Time for a new spin-off?

[Provost Martin]

Am I missing something here, but how is a DLC different from an expansion when it comes to copyright concerns and integrating material from them into modifications? Just curious.

 

[Commander Bello]

Ultimately, I think DLC simply means that modders must adopt the practice of ignoring DLC material. All mods must use regular game material or user generated ones. Official Babylon art must be ignored unless they become part of an expansion pack or become available for free. There is no reason why anyone must use DLC art.

And that is, what I mean when saying there are legal implications which contradict the "unprecedented modding capabilities".

Am I missing something here, but how is a DLC different from an expansion when it comes to copyright concerns and integrating material from them into modifications? Just curious.

Because DLC in the announcend and confirmed way now makes for different combinations from start on.
a) "standard" and "collector's" versions (18 civilizations)
b) "deluxe" steam (18+1 civilizations)
c) "deluxe" D2D (18+1+2 civilizations)*

And then, since D2D explicitely talks about the first DLC package, we can take it as guaranteed that there will be more in the near future, which means even more versions.
So, in much less time much more combinations with DLC then previously with "just" add-ons after 18 months.
Since the add-ons also gave new game principles, the majority of users moved on as did the modders, thus having a settled base for all again.

*yes, the additional 2 civilizations of D2D will come later, but our modders will need some time to get used to the new ways, too. So it seems to be viable to count these 2 bonus civilizations into the number of civilization "from the start".

 

[ColdFever]

How is a DLC different from an expansion when it comes to copyright concerns and integrating material from them into modifications? Just curious.

If you use a mod for an expansion/addon, you usually need the expansion/addon installed, otherwise mod functionality is doubtful. Example: For modding an addon Civ you usually need its addon installed, otherwise the special addon abilities of the Civ probably will not work.

But if a modder would just release a mere data collection of official DLC as a mod, for example by using the official Babylon Civ for deriving an "Assyria" Civ, this could work without problems, because the program already is prepared for this functionality. It is unlikely that the Steam DRM will limit the usage of mods or that Civ5 is written in a way that it will limit the usage of mods. If T2/Firaxis would try limiting mods technically, this probably would be the first target of hackers. Or even worse, modders could just give up on the title.

legal implications contradict the "unprecedented modding capabilities"... and modders will need some time to get used to the new ways, too..

Being a modder, it already has been a complex task in the past to write code for detecting and handling addons correctly. But as there have been only very few official addons, this was ok. But if in the future there are many tiny DLC modules a modder would need to take into account, I would not mod them anymore. For example, I did a Civ4 mod to re-color leader faces for better fitting my naturally colored terrain mod. This required Civ4 detection code for 2 addons, ok. Iff for Civ5 such a task could require DLC detection code for each and every DLC Civ... thank you, no.

 

[GoGerbilGo!]

Being a modder, it already has been a complex task in the past to write code for detecting and handling addons correctly. But as there have been only very few official addons, this was ok. But if in the future there are many tiny DLC modules a modder would need to take into account, I would not mod them anymore. For example, I did a Civ4 mod to re-color leader faces for better fitting my naturally colored terrain mod. This required Civ4 detection code for 2 addons, ok. Iff for Civ5 such a task could require DLC detection code for each and every DLC Civ... thank you, no.

Basically, it seems to me that what the modders complaining here really want to do is to use DLC material in their mods, even though the simple solution is simply to refrain. If you simply ignore DLC material, or prevent their use in your mod by deliberately choosing which civs may be playable, then I don't see that there would be any more difficulty than usual in modding. I just do not believe that Babylon will see a whole lot of buyers and I do not think that it is worth the hassle to include DLC material in mods.

But I am curious for the sake of curiosity to know how Firaxis will handle legitimate copy recognition software. If it turns out that I am wrong and Firaxis has indeed made modding too great a hassle, my guess is that they will reverse their decision. This is because the Civ franchise cannot last without user generated content. Their vanilla games tend not to be interesting enough to stand for long without community support.

 

[The_J]

Am I missing something here, but how is a DLC different from an expansion when it comes to copyright concerns and integrating material from them into modifications? Just curious.

There is no legal difference.
But another one: After the BtS release, no one asked if someone could rip all the civs out and upload it. Because everyone just bought BtS. Because this was one big step, which most in the community would do.

With some tiny civs...yeah...how many will purchase them? How many not? It's not a big step. Not the whole community will follow. This is the only reason why this debatte here can happen.

And there is also a time/work difference. Could you rip out one civ <-> could you rip out 8 civs + X game elements. No one would think about the last option. Many think about the first.
But both is in the same way illegal.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Civ4 was IMHO kind of bloated in its feature list. By removing a couple of them and reinventing some old ones maybe we can get a game that appeals to more people and at the same time recaptures some of that old Civ feel.

Well -- a little bloated, especially the stuff in BtS I never seem to use. But my biggest gripe is that the coding is crap. It is not multiprocessor-aware, uses memory like popcorn and then leaks it all over like an incontinent drunk, and crashes. Otherwise, it would probably have great staying power. I don't need a new version of Civ, but I'd like it just for better programming.

I do agree that Firaxis is pulling a Microsoft here with all the different versions. Fortunately, I probably won't be having to figure it all out: Since I'm still skeptical about quite a few things with Civ V -- I'm still not convinced they haven't turned the whole thing into another war simulator -- I'll probably just sit back, wait for the reviews to come in, and then buy the Mac version.

 

[YoHo]

I'm not sure I completely understand the problem here. I'm a big player of Civ and of Halo3. Halo 3 has tons of DLC, Halo 3 also has no problem selling the game or the dlc. If I want to forge up a map from one of the expansions, then all the other players need the expansion. This has not bee a problem.

as time goes on, the cost of the DLC drops.

DLC is just the way modern games are releasing. My guess is that it will be a simple choice to make mods based on the core game or on a set of DLC. It isn't up to the modder to really worry about that.

Personally, I like the DLC concept. It has worked really well for me. I suspect that online play will be managed the same way MS does with Halo3. Some types use only the base game, some types require the DLC.

This argument just feels like a bunch of grumpy old men being forced to deal with the dang punk kids.

 

[Commander Bello]

DLC is just the way modern games are releasing.

And in which way does this make things better?

The oil spillage in the Gulf is "modern times", too. Have we now to be thankful for it?

 

[YoHo]

Well, Oil spills aren't THAT new.

It doesn't make it better per se', but it does make it a common and vetted method for distributing content post release. DLC works in the real world is my point. Its just a different way to get new content to people. There isn't any different problem with DLC that you didn't also have with add-ons.
If you make a scenario designed to work with Beyond the Sword. It won't work if all I have is Warlords. DLC is the same way, but the DLC might be smaller and cost less and there will likely be more of it to get. And, if it follows the typical MS model, the price of DLC will drop as its been in release for longer.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I understand your concern, but this is definitely not the case. A significant amount effort has gone in to making Civ V an awesome platform for modders, and there has been no effort to "gimp" the modding system.

Ok, I understand what you are saying. I believe you. However, let me play devil's advocate for just a moment. What will happen when an unscrupulous modder simply takes the content of a certain DLC, piece by piece, and makes a mod. Coincidentally, this mod is functionally identical to the DLC itself.

I'm about to puke because it sounds like I am jumping on the whiner bandwagon, but I do think this one concern does have a tiny bit of merit.

 

[AlpsStranger]

And in which way does this make things better?

The oil spillage in the Gulf is "modern times", too. Have we now to be thankful for it?

I've said this before but here I go again. If PC gamers "stand up" for ourselves we'll simply kill PC gaming. We can't go back to 1999, the fundamental reality is no longer there. I, and not a few game developers, once firmly believed PC gaming would be gone by 2005. In that light I think we're doing pretty damn good, don't you?

 

[EmpireOfCats]

We can't go back to 1999, the fundamental reality is no longer there. I, and not a few game developers, once firmly believed PC gaming would be gone by 2005.

I would say you overestimated how much money people are willing to spend for games-capable hardware. In our family, the adults have computers, and we all use the Wii, because you can jump around with it. Would we buy an Xbox or another "serious" console? No way. Too expensive. If the game doesn't run on the PC (well, in this case, Macs, one of which is dual boot), we're not going to buy it.

Don't believe Microsoft's marketing. PC games may never have the market share they once did, but they are here to stay, simply because there is a lot of money to be made with the "normal" people who have "normal" budgets for this sort of stuff.

 

[LaRate]

The only technical difference between DLC and Add-Ons is granularity. With Civ IV, there were two major addons, released in considerable time interval. For most of the community, both Warlords and BTS simply were updates you had to pay for. Mods could relate to Vanilla, Warlords or BTS, where the latter would generally include the former - quite clear.

Now DLC could come in all sorts of sizes. While an extra Civ might not really add to the complexity, new gameplay elements (like those in the Civ4 addons) most certainly could. In this case modders might have to consider all kinds of possible combinations of available DLC installed. Furthermore, the release intervals of DLC is assumed to be considerably shorter, and noone knows what compatibility issues a new DLC might imply on an existing Mod.

Of course all of this is pure speculation, but I can understand why it makes people nervous.

 

[Provost Martin]

Thanks for the responses to my question.

I'm still pretty confident that we will see expansions with released DLCs included. Therefor I will probably wait and see; ie. buy the vanilla game and ignore all other available content for a while. And then buy bigger packages once they're made available. Pretty the way it's worked before. However I do like that I have options to do whatever I like. Say I like this civ, but not that one. Or don't need this or that, then I don't have to, I can just pick and chose. It's like a big smorgasbord. So I guess that's were I differ from some of you. But I can definitely understand why there are concerns about modding. Since we don't how that will play out yet, I'll withhold my judgment.

 

[The_J]

What will happen when an unscrupulous modder simply takes the content of a certain DLC, piece by piece, and makes a mod. Coincidentally, this mod is functionally identical to the DLC itself.

Easy answer: You will not be able to distribute it.
Not via the official ways, and certainly also not via CFC.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Commander Bello, I think everyone understands your concern. Ultimately, I think DLC simply means that modders must adopt the practice of ignoring DLC material. All mods must use regular game material or user generated ones. Official Babylon art must be ignored unless they become part of an expansion pack or become available for free. There is no reason why anyone must use DLC art.

I find your position on this intriguing because I think actually modders need to do almost the exact opposite. Modders cannot simply ignore DLC. Suppose for example all the game-files needed to turn a DLC civ are included with the game but are "locked" by something like the exe. (At the moment I think this situation - having the content for DLC on everyone's machine - is the most likely scenario.) Modders who are not well versed in the details of what is DLC and what is not would need to take care not to accidentally release some of what is official DLC in a mod of their own.
It may not work exactly that way of course, but my point is that modders will at the very least need to be aware of what they can touch and what they can't.


This is one of the reasons I'm disliking the whole DLC proposal. It's just likely to turn out to be unfriendly to modders. Modders who do use official DLC for their designs will be disappointed to know their audience is limited more than the civ5 audience because not everyone will buy the DLC. Especially if lots of DLC is released, it will become very likely that hardly anyone will have most of the DLC and so modders have to make tough decisions about what to use. No doubt 2K and Valve will refuse to give us any idea of how much DLC is actually utilised so even modders will have no real idea what percentage of their audience are using a particular DLC.

I've said this before but here I go again. If PC gamers "stand up" for ourselves we'll simply kill PC gaming. We can't go back to 1999, the fundamental reality is no longer there. I, and not a few game developers, once firmly believed PC gaming would be gone by 2005. In that light I think we're doing pretty damn good, don't you?

I agree with EmpireOfCats on this one. Don't believe the the "PC games are dying" propoganda. It's true their market share is decreasing because of consoles (and number of consoles is increasing too) but that is only measured as a proportion and not an absolute figure. The only way PC gaming would die is if manufacturers of gaming-grade hardware stop selling hardware to anyone but console-manufacturers (also a very unlikely scenario). Where there is demand there will always be a way. I'm no economist but I'm pretty sure it's something along the lines of free market we can thank for it.

In other words, you might lose some devs or publishers but there will always be someone else to fill the void who won't expect you to bend over.

 

[AlpsStranger]

If the industry can't survive without dlc, then let it die.

This is a fundamentally insane position. You are coming across like some kind of religious zealot. There is literally no case where no PC game industry is better than a PC game industry with undesirable feature X or Y. This is a knee-jerk, throw the baby out with the bathwater response.

You *do not* actually mean what you say here and will never convince me that you do.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Easy answer: You will not be able to distribute it.
Not via the official ways, and certainly also not via CFC.

That's not what I was driving at. I was agreeing that modding may be "clamped" to some extent to prevent the scenario I described. There is no point in charging for totally undefended DLC.

Many people who are above piracy are not above DLC piracy I've found.

For the record, I am no fan of DLC either. I am simply not sure the PC industry of the present and future will simply forgo a revenue source to please the hard-line ideology of about 5% of the total market.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I said it in probably a different thread, but I would happily copy any non-copyrighted data from an official DLC civ to make it into an inferior mod i.e. without any 3d graphics. Whether or not I'd even want to do this will depend on many things about the game I have no knowledge about though. Firaxis and 2K like to keep us in the dark til release. The North Americans are the beta testers this time, by the way. (It was Aussies for BtS)

EDIT... The mod would basically cater to the "completists who don't care about graphics and don't buy DLC" group.

 

[Aramel]

And in which way does this make things better?

The oil spillage in the Gulf is "modern times", too. Have we now to be thankful for it?

It is better because it gives the customer more choices. If I'm interested in a DLC pack with Khmer and the Byzantine Empire, I can buy it. If I'm not, I don't have to buy those Civs just to get Sumeria and the Dutch. So I have more options.

But no you are right, this is exactly like the gulf oil spill. How did I not see it before. Thank goodness we have you around to point out these things.