A case for DLC Profit sharing for modders

[OrsonM]

As I just saw the news of 2 new DLC packs (Danish and Explorers map pack), I got me thinking that from the few things that do work well in Civ V, DLC's are now working on schedulle.

It actually makes sense from Firaxis point of view. To expand, fix or stabilize the game for modders does not generate revenue (immediate revenue, that is), particularly this iteration of the game which has the most elaborate and ambitious design-minded version yet. Something that I'm sure Firaxis and the designers do not really have much of an intention to see modified with just about anyone. Their beautiful original Art Deco graphics replaced with pixelated stock images from the internet?, Designers are a proud folk, what took them 500+ hours to make they do not want to see it destroyed in 1 hour. But I digress...

Since Mods are for free (the gain is just a portfolio piece for the members of the team) modders have little to no incentive, just a platform. So how about some support for modders working on the next Fall From Heaven?, whoever they may be.

Now, modders aren't usually too keen on respecting some corporate business practices (particularly and mostly copyright), and even Fall From Heaven is a minor offender here:

http://kael.civfanatics.net/Credits.shtml

But you never know!. Counterstrike originated in this fashion and today it is a wonderful cashcow (even Steam had it's kickstart thanks to Counterstrike), Day of Defeat, DOTA, Tower Defense and Team Fortress were originated or promoted by modders. Likely because it's hard to be creative with a bunch of stockholders breathing down your neck, independent developers hold the key to the next generation of gaming (if not just to copy said independet developers ideas to port them on the android).

Could DLCs be expanded for modders?, should they be?

Charging 10 dollars for a mappack is probably the closest thing to highway robbery Firaxis has attempted yet (IMHO). What makes Firaxis maps so special?. Same thing about scenarios or new Civs. Why not open that door to independent developers, stating of course a few guidelines beforehand to keep the project lawsuit free and on track with the rest of the games design. Even a tiny percentage could be a great incentive for modders.

As long as Firaxis or 2k do not see a profit from modding, it is unlikely it'll be a priority any time soon. Offering modders a profitsharing DLC option for exceptional work might do trick.

 

[Afforess]

As I just saw the news of 2 new DLC packs (Danish and Explorers map pack), I got me thinking that from the few things that do work well in Civ V, DLC's are now working on schedulle.

It actually makes sense from Firaxis point of view. To expand, fix or stabilize the game for modders does not generate revenue (immediate revenue, that is), particularly this iteration of the game which has the most elaborate and ambitious design-minded version yet. Something that I'm sure Firaxis and the designers do not really have much of an intention to see modified with just about anyone. Their beautiful original Art Deco graphics replaced with pixelated stock images from the internet?, Designers are a proud folk, what took them 500+ hours to make they do not want to see it destroyed in 1 hour. But I digress...

Since Mods are for free (the gain is just a portfolio piece for the members of the team) modders have little to no incentive, just a platform. So how about some support for modders working on the next Fall From Heaven?, whoever they may be.

Now, modders aren't usually too keen on respecting some corporate business practices (particularly and mostly copyright), and even Fall From Heaven is a minor offender here:

http://kael.civfanatics.net/Credits.shtml

But you never know!. Counterstrike originated in this fashion and today it is a wonderful cashcow (even Steam had it's kickstart thanks to Counterstrike), Day of Defeat, DOTA, Tower Defense and Team Fortress were originated or promoted by modders. Likely because it's hard to be creative with a bunch of stockholders breathing down your neck, independent developers hold the key to the next generation of gaming (if not just to copy said independet developers ideas to port them on the android).

Could DLCs be expanded for modders?, should they be?

Charging 10 dollars for a mappack is probably the closest thing to highway robbery Firaxis has attempted yet (IMHO). What makes Firaxis maps so special?. Same thing about scenarios or new Civs. Why not open that door to independent developers, stating of course a few guidelines beforehand to keep the project lawsuit free and on track with the rest of the games design. Even a tiny percentage could be a great incentive for modders.

As long as Firaxis or 2k do not see a profit from modding, it is unlikely it'll be a priority any time soon. Offering modders a profitsharing DLC option for exceptional work might do trick.

Your idea could work...barring one key flaw:

Firaxis has already laid off (or they fled the project...*cough*Shafer*cough*) everyone who did the real programming on the game. Doing DLC profit sharing would most definitely require new code.

 

[Psyringe]

A similar suggestion was discussed prior to Civ5's release. It was heavily criticized for a number of reasons, and 2KGreg even found it necessary to step in and state that no "mod marketplace" was planned.

I can see how you arrive at your conclusion, but I don't think it would work in the way you envision it. First, if Firaxis charges for mods (or participates in the earnings of them), they'd also have the responsibility to check, test, fix, and patch it, or make sure that others do so. They probably wouldn't want that responsibility since it's not only a huge task to organize, it also costs time and money. And while there are some modder teams who work on a pretty professional level, many teams wouldn't be able to _guarantee_ continued support for their product either.

Can you imagine the customer reaction if they paid for a mod that simply doesn't work under the latest patch, and no one's going to fix it because the key people created the whole thing while they were between jobs, and now they have work again and no time left for modding? Customers excuse failings and problems in mods much more than they do so in commercial games - because with mods, they don't lose money.

Also, for the development of mods, it's important that they are free. The fact that they don't cost money multiplies the number of people who at least check it out by a huge factor. This in turn leads to more people giving feedback, more people contributing to the mod, more popularity of the mod, etc. All this becomes more difficult once you charge for mods.

Another problem is that of code ownership. One of the greatest assets of Civ4's modding community is that you can basically combine other people's mods into yours as you like, as long as you give proper credit. This free sharing of code and ideas breaks down when money is involved. People will want a piece of the pie if their code is being used. People will be more protective of their code, and more reluctant to publish it anywhere, if that code is part of any product they earn money for (because then, publishing it freely hurts their income). You're also laying the groundwork for ugly copyright fights within the community ("Your team stole our team's code!") that we can happily live without.

Copyright also causes problem on another end: Several popular mods use stuff from other games (graphics, sounds, music) that are actually copyrighted. The copyright holders often turn a blind eye on this as long as no profit is involved, but they could easily sue anyone who uses their stuff without permission, and believe me they will if anyone is trying to make money off their work.

In short, a "pay for mods" system as you envision it would be detrimental for most mods and for the community as a whole.

Exceptions may be possible though - highly professional mods created by a rather closed team (like FfH) are a good example. Or check other games - Europa Universalis III has a very popular mod, Magna Mundi. The Magna Mundi team proved for years that they can develop and support a complex product on a professional level, so Paradox finally hired them to do their own game. These things are possible, and it's _good_ that they are, but they are also rare exceptions.

Finally, I think that your premise "Firaxis or 2k doesn't see a profit from modding" is flawed. They do. Civ4 has been an exceptional longseller, and this is also due to the fact that there are so many great mods for this game. Some people bought Civ4 mainly to play FfH or RFC.

Of course, the latest practice of companies offering very small (and hugely overpriced) additions is at odds with free modding, since the official DLC suddenly competes with the free stuff from modders. That's probably one of the reasons why we see increasing delays between a game's release and the release of powerful modding tools. That's unfortunate, but the number of people who are actually willing to spend a lot of money on tiny bits and additions seems to justify the approach (although I really don't understand these people). In any case, charging money for mods would not solve the problem. The publisher would still earn more money with things developed in-house (no need to share the profit with outsiders), and as long as mods can be offered for free, they'd still have to deal with the cost-free competition. As long as modding tools are freely available, some people will offer excellent mods free of charge, which then compete with the official products. The only way to circumvent the competition problem is to only give modding tools out to a few select teams, which would kill the community outright.

I could go on, but I'm tired and I think I made my point already.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Psyringe covered the basics, but I want to comment on two things:

Can you imagine the customer reaction if they paid for a mod that simply doesn't work under the latest patch, and no one's going to fix it because the key people created the whole thing while they were between jobs, and now they have work again and no time left for modding?

As it is, we already see a lot of mods that are non-functional because the mods were broken as a result of the December or March patches, and the original writers are long gone from the modding community. The in-game Mod Browser is fairly worthless as a result, because you have no idea whether the thing you're downloading will even work. I stopped using it a while back, and now only download things that I see are active on these boards.

Asking people to pay for mods like that just makes it far worse, because now the customer would feel entitled to a working product at all times (heh). That means Firaxis would need to go through the mod browser (or at least any "official" mods they've charged for) to ensure that everything in there is still functional after each patch, and that's a huge amount of extra work for them. Sure, they could just not break the things in the first place, but I think we all know how likely THAT is.

Alternatively, consider the modder who gets sick of Civ5 and wants to move onto another game, but is receiving money for a mod he's developing...

Copyright also causes problem on another end: Several popular mods use stuff from other games (graphics, sounds, music) that are actually copyrighted. The copyright holders often turn a blind eye on this as long as no profit is involved, but they could easily sue anyone who uses their stuff without permission, and believe me they will if anyone is trying to make money off their work.

It's not so much turning a blind eye, as that they have no real grounds to sue under normal Fair Use. Fair Use says that I can use copyrighted assets to a certain extent, depending on the following:
1> The purpose you're using it for matters. Teachers who want to use a clip from a movie in something they show their students get a lot more leniency. Commercial profit is a lot less accepted. Nonprofit "fun" falls in between.
2> You don't do anything that would infringe on the potential market for the original product. Taking icons from a 10-year old game (say, Alpha Centauri) is a lot more acceptable than using a 3D model from Starcraft II, which still has upcoming expansions.
3> You don't use too much of the copyrighted material. (This one's obviously a lot fuzzier.) Quoting a few paragraphs or key lines in a review of a book is okay, photocopying the first chapter in its entirety is generally not.

So if your mods are free, for pure entertainment value, then it'd be really hard to argue against Fair Use unless you use a huge number of assets from the original product. But if you're going into business and charging for them, then you very quickly lose that protection, as far as I can tell.

----
And finally, there's another reason to not charge for mods. Simply put, you can't pay me enough to be worth my time, so why bother? If a good mod takes thousands of man-hours of effort, would enough people be willing to pay for me to even reach minimum wage? I mean, games like Minecraft (millions of downloaders at at least $10 apiece) are the exception. If I charged the people who downloaded my own mod a dollar apiece, well, I could have bought a few extra pizzas over the past six months, but I make more than that in a day at work. (Heck, with the length of my posts, I probably would make more in the amount of time it took to write this post!)

 

[OrsonM]

It's easy to list reasons for why such system would utterly fail, but they are mostly grounded on the current modding scene from Civ 5, I believe an incentive might help here.

Why not give an incentive to modders who strive to become professional?, this is clearly not a system that would work with the casual hobbyists. The idea wasn't even mine, it's from Blizzard Entertainment, to quote from wikipedia:

A major new addition to the map-making community will be the StarCraft II Marketplace, where high quality maps will be sold for a small fee as "premium maps" over Battle.net. The mode of payment has not yet been announced. Lead Designer Dustin Browder has mentioned that even maps like player-created Defense of the Ancients in Warcraft III would not meet the quality requirements to be branded as a premium map

Why wouldn't Civ keep up to date with this? (not sure if the Blizz idea was placed in practice yet though). Modders knowing that they might be rewarded for their hard work might just become more profesional.

This could be a system for mods superior to Far from Heaven, why superior?, because it would have to have all original art work and music. While for the hobbyist this sounds absurd, for students and maybe small companies, this wouldn't be half bad.The estimated development time would likely be the same time as of any independent game out there.

Would people buy them?, who knows, you might just develop the next line of products for Firaxis if it's a great idea. Team Fortress, Counterstrike, Portal and Killing Floor became retail. While DOTA, ActionQuake, Tower Defense and A Path Beyond became more successful than their original games.

Even Civilization jumped on board with this with Fall from Heaven and Rhyes and Fall of Civilization being included in BTS. If DLC is their new thing, why not try to expand it?. Firaxis would make a profit with this in either 2 ways, if it barely sells, then they make a small profit and can portray themselves as helping new developers. If a mod sells exceptionally well, then Firaxis can either purchase it or do legal jujitsu and start a new line of games (and still rake in).

In any case, this model could work with just very exceptional mods, keeping in mind students and small developers triying to break into the gaming industry. Not for the hobbyist or casual modder.

 

[Psyringe]

It's easy to list reasons for why such system would utterly fail, but they are mostly grounded on the current modding scene from Civ 5,

Well. Apparently it's not quite as easy as rejecting all those many individual reasons, without even addressing a single one of them, by making one simple sweeping assumption that isn't even remotely true ... humm

I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that my contribution was "grounded on the current modding scene from Civ5", which btw I barely know. I hope it doesn't come off wrong when I say that the first game I modded was Wing Commander Privateer in 1994 (if you don't count things like making levels or hacking extra lives for C64 games in the 80s), and I haven't been _totally_ oblivious to the modding scenes since then (ask if you really want a list of those I've monitored or have been part of).

While I of course can't guarantee that I'm 100% right (there's always a margin for error), I can assure you that I'm using a much broader base than you try to insinuate.

Anyway. You added an interesting bit about Blizzard. That's a modding community that I have few ties to (so thanks for the pointer), though I remember having read about their ideas during the "mod marketplaces" discussion I mentioned earlier. As you can tell from my earlier, I'm very skeptical about the viability of such an approach for general modding, and as far as I can see, you haven't really provided an argument against that. However (and I already said that too), as an exception for exceptional mods, produced by closed teams which agree on a certain work-ethic, it can work and it can even become a valuable stepping stone for people wanting to break into game design (see my Magna Mundi example). I think we agree on that.

However, you also presented your idea as a way to "make modding a priority" for Firaxis, and I don't think that would work the way you hope it would (see my previous post for reasons).

 

[OrsonM]

Blizzard provides amazing editing tools, I remember making a few scenario maps and even a campaign in Starcraft back in the day. I think the WC3 map maker provided even more tools for making maps but I never tried it (I think I was messing around making voxel units for Tiberian Sun back then, also very modable).

I assumed you meant the current modding scene because... well, because I thought you did based on your comments, if you didn't, my bad.

Anyhow the idea is just a chimera, it's just sad to see little to no support from Firaxis on mod matters (despite claims to the contrary):

http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/podcasts

Check the last episode, were they claim Civ V is more modable than Civ IV (!).

I think at the moment they are prioritising things that would yield profits right away, a support for modding likely would yield little to no immidiate profits (they would have to nurture it to get a profit). Adding a DLC profit sharing incentive might make the Mod Scene a bit more vibrant. In any case I don't think Firaxis would come out and offer that any time soon (not even a contest).

 

[Thalassicus]

Rather than charge for downloads, I prefer the approach of a donation system like Firefox addons use. This way users don't feel forced into things. A lot of content on the web is going to a free+donation or free+premium combination approach, so I discussed that somewhat when the last major patch was released.

Mod to Core

 

[Valkrionn]

Your idea could work...barring one key flaw:

Firaxis has already laid off (or they fled the project...*cough*Shafer*cough*) everyone who did the real programming on the game. Doing DLC profit sharing would most definitely require new code.

I'm sorry, but this is unequivocally false.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

I think at the moment they are prioritising things that would yield profits right away, a support for modding likely would yield little to no immidiate profits (they would have to nurture it to get a profit). Adding a DLC profit sharing incentive might make the Mod Scene a bit more vibrant. In any case I don't think Firaxis would come out and offer that any time soon (not even a contest).

Firaxis is a business... true modders have held to a precious reputation of doing it for free.

I could foresee a day when some stuff ends up being *Contracted* for -- but what exactly could stop them from reaching out for (some) quality simply by hiring staff?

Ubisoft is more than a think-thank -- but they pay employees assigned to projects right here in Montreal. All of which, hired & trained to integrate development tasks.

The anomaly with MODs (as they are currently perceived, btw) is that the Gaming Industry benefits from an alternate source of content at no real costs in business terms.
They'd simply be fools to scrap the pipelines by implementing profit sharing without specific conventions. Intellectual property is already complex as it is, so you can imagine how coders shiver once they sign out their rights of any authorship to corporations.
Law prevents malpractice.
Modders *DO* walk a very thin blurry line once any form of SDKs has been provided.

 

[OrsonM]

First Person Shooters have rather large teams of people working on them, all of them working in 100% original assets, albeit on some extremely unoriginal ideas. Civ 5 modding community on the other hand is usually composed of 1 person teams, working on original ideas, but neglecting for the most part to use original assets.

It's 2 completely different situations, on the one hand the first person shooter team aims to make a game they'll eventually sell and maybe kickstart their careers there. So what's holding the Civ 5 modding scene?

On hindsight my first guess was lack of financial motivation, I mean first person shooters sell extremely well in comparison and don't require nearly half as much work on concept (they are almost all ripoffs of current successful games or successful movies, and when they are original it's usually an overdone concept like Apocalypse, Mod ideas at least), so logically I thought that the DLC system would be the only way exceptional and professional mod work could get an spotlight and an incentive (as Firaxis is now releasing DLCs on regularly).

As pointed by Zyxpsilon, if a mod team would release an amazing mod, it'll likely get a contract anyways. But I feel this will rise out of a rich modding culture within the community. Not having the patience to wait for that to rise out on it's own, I thought maybe Firaxis could give an incentive of sorts. Mods like Fall from Heaven or games that derive from Civ IV like Colonization would like get released today as a DLC today.

 

[Thalassicus]

Edit: Nevermind. I was thinking that the difference in commercial success of mods is due to action games' popularity, but then I remembered the sale stats from the past five years or so... for years Civ 4, WoW, and The Sims were solidly on the top-10 bestselling list. Strategy and building things (empires, characters, houses) are still popular. And there have been commercial spinoffs of strategy game mods (Defense of the Ancients). The curse.com mod-site franchise for WoW has also become very successful, and there's that Fall From Heaven spinoff game.

 

[OrsonM]

There are strategy games that have respectable modding communities: Civ IV, Starcraft, Warcraft and Command & Conquer can be counted among them. Even Total Annihilation is kept alive today thanks to it's modding community. I guess I was just comparing it to Civ V in general.

But yeah, I've yet to see anyone trying to make an independent strategy game from scratch. Independent developers seem fixated in either shooters or casual games for mobile platforms. It could just be that strategy games are just a thing usually seen on PCs or that I'm just not hanging out with the right crowd.

 

[Thalassicus]

You never know where new indie games can pop up, though... look how Minecraft is taking over the world, and it evolved from strategy games like Dwarf Fortress. My brother, friends, coworkers and classmates are all really into that game. I haven't had time to try it out myself since I've been split between my job, family, and modding Civ.