Do Game Companies Dislike Custom Content (maps, mods, etc)?

[WhipperSnapper]

How do gaming companies feel about custom content--user-made maps and mods?

One of the reason why the original Unreal Tournament (1999) and UT 2004 are two of my favorite games is the fact that players can made custom content for them and many of the custom maps prove to be much better than the stock maps and some of the mods are excellent stand-alone game-types on their own. Quake III, another great game, also allowed for custom content as did Tribes.

Why is it that other big name games do not allow for custom content--Battlefield, Call of Duty, Crysis, etc? Is it just that they don't want to release a map editor with the game or that they're afraid of custom content?

Sins of a Solar Empire is an interesting case because players can make custom maps with the Galaxy Forge map designing tool but these custom maps (and various mods) will not auto-download for games online. Custom maps and mods can be played but they need to be downloaded offline and added to the game. In contrast, maps generated with the "Map Designer" will auto-download, so it looks like it was a design decision on Stardock's part.

Do the gaming companies just dislike the thought of custom content or at the least have a love-hate relationship with it?

 

[uli2000]

?

Counterstrike and TF2 not having custom content? You need to play more servers if all you are seeing are stock maps. My clan runs about 6 css servers and I dont think a single one has stock maps on it. On some of our servers almost half the maps are made by clan members. Ever go to fpsbanana and look at the thousands of custom maps uploaded there? And Valve gives you a copy of the SDK with any Valve game purchase so you can start making your own maps if you like.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: uli2000
?

Counterstrike and TF2 not having custom content? You need to play more servers if all you are seeing are stock maps. My clan runs about 6 css servers and I dont think a single one has stock maps on it. On some of our servers almost half the maps are made by clan members. Ever go to fpsbanana and look at the thousands of custom maps uploaded there? And Valve gives you a copy of the SDK with any Valve game purchase so you can start making your own maps if you like.

Yeah, exactly. CS and TF2 have oodles of custom content out there. Valve releases the SDK and even script editors to users; they are all about allowing custom content. Heck for TF2 Valve has even adopted some of the custom maps and released them as official maps later on.

Not sure about the other games you mentioned though.

KT

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: uli2000
?

Counterstrike and TF2 not having custom content? You need to play more servers if all you are seeing are stock maps. My clan runs about 6 css servers and I dont think a single one has stock maps on it. On some of our servers almost half the maps are made by clan members. Ever go to fpsbanana and look at the thousands of custom maps uploaded there? And Valve gives you a copy of the SDK with any Valve game purchase so you can start making your own maps if you like.

My mistake. I've never actually played Counterstrike or TF2 but was under the impression that you couldn't make custom maps for them. I take it back. (Maybe I should go get TF2 now.)

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
(Maybe I should go get TF2 now.)

DO IT!

KT

 

[FuryofFive]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

Originally posted by: uli2000
?

Counterstrike and TF2 not having custom content? You need to play more servers if all you are seeing are stock maps. My clan runs about 6 css servers and I dont think a single one has stock maps on it. On some of our servers almost half the maps are made by clan members. Ever go to fpsbanana and look at the thousands of custom maps uploaded there? And Valve gives you a copy of the SDK with any Valve game purchase so you can start making your own maps if you like.

My mistake. I've never actually played Counterstrike or TF2 but was under the impression that you couldn't make custom maps for them. I take it back. (Maybe I should go get TF2 now.)

yes get TF2 now.. also edit the Original post... to reflect that TF2 and CSS both can and will allow custom content

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally posted by: FuryofFiveyes get TF2 now.. also edit the Original post... to reflect that TF2 and CSS both can and will allow custom content

Editing done. I'm gonna pass on TF2 for now since I don't have any real desire to play it and am fully occupied with games my favorite games.

I do hope that the main issue can be addressed, though.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I think that in general, Game Companies value custom content. It helps them generate sales without adding to their costs.

Also, in addition to TF2 and CSS supporting massive amounts of custom content, the same is true for Battlefield.
Battlefield 1942 "Desert Combat" was hugely popular. (though there are others that were big too)
Battlefield 2 has "Point of Existence" which was really big last time I checked.

Now stuff like Crysis, I don't know about, because I've never played it, but there was a moderate amount of custom content for Far Cry ....

 

[KeithTalent]

Doesn't Crysis have a full sandbox editor for creating custom content? I actually own the game, but I never play it, so I'm not positive on that.

KT

 

[Dimmu]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent
Doesn't Crysis have a full sandbox editor for creating custom content? I actually own the game, but I never play it, so I'm not positive on that.

KT

Indeed it does, and it's a very good one at that. You can go between editing and playing/testing on the fly.

 

[CP5670]

Yes, Crysis has a great map editor and a pretty active mod community.

I agree with what you're saying, although you listed bad game examples. A lot of games these days have no room for expansion and once you're done with them, you have seen everything the game has to offer. This is especially common with console ported games. All of the games that I've spent the most time with over the years have been highly expandable and had thriving mod communities for years after the game came out.

 

[nerp]

Hehe. Zombie mod? World of Warcraft mod? gungame? Deathmatch? Custom skins? Textures? guns? Sounds? Models? Maps. Yep. That's CS:S.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper


Why is it that other big name games do not allow for custom content--Battlefield, Call of Duty, Crysis, etc?

Loads of custom content / custom maps exist for each of those series listed (disclaimer, I do not know about crysis) (on the PC). The only disadvantage is that in BF2 and CoD4, they do not allow for custom maps to contribute to ranks / levels / stats due to the obvious concern of people creating "level up" maps. If you do not care about levels / ranks and just want to play the game for fun, there are plenty of custom maps out there for BF2 and CoD4.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent

Originally posted by: uli2000
?

Counterstrike and TF2 not having custom content? You need to play more servers if all you are seeing are stock maps. My clan runs about 6 css servers and I dont think a single one has stock maps on it. On some of our servers almost half the maps are made by clan members. Ever go to fpsbanana and look at the thousands of custom maps uploaded there? And Valve gives you a copy of the SDK with any Valve game purchase so you can start making your own maps if you like.

Yeah, exactly. CS and TF2 have oodles of custom content out there. Valve releases the SDK and even script editors to users; they are all about allowing custom content. Heck for TF2 Valve has even adopted some of the custom maps and released them as official maps later on.

Not sure about the other games you mentioned though.

KT

I think the amusing thing is that the CS and TF series both STARTED as custom content (mods), so not allowing it would have been madness.

Battlefield had Desert Combat. The makers of which were bought by DICE.
The CS/TF teams were bought by Valve.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
Why is it that other big name games do not allow for custom content--Battlefield, Call of Duty, Crysis, etc? Is it just that they don't want to release a map editor with the game or that they're afraid of custom content?

They all allow custom content. They have map editors. If the map editor isn't with the game, it comes out soon afterwards. Those games have hundreds of custom maps.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Battlefield had Desert Combat. The makers of which were bought by DICE.

Who then downsized them...

 

[sswingle]

I remember the days when CS itself was a mod.

And what happened to Firearms. That was a good mod. And then of course you had Action HL and Action Quake 2.

 

[Canai]

They like the custom content if they can charge the consumer for it.

 

[EvilComputer92]

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
How do gaming companies feel about custom content--user-made maps and mods?

One of the reason why the original Unreal Tournament (1999) and UT 2004 are two of my favorite games is the fact that players can made custom content for them and many of the custom maps prove to be much better than the stock maps and some of the mods are excellent stand-alone game-types on their own. Quake III, another great game, also allowed for custom content as did Tribes.

Why is it that other big name games do not allow for custom content--Battlefield, Call of Duty, Crysis, etc? Is it just that they don't want to release a map editor with the game or that they're afraid of custom content?

Sins of a Solar Empire is an interesting case because players can make custom maps with the Galaxy Forge map designing tool but these custom maps (and various mods) will not auto-download for games online. Custom maps and mods can be played but they need to be downloaded offline and added to the game. In contrast, maps generated with the "Map Designer" will auto-download, so it looks like it was a design decision on Stardock's part.

Do the gaming companies just dislike the thought of custom content or at the least have a love-hate relationship with it?

You listed really bad examples. Battlefield has several total conversions such as Project Reality and First Strike. Crysis has a powerful editor and has many custom levels released for it in addition to many total conversions in the making. UT3 also has a active mod community even though there isn't much of a player community.

That was one of the reasons I switched from console to PC gaming recently, since it was quite ridiculous that it costs $10 for 3 Halo 3 maps while total conversions are being released on the PC for free.

 

[invidia]

I know Blizzard isn't one of those companies. In fact, they promote content/mod creation in most of their games.

 

[Bateluer]

LucasArts dislikes custom content. KOTOR1&2 were both based on derivatives of the NWN Aurora engine, which had an excellent toolset with it. LucasArts forbade Bioware to develop or release a toolset for KOTOR and they did the same for Obsidian with KOTOR2. Dang shame, both games would have sold even better than they did.

 

[duragezic]

Originally posted by: sswingle
I remember the days when CS itself was a mod.

And what happened to Firearms. That was a good mod. And then of course you had Action HL and Action Quake 2.

Oh hell yes! I didn't play much Action HL but AQ2 was great. I thought they were making Firearms 2 for Source. Then again a lot of cool mods just sort of went away or never got released.

I think the vast majority of popular games have a fair amount of mods, and for the most part that is probably encouraged by developers. Some games were basically carried by mod support.

Quake modding was huge. I think one reason for that was it was pretty simple. Who remembers qME, Quark, ... Worldcraft! Fairly simple models, textures, and levels could be okay for a mod back then. These days it is some pretty professional stuff, well for example Insurgency for Source, not shitty CS maps made by some dumbass. The tools are probably a lot better now, (haven't dabbled with modding in many years) and say with Valve you got excellent tools and guides, but the complexity of making a quality mod has increased like the games themselves.

 

[bullbert]

Originally posted by: EvilComputer92

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
...snip...

You listed really bad examples. Battlefield has several total conversions such as Project Reality and First Strike. Crysis has a powerful editor and has many custom levels released for it in addition to many total conversions in the making. UT3 also has a active mod community even though there isn't much of a player community.

That was one of the reasons I switched from console to PC gaming recently, since it was quite ridiculous that it costs $10 for 3 Halo 3 maps while total conversions are being released on the PC for free.

Add to that, the fact that 'new' MSRP prices are $10 higher for console verses PC. I won't even mention the opinion that the several game genres will never be gamepad friendly.

The only saving grace to the consoles in todays market, is that you can still legally and cheaply rent the un-mod-able games that only offer 10 hours of gameplay and no entertaining replayability. I still remember when renting PC games was legal, back in the floppy disk days (pre CD-ROM), and way before online reviews of any sort helped you sort out the 'keepers'. I saved a LOT of money by 'trying before not buying' and avoiding many buggy dogs, as well as the 'too short with no replayability' games. By only spending the $25-35 for new titles that are still worth playing via DosBox, I probably saved enough for a pretty car (although I blew all my savings on fast women).

However, I expect console DRMs will soon eliminate the used and rental console game marketplace, not long after the publishers flush out the DRM bugs which will finally kill the used PC market.

 

[Eeezee]

There is a dangerous trend on XBL, however, with companies releasing map packs for a fee. If that trend continues, companies may no longer smile upon 3rd party mods and maps.