Gone are the days of free mods

[DVad3r]

Something I have noticed for a long time now is that gone are the days of free mods and add-on's for games. I remember back in the day playing quake 2/3, Half Life, etc, and the shitload of free mods available to the games in the form of a simple download. It really made games fun and encouraged people to get creative, with the ability to design their own games.

Now mods are being sold, STEAM being a gigantic culprit. I just came across this also: http://www.firingsquad.com/new...cle.asp?searchid=21239 which charges a crazy price for something that would of been free some years back.

So why the absence of mods these days? Money making or another reason?

 

[GullyFoyle]

Yes, it's part of many companies business plans to create one or more add-ons or expansion packs for every game they make, and to charge for them.
Sometimes, game companies still release some free content (maps, etc) for their games.

There are also many many mods made by private groups that are free.

I don't think this has changed at all.

There are many free mods for Half Life that are available from Steam, free of charge.

 

[SunnyD]

It started with Counterstrike. Blame Valve.

 

[pontifex]

i see plenty of free mods. i think the problem (if there is one) is fewer devs are giving out the tools to mod their games.

 

[Chriscross3234]

It's understandable that a dev would charge for something that they created extra, such as a mod, versus something free, like a patch. Pontifex hit a good point; games with toolkits will almost always have some type of modding community with player made mods. Civ, Total War series, Oblivion, Fallout, the list goes on.

 

[CP5670]

There are plenty of mods still being made. I just got some for Fallout 3 a few days ago, which improve the game considerably.

You have a point with full-blown mission packs though. The problem with these is that it takes a lot more effort to make a good one nowadays, since games have gotten much more advanced in terms of graphics, level design and so on. At one point, there used to be many professional-quality fanmade campaigns that matched or surpassed the commercial games they were based on, but I rarely see that anymore.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Game companies discovered gamers were willing to pay for horse armor and new maps in video games.

Fewer companies will release toolkits out of fear that player made mods will compete with their non-free offerings in the form of DLC.

Some dangle the carrot in front of your face to prevent you from trying player made content (see CoD 4 player-made custom maps (you cannot have your stats from those applied to your account) and people that play for rewards and stats instead of fun).

The only thing slowing this trend down is publisher fear of distribution methods that are not in the form of CDs / DvDs.

 

[Fox5]

There are less and less total conversion mods for whatever reason. Mods that do exist tend to be small tweaks on the existing game, and few are very adventurous anymore. Halflife, UT2k3/UT2k4, and Starcraft had the best modding communities from what I remember, and could completely change the game and add whole new campaigns.

 

[coloumb]

It's slightly more time intensive and difficult to create mods for today's games. Back in the quake1/2 days - you could easily build a level in about a week or 2.

 

[HannibalX]

Just look at Counter-Strike. You know there are still people who buy the original and have no idea you can download it for free.

 

[Dkcode]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
It started with Counterstrike. Blame Valve.

If you owned a copy of Half Life, you could download it for free. Even when Valve started charging for it. Same went for TFC and DoD.

There has always been add ons professionally created for the Flight Sim series, which cost money to buy. There is nothing stopping anyone from creating and distributing add ons and mods for free. So i see no reason to call doomsday here.

Half Life would not have had the success it had if it was not for is modding community, and Valve know this. It would be very short sighted of the developer not to release modding tools for their engine. After all, people do buy the original games so they can play a specific mod. Red Orchestra for UT2003/4 is a good example.

 

[PingSpike]

I bought UT2K4 for Killing Floor. I only played the actual game like twice.

I'm not really seeing what the OP is seeing. There are tons of mods in development for games that have tools, just like in the old days. And most of them are never going to be released or hell even become playable, just like the old days. There is some truth to the fact that mods are now more complicated to make but I've still seen a lot of stuff more polished and complicated then what used to get released back in the duke3d and quake days.

Yes, developers are releasing crappy mods for a dollar or so. This can sort of fly for single player games, but in a multiplayer game is just busts up the community into tiny pieces and kills the whole thing. Frankly, I don't really care to much. I actually don't have a problem with paying money for a mod if its a good mod. A lot of mods are better then the game they came with.

 

[Ultralight]

The Neverwinter Nights games have a huge modding community for both 1 and 2 and Bioware (now part of EA *shudder*) continues to sell add-ons to #2. NWN1 is at least 6 years old and still sells. I believe major reason is due to the very viable and creative modding community with so many good free offerings.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Ultralight
The Neverwinter Nights games have a huge modding community for both 1 and 2 and Bioware (now part of EA *shudder*) continues to sell add-ons to #2. NWN1 is at least 6 years old and still sells. I believe major reason is due to the very viable and creative modding community with so many good free offerings.

The NWN games were designed from the ground up to be user moddable and community friendly. It was part of their base strategy.

I haven't seen other touch on this aspect yet. ESRB ratings. Say a developer/publisher releases a game that the ESRB gives a Teen rating. Then, some enterprising community members begin making adult content, nudity and undergarment mods, mature quest lines, profanity, etc. What happens? In some cases in the past, the ESRB has re-rated the game to a higher rating, Teen > Mature, or Mature > Adults Only. Drawing an Adults Only rating is virtually a death sentence for a game, as most B&M stores won't carry it. There's always online distribution, but, for the time being, that doesn't generate the same sales figures as Walmart.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The professionally-created mission packs for Wolfenstein 3D cost money (Spear of Destiny).

Company-created single-player content has almost always cost extra. Nothing new here.

It's usually only been amateurs working on nights and weekends that have given away their work, though 99% of those projects never make it out of beta.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
The professionally-created mission packs for Wolfenstein 3D cost money (Spear of Destiny).

Company-created single-player content has almost always cost extra. Nothing new here.

It's usually only been amateurs working on nights and weekends that have given away their work, though 99% of those projects never make it out of beta.

 

[Modelworks]

The free mods are not gone.
What is getting harder to do is form a team to make mods. It is very hard to get a group of people together to work on graphics, sound, scripting, level design , story, that all are serious enough to follow through to the end and do it for free.
I started doing mods/levels with doom 1. Then moved to duke nukem 3d, quake, unreal, NWN, source, OGRE. The level of knowledge you need now is way more than what it was before. When you start talking to the average gamer about things like portals, occlusion , BSP, lightmaps and entities, Lua, Python, Collada, most people don't want to learn all that to be part of a mod. So its up to the few people that remain to try to put together something workable. I can't tell you how many projects that have started and failed simply because it took too much time to do everything and people lost interest.

 

[CP5670]

Exactly. It took much less work to do these things 10 years ago than it does today. I used to spend a lot of time making maps and mods with late 90s games but haven't done anything with games newer than 2002 or so, after the engines started becoming increasingly complex and hard to master.

I remember Descent 2 and Unreal/UT had very active singleplayer mapping communities who produced numerous campaigns rivalling the main games, but I haven't seen anything like that with modern games. Interestingly though, we do still get excellent multiplayer maps in some games. The UT3 mod community has made many maps that are as good as the official ones, despite the low online activity of that game.

 

[skace]

What Valve does is completely different than what any other company is doing. They aren't trying to get you to pay for booster packs or other bullshit. Instead, they are investing in very high profile modding teams in hopes that a profit will be turned from them. So yes, while these mods are sold, they are often very high quality for what you get. You think anything even close to L4D's quality would have been made for free?

As a gamer - trying to get everything for free - this might look like a bad thing. However to the people in the modding community, busting their ass for absolutely nothing this is a big change. It gives them that intermediary step between hobby and job. Let's them get recognition and a foot in the door at a great company. Valve is very smart, instead of shopping the market for employees, it's cherry picking the best right out of the modding community. This isn't a surprise though, because this is how Valve got started - if you were around back in the Quake Command days you'd have a better idea. 2 of the best modders in Quake ran a website called Quake Command dedicated to all their mods. They were hired into Valve to work on a new game - Half Life 1.

 

[Regs]

busting their ass for absolutely nothing this is a big change. It gives them that intermediary step between hobby and job.

I always thought this too. The more the better in the long run since it seems the game design talent well is drying up.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Regs

busting their ass for absolutely nothing this is a big change. It gives them that intermediary step between hobby and job.

I always thought this too. The more the better in the long run since it seems the game design talent well is drying up.

I wouldn't say talent is drying up, its just that the people that are getting paid to do it have already shown what they can do . Since they made one good title , publishers think they will do it again and again. Publishers would rather stick to what made them money before versus take a chance on a new idea.

There is still lots of talent out there. The indie game community is full of great game ideas. The graphics and sound may not be up to the retail standards but the concepts are there and the games are fun.

A few sites:
http://www.indiegames.com/
http://www.gametunnel.com/news.php
http://www.indiegameshowcase.com/index.php?file=play

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: Regs

busting their ass for absolutely nothing this is a big change. It gives them that intermediary step between hobby and job.

I always thought this too. The more the better in the long run since it seems the game design talent well is drying up.

I wouldn't say talent is drying up, its just that the people that are getting paid to do it have already shown what they can do . Since they made one good title , publishers think they will do it again and again. Publishers would rather stick to what made them money before versus take a chance on a new idea.

There is still lots of talent out there. The indie game community is full of great game ideas. The graphics and sound may not be up to the retail standards but the concepts are there and the games are fun.

A few sites:
http://www.indiegames.com/
http://www.gametunnel.com/news.php
http://www.indiegameshowcase.com/index.php?file=play

That I don't agree with. Sure you have EA games who play the market for main stream gaming, though you have starter companies or even unsuccessful ones like Midway or mediocre ones like Activision. They can afford to take the risk. Anybody who has a good business model and idea, can get the proper backing and support from banks and publishers to make their design possible and profitable.

 

[ja1484]

The problem is that game content creation now takes a full team of people working full time, not a hobbyist working weekends for 3 months.

Sorry, it's more complex now, which means less free stuff.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: ja1484
The problem is that game content creation now takes a full team of people working full time, not a hobbyist working weekends for 3 months.

Sorry, it's more complex now, which means less free stuff.

Well hopefully those 17+ (in age) hobbiest decide to make a career out of it. I'm sure Carmack started some where.