- Jan 29, 2005
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Ever thought of that?
I just discussed that recently with a friend, it was interesting to think of the possibilities. You'd be a developer (coder, artist making textures or creating models in whatever software, and so on) working on 'x' game at your office, using the toolset for the said game. The usual development goes by the days until the release of the game. Then, after the game's release let's say that one guy from the development team isn't personally satisfied with something in the game that he (or she) understands well because he just happened to work on that during the development (let's presume he made some of the game's character models). So he gets home and possibly brings with him (or perhaps pretty much has to) part of or the entire toolset/software combo used to develop the game in the first place, and modifies the game to the extent that is possible/understandable to do so for him. For instance, he creates new or better-looking models for his own pleasure, or even for "the community" and even pretends to be just a normal guy not part of the development team working on that during his spare time as a hobby, or as a passion.
I mean many developers (or many individuals part of development teams out there, you get the point) do claim to be or at least say that they "have been" gamers themselves at some point in their life... that they actually like to also play games when they get home and not just professionally work on them to get their paycheck to pay their bills.
Now I do wonder a few things about that though...
1) If any guy from a development team even has the desire to create "personal" modifications that won't ever leave their personal computers, then do they even have the actual right(s) to use the toolset at home? Even if the toolset was never actually released to the public? Or perhaps the right to download the software from home, or to even just buy it to ultimately use it? Or do they have to do everything in silence without getting caught?
2) If they do have the right to freely use the toolset(s), or to buy it/them, then do they have the right to actually publish their "personal modifications" to the public once the game has been released? Or do they have to pretend to be Mr. Joe everyone not to get caught if they do want to publish their work to the public?
3) Are there any known cases of perfectly legal modifications made by some guy(s) whom worked on the game as part of the original development team that made it to the public without any problems?
Also, it made me think of a few things unrelated to the legality of all that, which concerns the unwillingness or perhaps the "unavailability"/impossibility for developers to actually release proper toolset(s). What I mean by that is, for instance, the Mass Effect series. I do know that some people out there went to great lengths to temper "just a bit" with some textures here and there (for instance a mod which replaces the vanilla texture used for the face of Garrus, for a better, higher resolution version on the PC version). But those mods require other third-party programs to "trick" or "force" textures to be applied in the game in a way that is just either inefficient (might not work, might crash the game, etc.), or doesn't convince players around to do all the necessary steps just to make one or two textures work that they might completely forget about after a few days anyway. Also, because they are textures that they won't notice often enough during actual game-play, even though they looked cool on pictures in the preview of the mods.
Now let's say some guy at BioWare worked on the textures and models (let's presume both) for Mass Effect 2 (or the original one instead). They (at BioWare) had to use a toolset to create textures of course (and models, on a software like say the popular Maya 3D modeling software, just as an example). Now let's say that the guy in question happens to play Mass Effect as well, or just likes to modify games at home (the goal here isn't to pretend that there's actual interest to do it, but that there's a possibility to do it at home), so that guy could bring home the actual toolset and modify whatever he can modify (since he worked on that during the development). Now the thing is BioWare never released the actual toolset for us "the community" to modify the series, in fact many UE3-based games cannot be or can barely be modified (the only one I know that does have a good number of mods is UT3). But some guy working at BioWare could do it and just keep his own mods and never publish them, right? Even though BioWare wouldn't have released the toolset to the public in the first place, or whomever is responsible to give the permission(s) to release it, be it BioWare or not.
It's almost as if there were possibilities of an underground-like modding community between developers themselves, that the "generic gamer" out there will never be aware of, nor would ever be able to suspect its existence. I'm not saying it does exist. I'm just saying that there's perhaps the possibility that there's toolsets "for us", and that there's toolsets "for them" when "we" never see those specific toolsets released for the gamers mass. I was nonetheless thinking of the possibilities of modifying games as wildly as the TES series has been for years (as an example), others games that for the moment cannot be modified due to the lack of a publicly and legally released toolset from the developers, for the public modding community. And Mass Effect being just one example out of hundreds, literally.
Well anyway, I thought it was an interesting subject.
I just discussed that recently with a friend, it was interesting to think of the possibilities. You'd be a developer (coder, artist making textures or creating models in whatever software, and so on) working on 'x' game at your office, using the toolset for the said game. The usual development goes by the days until the release of the game. Then, after the game's release let's say that one guy from the development team isn't personally satisfied with something in the game that he (or she) understands well because he just happened to work on that during the development (let's presume he made some of the game's character models). So he gets home and possibly brings with him (or perhaps pretty much has to) part of or the entire toolset/software combo used to develop the game in the first place, and modifies the game to the extent that is possible/understandable to do so for him. For instance, he creates new or better-looking models for his own pleasure, or even for "the community" and even pretends to be just a normal guy not part of the development team working on that during his spare time as a hobby, or as a passion.
I mean many developers (or many individuals part of development teams out there, you get the point) do claim to be or at least say that they "have been" gamers themselves at some point in their life... that they actually like to also play games when they get home and not just professionally work on them to get their paycheck to pay their bills.
Now I do wonder a few things about that though...
1) If any guy from a development team even has the desire to create "personal" modifications that won't ever leave their personal computers, then do they even have the actual right(s) to use the toolset at home? Even if the toolset was never actually released to the public? Or perhaps the right to download the software from home, or to even just buy it to ultimately use it? Or do they have to do everything in silence without getting caught?
2) If they do have the right to freely use the toolset(s), or to buy it/them, then do they have the right to actually publish their "personal modifications" to the public once the game has been released? Or do they have to pretend to be Mr. Joe everyone not to get caught if they do want to publish their work to the public?
3) Are there any known cases of perfectly legal modifications made by some guy(s) whom worked on the game as part of the original development team that made it to the public without any problems?
Also, it made me think of a few things unrelated to the legality of all that, which concerns the unwillingness or perhaps the "unavailability"/impossibility for developers to actually release proper toolset(s). What I mean by that is, for instance, the Mass Effect series. I do know that some people out there went to great lengths to temper "just a bit" with some textures here and there (for instance a mod which replaces the vanilla texture used for the face of Garrus, for a better, higher resolution version on the PC version). But those mods require other third-party programs to "trick" or "force" textures to be applied in the game in a way that is just either inefficient (might not work, might crash the game, etc.), or doesn't convince players around to do all the necessary steps just to make one or two textures work that they might completely forget about after a few days anyway. Also, because they are textures that they won't notice often enough during actual game-play, even though they looked cool on pictures in the preview of the mods.
Now let's say some guy at BioWare worked on the textures and models (let's presume both) for Mass Effect 2 (or the original one instead). They (at BioWare) had to use a toolset to create textures of course (and models, on a software like say the popular Maya 3D modeling software, just as an example). Now let's say that the guy in question happens to play Mass Effect as well, or just likes to modify games at home (the goal here isn't to pretend that there's actual interest to do it, but that there's a possibility to do it at home), so that guy could bring home the actual toolset and modify whatever he can modify (since he worked on that during the development). Now the thing is BioWare never released the actual toolset for us "the community" to modify the series, in fact many UE3-based games cannot be or can barely be modified (the only one I know that does have a good number of mods is UT3). But some guy working at BioWare could do it and just keep his own mods and never publish them, right? Even though BioWare wouldn't have released the toolset to the public in the first place, or whomever is responsible to give the permission(s) to release it, be it BioWare or not.
It's almost as if there were possibilities of an underground-like modding community between developers themselves, that the "generic gamer" out there will never be aware of, nor would ever be able to suspect its existence. I'm not saying it does exist. I'm just saying that there's perhaps the possibility that there's toolsets "for us", and that there's toolsets "for them" when "we" never see those specific toolsets released for the gamers mass. I was nonetheless thinking of the possibilities of modifying games as wildly as the TES series has been for years (as an example), others games that for the moment cannot be modified due to the lack of a publicly and legally released toolset from the developers, for the public modding community. And Mass Effect being just one example out of hundreds, literally.
Well anyway, I thought it was an interesting subject.
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