Paid Mods on Steam Discussion

localdisk51 said:

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I see a massive amount of potential in the PC gaming industry that is being wasted by market inefficiencies. Why are there games being developed by just one or two companies? What a crazy amount of unnecessary risk to take on! Wouldn't it be better if there were companies that specialized in just AI, where one game engine has different AI implementations by completing businesses? Not only that, but AI systems being developed to work across multiple games, so that the wheel isn't being reinvented over and over? On the flip side, companies developing other parts of game engine would have a financial incentive to maximize modularity in order to attract more implementations of the game.

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The scope and complexity of your project (with regards to features that you must then teach your AI to use) will constantly change (dubbed a "moving target"). Do you really want to waste time and money contracting and re-contracting AI programmers? Keep in consideration that you have no guarantee that you will be able to get the same contractor over the duration of your project.... in the worse case scenario, you will have to allocate time (and resources) to allow each different contractor to familiarize themselves with your systems (that's called lost time and money).

You say that you do not need to re-invent the wheel each time.... but when said wheel is copy-righted as intellectual property (any work done in a RFP or contract generally belongs to the contracting entity, based on the legal documents they make you sign) you are going to go back to the drawing board to re-invent it.

localdisk51 said:

And wouldn't it be good for competition if the barrier to enter that market were minimized?

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Competition is good for the consumer. Competition is bad for the supplier (or 'game studio'). Needless to say, the major companies in any industry will do everything in their power (be it governmental lobbying for favourable legislation to pass, or the monopolization of infrastructure) to make life for startups very hard.

ThorHammerz said:

The scope and complexity of your project (with regards to features that you must then teach your AI to use) will constantly change (dubbed a "moving target"). Do you really want to waste time and money contracting and re-contracting AI programmers? Keep in consideration that you have no guarantee that you will be able to get the same contractor over the duration of your project.... in the worse case scenario, you will have to allocate time (and resources) to allow each different contractor to familiarize themselves with your systems (that's called lost time and money).

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What I was thinking was more along the lines of a modular AI system that provides an API for other parts of the game to access. The ecosystem that has formed around the Unity engine is the type of structure I'm talking about. So in this case the API for an AI engine provides a system to handle the organization between all the other primary objects in the game, and figures out how to handle your mod on its own by receiving instructions on the nature of your mod. We currently have to write most of our own AI because the AI in Civ isn't completely modular, but that would not be necessary with an API that is independent from any specific game.

But this is all looking way into the future of what I hope paid mods would lead to many years down the road. I can certainly see some potential harm in the short term.

ThorHammerz said:

You say that you do not need to re-invent the wheel each time.... but when said wheel is copy-righted as intellectual property (any work done in a RFP or contract generally belongs to the contracting entity, based on the legal documents they make you sign) you are going to go back to the drawing board to re-invent it.

Well things like an AI engine would be developed and copyrighted for the purpose of selling licenses for. If you're getting paid for whatever object you're developing, then the idea is that you use some of that money to purchase licenses for other objects. Secondly, there are an infinite number of ways any primary object in a game can be implemented and designed. So using AI as an example again, barring any legal or regulatory restrictions, there should be competition on pricing and quality of each AI engine you choose to purchase a license for. Unity again is a perfect example of this, as independent developers purchase licenses for assets to use in each others projects.

Competition is good for the consumer. Competition is bad for the supplier (or 'game studio'). Needless to say, the major companies in any industry will do everything in their power (be it governmental lobbying for favourable legislation to pass, or the monopolization of infrastructure) to make life for startups very hard.

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Yea but those companies need investors, and the gaming industry is considered very high risk as is. Investing in gaming component objects whose future does not depend on the success of just one game is likely to see a lot more money from the investment community.

Secondly, I'm not talking about competition between gaming studios, but rather competition between developers of gaming components, or in the short and immediate term, we would call mods. So, competition between modders, but the distinction between types of mods would become more significant. And there would be mods that can be applied to different games, rather than just one. Gaming studios have a lot to gain from starting this, as they get a cut. However, given enough time for the business structure of paid mods to mature, and investment money coming in after contracts on platforms like Steam get renegotiate or supplanted by another platform offering a better contract, it will be the developers of gaming components who dictate the terms. I realize I'm not technically talking about mods anymore, but the point is that the need for game specific mods should become less necessary if a foundation is set for more gaming components to earn a profit.

As for me when modding I get a lot of help from other modders. I would have to share the pot of gold with them . Otherwise it just wouldn't be right. I wonder how they would set that whole deal up. Maybe, I could just become a decent civ map maker and earn a living that way.

Seriously though, I never thought of modding for money. To me it is a way to take ideas and give them life. Make the game better. Fix problems and try new things. Steam is just trying to make more money. We should have a separate free mods community that does their work for free. After all we need to give opportunities open for new modders. They need to be able to start someplace, without having to pay a boatload of money to find out how to mod. I am not saying that modders cannot work to get their mods paid for. Work for pay after all is the order of the day. However, the modding community needs to continue to expand like it always has.