Jake

Idle Thumbs 208: Buds are Out, Keys are In

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After the break when you guys are talking about what to do with a lots of ballons did remind me of this classic article from Cracked: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-50-creepiest-pieces-romance-advice-ever-published/

 

 

Jake joked about a Skyrim mod pyramid scheme, but that sort of actually happened.  Or it would have if the paid mods thing continued.  There are a lot of mods that apparently require a mod called SkyUI to function properly, and the creator of SkyUI said that his mod was going to become a paid only mod.  This of course angered a lot of people.  At least that's my understanding of the situation, I've never played an Elder Scrolls game.

 

In general I think the paid mods idea could work.  I'm with Jake in that I like the idea of there being a way for mod creators to earn.  I just think that Valve picked a bad starting point.  Trying to interrupt an existing mod scene like this is pretty much only going to be met with contempt.  They need to start with a new game and show that it can work from the start instead of trying to tack it on to something that already exists after the fact.  Also they need to be way clearer about how its actually going to work.  I saw a LOT of false information and assumptions being thrown at Gabe in his AMA.

 

One thing, SkiUI creator was retired from modding way before this and it´s mod was in version 4.2 (or more), what happend is that he planned to return and create a new version of SkiUI (5.0) which would be paid. Anyway, yeah, there is certain mods which are essential to others, like FNIS for poses, SKSE for more complex mods, there is another one which expand the menu and so on. That could have caused a lot of problems, but far as I know, none of this authors said anything about turning in paid mods and some said they would kept them free during the whole thing.

 

Maybe they  thought that trying that with a already large modding community it could work better, because a in newer one, it might lack enough modders or it could scare them away. But as you said, it worked against it. I think even with a better presentation/share it would not prevent or even predict (in size) the backslash.

 

Which still bring me to The Sims, I think there mods could be sold, don´t know if offical or not, but since most mod there (from memory) are individual assets and not so much overhauls or linked, in theory a paid system could work (or not), since it wouldn´t run in the some same issues like Skyrim.

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I really enjoyed the Thumbs' discussion of mods in the first half of the podcast, but it also felt really clear to me that they were speaking as indie developers used to working in small and close-knit teams, close to the ideal of an auteur or a collective. I don't have that much experience with making mods, but what experience I do have, working in double-digit teams of complete strangers over the internet to release total-conversion mods similar to the Game of Thrones mod for Crusader Kings 2, wouldn't really work well with any kind of traditional payment scheme.

 

For most of 2005, I drifted in and out of the forum-based team for Rome: Total Realism, maybe the biggest mod for Rome: Total War until Europa Barbarorum was released and the RTR team refocused on scale and modularity instead of sheer detail. During my stint, we had twenty or thirty coders, artists, and testers total, plus a dozen or so independent modders who gave permission for their own work to be included in our mod. I worked under Driddle, testing his unit code for balance, but I didn't know his real name. In fact, I didn't know anyone's real name, nor did most of the other members of the team with whom I spoke regularly. This proved a problem because, twice during my short time with the team, the team leader (GaiusJulius, who was eventually forced out in favor of Caius Britannicus) absconded with some or all of the mod's files and no one knew what to do besides start over from scratch. The first time, it was because of a stupid argument that he wanted to win, so he just took his toys and left until the rest of the team begged for him to come back, but the second time, he used the trust people had placed in him as team leader to take down the mod's official site, blackmail some members of the team into quitting, and put up a broken version of the mod under the name of other members to discredit them for criticizing his behavior. It soon came to light that GaiusJulius was a lot younger than he had let on that he was and, despite his immense wealth of programming talent and historical knowledge, was simply not up to the task of leading a large, diverse, and multilingual team. As I alluded to above, he was replaced (by blunt acclamation) with someone who was, but the mod had already lost hundreds of hours of work and a lot of people had drifted out of the orbit of the team during the drama, myself eventually included.

 

I still think Rome: Total Realism 6.0 Gold is one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life, and I feel lucky to have played an extremely small part in bringing it into being, but I literally have no idea how such a mod could exist in a system of paid mod distribution that just deposited money into the account of whoever uploaded the mod. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I have so many questions about it that my mind cannot get to the point where I could even suggest a theory of how it would work. How would I, a part-time tester and consultant, be paid? Would I be expected to work for free and is that fair? How about independent modders who let their work be included in the mod, should they be compensated? What if they changed their minds later, if the mod to which they contributed turned out to be very successful? Could they pull the content that was theirs, maybe issue a DMCA, if they wanted to do that? Is it just going to be up to the team leader to disburse funds among the major figures on the team and hope that they let it trickle down? What's keeping the team leader from keeping all the money or doing a runner? What if the mod team is divided on the issue of price or on whether to charge at all? What's keeping a disgruntled or greedy member of the team from uploading an internal beta to the store in the hopes of tricking fans into paying? What happens when the original creator of a mod quits the team? Do they still own the mod, in the eyes of Valve? Can they demand that it be taken down and work be halted by whoever succeeds them on the team? What if they're forced out involuntarily, does Valve keep paying them the money or change to whoever's now on top? How is any of that decided? Are large mod teams going to have to incorporate to make this work? In short, could this team even function in a marketplace for paid mods, or would the politics of capitalism and the internet simply prevent them from existing, putting content on the Steam Workshop, and charging money for it?

 

All of the above are questions for which Valve at least will have hypothetical answers, I hope, before they try to implement optional pricing for mods again.

You should write in to reader mail. Jake's first game development experience was doing exactly the kind of distributed mod development you describe (but for Quake 3). Also for what it's worth none of us were suggesting that all mods MUST be paid. I made sure to note that I strongly believe many would continue not to be. The concerns you raise are real, but they have existed in other forms of distributed online creation for a long time. That doesn't mean they're solved in a perfect way, just that they're an inevitable part of the world we live in.

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Totally agree with Chris wrt GTAV.  I soldiered on for a few more hours then he did, but I couldn't find anything worthwhile beyond the scope and production values.  I was really disappointed too because I just got back from a Disneyland-Santa Monica-LA-San Diego vacation and wanted to enjoy their in-game renderings, but man that gameplay and those characters...ewww.

 

Yeah, I played some more, since I had just moved from LA and missed it dearly, but damn if that game isn't a cesspool of this juvenile "hardcore/adult" sensibility and attempts at humor. It's incredibly offensive at every turn, and just terribly, terribly acted and written. I would love if the people who worked on the city of Los Santos were to mutiny against the people who write the game and create the characters. Chris' description in the podcast of the early part of the game where you "just click on policemen and they die" (I am paraphrasing) seems like so much of AAA game-making. Click on people and they die, click click click. There is so much fun that can be had in Los Santos, just playing around, and hardly any of it is in the click on people and they die vein, and none of it requires actually trying to play the primary, dumb-ass game. 

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You should write in to reader mail. Jake's first game development experience was doing exactly the kind of distributed mod development you describe (but for Quake 3). Also for what it's worth none of us were suggesting that all mods MUST be paid. I made sure to note that I strongly believe many would continue not to be. The concerns you raise are real, but they have existed in other forms of distributed online creation for a long time. That doesn't mean they're solved in a perfect way, just that they're an inevitable part of the world we live in.

 

Oh, I know that no one has to charge for their mods, but if any mod deserves to have a price attached to it, it's the incredible work done in a complete and functional total-conversion mod, which makes it a bit unfortunate that they're often made by teams that tend to be large and fractious. If the questions I put out there have been answered in any capacity, I'd love to heard those answers, since it's been nearly a decade since I was active in any kind of mod development, so I guess I'll cut my post down and send it in.

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Of all the weird tangents in Idle Thumbs I never thought I'd hear a thorough Doug reference. Now the theme is playing in my head.

 

Doug is fascinating as the logical endpoint of the nineties-era Burger King Kids Club approach to diversity in cartoons, where every cast member is distinctly different and their ethnicities are never directly addressed, but the protagonist is still very unambiguously a caucasian male.

 

 

I think that what I love about this podcast is perfectly encompassed by Danielle talking about shitty police procedurals as a segue and nobody considering that it would be a segue to HOT NEW RELEASE Battlefield Hardline.

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Thanks for the mention, Wizard Jam was a great experience! I was playing Mega Man 5 today and met some kind of prototype version of that tomato robot, this one just throws raw tomatoes at you.

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That Wizard Jam song needs to be on the Itch.io page or in the jam forum or something and made into the official Wizard Jam Theme Song.

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I feel like the Premium Module system Bioware did for Neverwinter Nights was a good example of how to do paid modding. Or at least, it was far, far closer than Valve's abortive attempt with Skyrim. Real, substantive content for a modular game at pretty fair prices (though I have no idea what the revenue split was) with careful curation by the developer working in tandem with a selected group or groups of modders, and with the new assets folded into free patches for the game so free mods could play with them too. It did end kind of unceremoniously and there's a reputedly excellent mod (Darkness over Daggerford) that was going to be a Premium Module before Bioware shut the program down, so I don't know that it was drama free, but I don't know enough details to say what happened.

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Chris and everyone in here who didn't like GTA V, you are all correct. Except the game is GREAT! You just need to not play the single player at all and play it online. It still has trash misogyny and South Park style "satire" but the way they handle the multiplayer is brilliant. It's essentially a little GTA MMO that you can populate with your buddies. I haven't gotten to the heists yet but I've had loads of emergent gameplay stories just playing around in free roam and doing co-op missions with some friends.

 

My friends and I were doing a mission that required us to steal a package of drugs from a gang, drop it off at our connect's place, then roll through the gang's territory and take out their vehicles. I drove my car next to a building near the pickup site and my friend jumped on my car and up onto the roof to take out bad guys while my other friend ran it grabbed the goods, and drove away in his own car. I was idling the whole time waiting for my rooftop friend to get back so we could drive behind the drug runner friend and provide cover fire. it all goes fine and we're at the part where we need to take out the rival gang's vehicles. Two of us are running from rooftop to rooftop shooting gas cans next to the parked cars (video games!) while the other runs in the alleys picking off gang members. all of a sudden we are just swarmed by enemies. One friend gets killed and we are out of lives so they just have to watch as we try to finish the job. Then the gang leader tries to run away and we have to catch him. The two of us left run to our cars, but my remaining friend get's picked off before he can drive out of the block, so both of them are just watching me now. I follow this guy in his car and he shakes me by taking a hard right into a canal. I double back and chase him through the dried up canal like that scene in Terminator 2. We reach a wall and i slam into his car. He shoots me and starts to run, so I get out of my car and chase him down and manage to pick him off before I'm wasted myself. 

 

It's FANTASTIC.

 

You can make your own character even! I'm playing a rad lady! 

 

But yeah, everything in the single player is terrible. Don't play the single player, it's really awful.

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http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/975uq6/prince-of-persia-on-nbc-s-life

 

I really enjoyed that show, but goddamn that scene was painfully bad. Worse than the Big Bang Theory in terms of nerd hate and video game stupidity. If it's "a hard drive with games on it" why didn't they show the techie take out the HD, access it with his desktop in two seconds, done. Even with some stupid made up GUI it's better than faking the video game stuff.

Also the object of the game is not to rescue Princess Farrah! She shows up about midway through and you solve areas of the game with her, much like Sands of Time. Naturally she does get captured by the last boss, but still.

 

Also why did they never rewind?! They get pretty tense for a game that is really not that difficult.

 

Gah I can't stop watching this. The lady that plays at the end is pressing the button a million times while walking across a beam. Forget that there is no mention of levels in there. And then why is Windows hidden in Xbox also only accessed through Prince of Persia? I'm just yelling at the obvious. Christ.

 

Also they are using glowing Papyrus font on top of everything in the game. That is not the font used in the game and it looks god awful.

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If glowing Papyrus is good enough for James Cameron, it's good enough for NBC's Life!

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Glowing James Cameron...

 

Also I looked up more about this figuring it was some kind of ad Ubisoft paid for to get people to buy Two Thrones. However I am not sure that is the case. Two Thrones came out end of 2005 for the original Xbox and other consoles. This episode of Life premiered near the end of 2007. It had to have been in production at most the beginning of 2007. If Ubisoft had wanted to advertise Two Thrones through a bad TV show, they would have been nearly two years late, considering the 360 was already out by then anyway. The HD version of Two Thrones wouldn't even be out until a few years later. Someone on staff specifically picked this game so they must have had knowledge of how it played, so why show it this way?

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With all that talk about economists and TF2 buds and keys and stuff I'm surprised nobody brought up famous economist John Maynard Keys:

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With all that talk about economists and TF2 buds and keys and stuff I'm surprised nobody brought up famous economist John Maynard Keys:

UIrAcrb.jpg

 

Yeah, I was waiting for someone to drop "Keysnian economics." It was right there.

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Oh my god PC Gamer Jake is my favourite thing in a long time.

 

I was seriously crying at my desk at work. Idle Thumbs has great talks about video games but I mostly stay for the ridiculous whimsy.

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Regarding that Blue Bloods exposlosion and AYKB, here's my thread of Things I am Going To Start Doing To Make Films/TV Retroactively More Realistic.

 

Re. the Two Thrones sequence, I actually don't think it's that bad. Ignoring the "But Two Thrones isn't like that really!" (because really, who cares? Guns and cars and physics work differently in tv too) and ambiguous continuity error complaints, what are the problems with it? Describing consoles as a hard drive with games on it - she's obviously simplifying for someone who is evidently a tech idiot, to convey to him quickly that yeah they can have files hidden on them and shit. The awful nerd stereotype guy - this gets subverted because it turns out that Ordinary Woman is a far better gamer than him and all his nerd-honour posturing doesn't mean shit. The air-playing - okay, this is hilariously bad. The villain somehow hacking his shit into Two Thrones - this makes no sense and is also pretty terrible (unless I missed an explanation of this where either it's just on this one disc and he has access to the source code and whatever else, or he works at Ubisoft).

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It seems to me that the smartest thing to do with the paid mod stuff would be to release it with a brand new game when you aren't undermining an already present community. If it were advertised ahead of time that the next Elder Scrolls game (if there even are anymore) would have paid mods, people could organize around that fact and it could be really cool.

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For a time, Blizzard was floating the idea of having paid mods in the StarCraft 2 arcade. But given how poorly the arcade was initially received, they went completely the other way and made everything in the arcade free-to-play (no longer requiring a purchase of SC2 to play). The arcade scene has stagnated however, since nothing really interesting is being made for it. The engine is a little too unwieldy for things like third-person shooters, though that hasn't stopped people from making a bunch. Recently all of the WarCraft 3 assets were added to map editor, so WC3 mods have started cropping up. Heroes of the Storm was initially supposed to be an in-house developed mod for SC2 (possibly a paid mod), but Blizzard decided to release that as a stand-alone game with the same free-to-play model as League of Legends. 

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Thinking more about that episode of Life, the killer/drug dealer has to get to the chariot section in Prince of Persia to access his drug dealing spreadsheet. That's at least two hours of play time if you speed run. Seems incredibly impractical.

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