Henroid

The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

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I don't have it to hand right now but I was looking at executive salaries the day before and Zynga-era Mattrick was on $6.5m.

To illustrate the point about stock options and alternative forms of payment, Strauss Zelnick of ZelnickMedia / Take-Two Interactive was on $17k.

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So some really huge, and bad, news has arrived.

 

2K Australia is now closed. via cnet

 

They were the last AAA video game company in Australia apparently. According to Kotaku, the cost of business operation in Australia is being blamed for the closure, which makes me wonder if that was the problem for all other game company / branch closures in the country. Which should be a freaking eye opener for the government there (who I hear is nutty in many ways).

 

The Marin office still exists and all but man. I wanna know what happens to all their properties.

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Team Bondi closed after LA Noire. There were rumours that many of them were now associated with George Miller's production company, but they were working on a game called Whore of the Orient, which I don't think anyone thought was a good idea.

 

Australia has a development culture more like France than the US. The idea of working 60 hour weeks is straight up bullshit, and that's what's expected of AAA. We also don't have any publishers with arms in Australia that aren't just distribution and marketing, so having a team based in North America is inherently more attractive because the publishers can go and visit.

 

This has been coming for a long time - in 2009 something like 80% of Australian developers lost their jobs, and the few holdouts were expected to fall eventually. Australian developers generally did outsourcing, but most Australian developers these days are independents. PAX Australia is a huge deal because many of these developers have the opportunity to build their audience, finally, in a way that they weren't able to before.

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Australia has a development culture more like France than the US. The idea of working 60 hour days is straight up bullshit, and that's what's expected of AAA.

 

That's a heck of a long day!

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's true though

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The amount of hours one works should not directly affect the cost of development in the sense that most people who continuously work more than 40 hours tend to have drastically lower actual productivity.

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The amount of hours one works should not directly affect the cost of development in the sense that most people who continuously work more than 40 hours tend to have drastically lower actual productivity.

I've heard/read in the past that even 40 hours is too much as far as optimal productivity goes!

 

No idea if it's true but I like to think it is 'cause I tend to work 40 hours a week and I always feel burnt out on Friday and there are definitely days (as in, days every week) where I'm like "this is too much get me out please".

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It's also relevant how hard you're pushed for those 40 hours and there's an emphasis put on the work to the detriment of the worker.

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Today Valve launched a new Curated Workshop thing for TES: Skyrim, allowing mod makers to put a pricetag on their work. People I know that are involved in the mod making community are outraged by this, calling others "sellouts," but from where I sit making mods is actually work and maybe it's not the end of the world?

 

What I want to know is the following:

- If I buy a mod, do I own it like any game regardless of updates? Or do I have to pay per update?

- Is Valve going to curbstomp anyone who tries to abuse selling the same mod multiple times over, especially via BS "v 1.0 for $2, but v 2.0 is separate and also $2"?

 

If the answers to those is "yes" then I'm fine with this concept. Work deserves compensation. And unless someone hires mod makers, the portfolio they're more or less putting together to show off their talent / ability doesn't mean shit.

 

Edit - Okay there is one piece of information about this that makes this bad news. So previously, mod files were basically zipped up folders / files in a single package. What this new system via Steam does is make the mod files .BSA files, which means mods are now "all or nothing." To translate further, if two mods affect the same thing like a texture, only one mod will work (or maybe neither). Whereas before, in the loose-set-of-files form, you can pick which to override the other.

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I am curious about that, because it could encourage and help modders in more ambitious and large (or complex) projects, while still give you options (modders still could upload where they want, giving it for free or not), which is great. Also from what I heard you can get refunds, which kills broken mods.

 

But overall, for the average player not much will change, many mods use (and need) Nexus and it´s manager (and other related tools) instead of steamworkshop, while many people will leave it for free, so no apocalipse in the horizon (but expect some drama).

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I am curious about that, because it could encourage and help modders in more ambitious and large (or complex) projects, while still give you options (modders still could upload where they want, giving it for free or not), which is great. Also from what I heard you can get refunds, which kills broken mods.

 

But overall, for the average player not much will change, many mods use (and need) Nexus and it´s manager (and other related tools) instead of steamworkshop, while many people will leave it for free, so no apocalipse in the horizon (but expect some drama).

Actually a lot of mod makers are taking down their mods from sites like Nexus, at most leaving behind broken legacy versions. Which is what has a lot of people crowing about "greed."

 

The refunds thing is news to me though. If that's the case then I can't see any problem with this.

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Apparently modders only get 25% of the sales. Hardly encouraging.

 

Seriously, that's gross.  I fully support modders getting paid, but the percentage should be higher than that, probably at least 40 percent. 

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Apparently modders only get 25% of the sales. Hardly encouraging.

Indeed. At the same time though, Valve is the one what is going to eat shit when a mod breaks the game, etc.

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Seriously, that's gross.  I fully support modders getting paid, but the percentage should be higher than that, probably at least 40 percent. 

Apparently modders only get 25% of the sales. Hardly encouraging.

 

Yeah, maybe I'm a cynic, but from the few large-scale mod projects on which I've worked, that seems like exactly enough money to heighten the recurrent drama and squabbles, but not enough money to actually smooth anything over or make it workable as a real project with full-time resources.

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Actually a lot of mod makers are taking down their mods from sites like Nexus, at most leaving behind broken legacy versions. Which is what has a lot of people crowing about "greed."

 

The refunds thing is news to me though. If that's the case then I can't see any problem with this.

 

Really? while I still play the game I lot and do use many mods I did not noticed anything really, but I don´t follow close the community (which I maybe keep doing for now until thing calm down). Wonder if could be because of that or because other things (like the extra space to upload, before this update, there was a limit in file size so larger mods had to be split in parts).

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Really? while I still play the game I lot and do use many mods I did not noticed anything really, but I don´t follow close the community (which I maybe keep doing for now until thing calm down). Wonder if could be because of that or because other things (like the extra space to upload, before this update, there was a limit in file size so larger mods had to be split in parts).

I have to admit, my source about this is really, really biased (to the extent that she's calling such modders "traitors" and such).

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I like the idea of modders being able to dedicate more time to making cool stuff so I think this is good.

 

That said I clicked through the valve article and looked at the skyrim mods and just saw a ton of swords/weapons selling for $1.75 each which to me is sooo stupid. Its like shitty aesthetic hat DLC, which I have never been interested in.

I hope the mod community doesn't devolve into a strange rat race to make weapons they can sell for way too much. I mean I just can't imagine paying the same amount of money as I would for a song in Itunes for a single weapon/armor item. 

 

I guess I like the idea and I support it but I wonder if the days of awesome free mods are ending which does make me sad. 

 

Also I wonder if the 24 return policy will be abused by people just playing a mod for a bit then returning them. Maybe its just me but I tend to get sick of mods pretty quick so It seems possible people might be able to get what they want in the 24 hours. 

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Indeed. At the same time though, Valve is the one what is going to eat shit when a mod breaks the game, etc.

 

I imagine a chunk of the money is going to the game owner as well, which is what traditionally makes it difficult to sell mods.

 

The main thing I'm concerned about is what happens when the game updates, breaks a mod you paid for, but there's no one left who cares enough to fix it.

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That said I clicked through the valve article and looked at the skyrim mods and just saw a ton of swords/weapons selling for $1.75 each which to me is sooo stupid. Its like shitty aesthetic hat DLC, which I have never been interested in.

I hope the mod community doesn't devolve into a strange rat race to make weapons they can sell for way too much. I mean I just can't imagine paying the same amount of money as I would for a song in Itunes for a single weapon/armor item. 

 

What if that weapon is the Master Sword/a Lightsaber/a Keyblade?

 

Alternatively: what if you could pay $10 for clean women?

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The main thing I'm concerned about is what happens when the game updates, breaks a mod you paid for, but there's no one left who cares enough to fix it.

 

I would look at paid mods as something that if I buy them, I know that they may eventually break.  It's kinda like buying an Early Access game or supporting a Kickstarter.  There is some inherent risk involved, but at least with a mod, you're getting exactly what is advertised for some amount of time. 

 

Functionally, this isn't any different than what Second Life was doing years ago, is it?  SL let people sell their creations for real money.  I'm sure there was some drama around that, but there is at least one model for paid mod/consumer content in a game. 

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From what I have been reading around:

 

- You can even apoint some service providers (such as blender and some player´s communities) to also get a share, if you want.

 

- You can´t give ratings on mods unless you bought them.

 

- Is quite vague about what to do on case o breaking or updates. Still you got a refund (under 24 hours, "The remaining time for an individual item is displayed on the item's Workshop page.") and abuse from it may lead to not begin able to ask for more refunds.

 

- Is upon to each developer/distribuitor to decided if they want allow mods to be sold or not.

 

- Stuff that is copyrighted isn´t allowed, but I am not sure how they will handle that, in the faq "then you may forfeit all earned revenue from the item, may be liable for damages and compensation, and may be banned from future participation in this Workshop or the Steam Community in general."

 

By the way, did The Sims also allow you to sell mods? or mods where begin sold by players? I just asking because I have a vague memory of my brother talking about that.

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What if that weapon is the Master Sword/a Lightsaber/a Keyblade?

Well it depends, personally I wouldn't be interested in paying for what is essentially a single model with high stat values. If it has more functions than that id be more interested. I suppose prices will level out as people figure the system out. 

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What if that weapon is the Master Sword/a Lightsaber/a Keyblade?

 

Alternatively: what if you could pay $10 for clean women?

Copyrighted content isn't allowed.

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