate" is a workable solution, especially if the base dev is encouraged to set X to a very small number - or zero. especially if it DEFAULTS to zero and the dev has to go change it. at that point it's a conversation between the modder and the dev who created their playground, which is what the conversation always should revolve around. it was a huge problem that nobody approached it from that sort of angle, though. modders and mod-users both had aneurysms over the very concept that mods could be charged for, and the modders themselves were absolutely negative professional about the situation. it was kinda a perfect example of what i was talking about. the vast majority of modders just went Full Arthimoor and made it clear they were abusive and unreasonable from the get-go. flat out, that's unprofessional behavior, exactly the same sort of nonsense where a mod author berates a user rather than simply linking to an FAQ. this was especially self-defeating when the alternative genuinely is patreons, ko-fis, etc and it absolutely is orders of magnitude harder to get people to go there and interact with those than the theoretical alternatives. i also don't agree that something being paywalled annihilates collaborative efforts and maintenance because that implies that the paywall on rimworld and its expansions do that, which is demonstrably not true. modders have to buy in to each new DLC when it releases, and compatibility stuff alternately working for if you have biotech vs royalty vs both installed is a common feature in many mods. i'd agree with the last part where the proposed systems thus far haven't been great deals for the modders, but let's not forget who proposed most of those systems. valve somewhat uncharacteristically hosed it up for sure, but the other major attempts have come from people like Blizzard and EA, and i scarcely think i need to elaborate on why they aren't a great model for anything. stealing the CONCEPTS in someone else's creative work ought to be just flatly illegal in the entire modern world, but here we are having massive corporations so absolutely terrified of indie creators that they try to lock people in to a shadowrun contract.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:59
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Coolguye posted:. stealing the CONCEPTS in someone else's creative work ought to be just flatly illegal in the entire modern world Yeah what we definitely need is more bullshit ip law :jerkoff:
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Sep 21, 2023 18:03
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StealthArcher posted:Yeah what we definitely need is more bullshit ip law :jerkoff: hailthefish posted:it's this, 'paid mods' aren't about ~professionalism~ or lack thereof, they're about extraction. the end. anyways, suffice it to say that if a consumer is being a whiny little chode everyone should treat them as a whiny little chode, including mod-makers. i don't think anyone's suggesting otherwise. i certainly never suggested whatever the hell that last clause of yours is saying so i assume you're talking to someone who isn't here.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:14
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VE I think is a good example of why paid mods would be dubious precisely because it is obviously quite high-effort, but has a number of technical issues, balance issues, god help you if you installed all of them at once, and a number of the systems introduced in older versions are superceded or awkwardly-adjacent-but-not-integrated-with features from subsequent expansions. It is very clearly lesser than the expansions, not necessarily in terms of any individual bit of content but in the fact that the expansions have been released without any thought as to how it affects the mods. It is a mod, and it would still be a mod even if you paid for it, it would not be official content with the same level of cohesiveness and expectation of being integrated into the official releases. It's second class content. I would also suggest that the reason that it's scummy companies who keep trying to monetize mods directly is because mods already generate money for the developers by providing extra content and already have methods of monetization via donations, which as a method help to eliminate the issues above with dubious quality, support, and integration by letting the user either not pay for it or pay when they think it's worth it. If the updates stop then you haven't paid up front with the expectation of them. Monetization being hostile to collaboration is a problem when the mods become commodities themselves, if someone stops updating a mod then they might just let other people take over maintaining it, that is directly disincentivized if the mod is making the original owner money, either you are asking the new maintainer to work for the original creator for free or they would be asking the original creator to sign over the commercial rights to the new maintainer, neither of which are incentivized, the up front payment model encourages manufactured scarcity, while the free model encourages collaboration. If someone doesn't keep up with the game, if their mods are freely released they have little incentive to not hand them off to new maintainers, which helps to counteract the issues with needing to buy DLC to develop for the latest versions of the game. If I were to suggest a method of monetization it would probably be the workers and resources model, where they apparently have just bought a bunch of assets off modders and put them in the game. Presumably the modders got paid a rate they were happy with for their work and the assets are now just part of the game. Seems like the fairest approach to me. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 18:17
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Shut the gently caress up at modding drama nerds and talk more about launching poop at your enemies or whatever.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:20
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Most of the famously toxic Minecraft modding scene issues were exactly because of monetization, there was so much drama around modpacks simply because of the literal pennies the creators were getting by putting downloads behind adfly links. Or just take a look at Roblox if you want to see the hellscape that built-in monetization actually is. Modding is a hobby, treat it as such.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:28
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OwlFancier posted:VE I think is a good example of why paid mods would be dubious precisely because it is obviously quite high-effort, but has a number of technical issues, balance issues, god help you if you installed all of them at once, and a number of the systems introduced in older versions are superceded or awkwardly-adjacent-but-not-integrated-with features from subsequent expansions. It is very clearly lesser than the expansions, not necessarily in terms of any individual bit of content but in the fact that the expansions have been released without any thought as to how it affects the mods. It is a mod, and it would still be a mod even if you paid for it, it would not be official content with the same level of cohesiveness and expectation of being integrated into the official releases. It's second class content. in my mind the first paragraph is basically why you should make it possible for people to get directly set up for doing a good job. agreed that VE has absolute assloads of rough edges, but precisely the free/paid split could more or less be "these are all the building blocks we made, those are free but they're building blocks, we explicitly just put stuff into it and people can play with it however they want. over here we have the curated experience megamods that integrate these building blocks into something you just pop in and play with." there's some stuff on the Fallout 4 end with this at https://www.fallout4experiences.com/ for example, where the only thing this group does is go make massive modpacks that they tweak and balance into a cohesive experience. there's tons of flaws with them still sure, but it's super hard to look at this stuff and not think of some of the massively ambitious mods for kenshi, age of empires, age of wonders, etc etc that more or less make an entirely different game. i see bethesda in a lot of your second point, which i broadly agree with but i dunno that that's actually a modder ecosystem environment to fix. in any sane environment where the modder can choose to do something for free not much changes really since Bethesda has made a habit of selling the creation kit, not the game as far back as Morrowind. don't get me wrong, I love morrowind, but even as a die-hard fan of it i'll be the first to admit the game sucks rear end out of the box and not just because of the lovely balance. Even in the final patches it's shot through with careless bugs and system problems that modders had to go fix. oblivion, skyrim, and starfield are all extensions of that tradition. bethesda's doing fine on it. the third point i think is one that's well made but it's one that we already solve every day. heck, even in the context of modding here we still have to tell people to go grab character editor instead of prepare carefully. it's something that happens regardless, and again, unless we're for some unholy reason FORCING people to have a microtransaction on every mod (which i agree would be insane and dumb), it's already a problem we have. if we need a better process surrounding it because there are these actual communities we're building up, that's a detail, not a fundamental problem. the last part is basically just the like unity store, which actually is one of the larger reasons i think the ecosystem could work. there's tons of free models, code, frameworks, and more on the unity store that the original creator is getting theirs by just on you downloading it. all of that is portfolio fodder. the folks who download it usually customize the stuff or whatever, but it's still super valuable. then there's more specialized models and more fully-featured engines that are largely plug and play, and those cost money. of course you then have the problem like current unity, where the host ecosystem goes completely insane and decides to burn itself to the ground, but that's a risk regardless.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:38
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Telsa Cola posted:Shut the gently caress up at modding drama nerds and talk more about launching poop at your enemies or whatever. fine fine
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Sep 21, 2023 18:38
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Coolguye posted:i certainly never suggested whatever the hell that last clause of yours is saying so i assume you're talking to someone who isn't here. that last clause was a pre-emptive rebuttal of the attempt to insinuate I was saying that, because my brain has been broken by twitter
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Sep 21, 2023 18:45
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hailthefish posted:that last clause was a pre-emptive rebuttal of the attempt to insinuate I was saying that, because my brain has been broken by twitter well i certainly did not see that as something you were saying if it helps 
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Sep 21, 2023 18:50
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Coolguye posted:haha ok yeah that's a fair point. i stand by that it's bullshit to be like "oh hey everything you ever thought of belongs to me" but IP law is kind of hosed up to the core so adding onto it without a basic overhaul probably won't help That is not at all what Coolguye posted:. stealing the CONCEPTS in someone else's creative work ought to be just flatly illegal in the entire modern world Reads as, just coming from me. Protecting people from companies just blanket going "all thoughts in ur brain are mine lolmao" is not the same as "I came up with a thunder god in this game so nobody else can use that concept ever, now let me congratulate namco on patenting loading screen mini games"
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Sep 22, 2023 11:49
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Telsa Cola posted:Shut the gently caress up at modding drama nerds and talk more about launching poop at your enemies or whatever.
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Sep 22, 2023 12:09
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Something interesting I learned while reading through Rimworld mods is that some people commission others to make mods. I can't imagine it's all that common but super weird to be digging into a mod introduction or in the comments and find out the "creator" (person uploading it to the workshop) doesn't know what a problem is because they commissioned it instead of making it themselves.
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Sep 23, 2023 20:27
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I think commissioning mods is cool and based, though, they should probably be uploaded by the mod maker though y'know gently caress it if you're not paying for maintenance so be it. Totally seperate from 'paid modding' as an idea, I'm extremely down for describing my vision, and paying someone who actually has useful life skills to turn it into reality.
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Sep 23, 2023 22:59
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Maybe "Producer" and "Creator" are better titles, but yeah I don't think anybody is against modders getting that bag
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Sep 23, 2023 23:05
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Prokhor posted:they should probably be uploaded by the mod maker though y'know gently caress it if you're not paying for maintenance so be it It's a tricky situation because sometimes you're only commissioning specific portions of the mod, like an artist might be hiring someone to handle the code, or a coder wants to replace their placeholder art. One of Mlie's Continued mods had a user commission a bugfix because Mlie couldn't fix it themselves, for example. In any case, having the person that is going to handle long term communications be the owner makes a lot of sense regardless of how the work was distributed. That kind of plays into why the VE way of handling things blows. Oskar has assumed the role of community manager for the entire VE brand by being the uploader for every one of those mods. He's the one running the Patreon and getting all the money. He's making enough to fund the development of an entirely new game on the side. If some random modder got popular and is a bit of an rear end while flying solo, whatever, but this guy has an entire team and turned this into a job. If he can't handle the pressure of being the community manager he needs to hire someone who can, the same way he pays his team to handle all the coding. He needs to be professional because he turned this into his profession.
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Sep 24, 2023 02:13
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I know there's some way to have multiple people upload/be linked to the mod's workshop page since I can see VEWhatever mods in the pages of people who have worked on specific mods. I think it's still credited to the original uploader though which is its own problem.
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Sep 24, 2023 02:22
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If you send out a caravan and build a camp, can they just... stay there forever and build a 2nd colony? I'm up to 35 people in my current colony and I really like the idea of sending 6 of the youngsters out to set up shop a half-dozen hexes away and try to build up a second settlement, is this something I can do or will I have to bring them home eventually? Also I am looking for mods that add beautiful trees and plants, anyone got anything? I used to have a mod that allowed you to grow some sort of glowing tree with high beauty but I can't find it now and I can't remember what the tree was called. Lastly, I want to recommend the Bouldermit Security System for all colonies that have access to it. I have 2 tame bouldermits that I have just sit out in the field in front of my main defenses, wandering about and making GBS threads out rocks. This ruins my barn and my pasture and so I sent them into the harshness of the wild. I don't care about them at all, which is good, because they exist to turn into a giant ball of insects or raiders during an attack. Everything comes to attack these bouldermits, they seem to hate them with a passion. They group up around the bouldermit and start attacking it dozens of times a second. The bouldermit seems not to notice. Once a nice "bouldermit ball" has formed, here come the rockets and grenades. The silly flesh-things surrounding the bouldermit care about such things. The rockets shred their flesh, the grenades tear them to pieces, blood flies and bones shatter. The bouldermit seems not to notice. Afterwards, as you're planting the corpses at the base of the Great Tree to make more treeling workers and smelting down their lovely ikwas and autopistols you realize: Oh God the bouldermit, I just left it out there bleeding. It's certain to die, it was the center of 3 minutes of full-on explosions and fire. With trembling hand you check its health. The tab is completely full of gushing, devastating wounds. How long do you have to save it?!? The message at the bottom is longer than it usually is. It says: 78 conditions need tending. No immediate danger. This motherfucker is fine, it's a giant crab. Patch it up if you feel like it but nbd honestly. It's totally worth burning a psychic taming charge on one of these things to engage the Bouldermit Security System. But don't keep it in your barn or pasture unless your folks like obstacle course animal handling 24/7.
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Sep 24, 2023 18:44
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