Out of this whole thing, I just want to say something about this.
Some players’ reactions to the paywall have been unfavorable; they think that charging for mods is unethical and goes against the spirit of community modification
Everyone needs to make bread. Someone asking for money from their mod or map or whatever isn’t against any spirit. It’s just a human being asking to make bread. Now some don’t agree with the price tag and that’s fine.
But we all need to recognize humans asking for some dough for their hard work is in the spirit of existing. Some folk do it for free just for the feelings and we love ‘em for it. But those asking for some cash are no different.
This world is already full of dog eat dog. Let’s not hate on someone just trying to get through it. You don’t have to pay the ask, but let’s not go making enemies just cause we don’t agree on that number on the price tag.
I am not disagreeing with the premise that it’s fair for someone to be paid for their work. However, during the Skyrim paid mod controversy (on Steam), I learned that there a lot of situations where having paid mods did hurt the modding community and created ethical concerns.
Mods were being stolen and sold by people that were not the actual mod authors.
Mods were being sold that depended on larger, more complicated mods to function, but the payment was not shared with the larger mod.
Mods that had multiple contributors were being sold by an individual who was not sharing the money with the other contributors.
Players were concerned about being asked to pay for bug fix mods when the developer should be fixing their own game. This is of course, was not the modders fault and does not mean their bug fix mod wasn’t valuable or deserving of pay, but many felt the developer should pay for it, not users.
I would also point out that it wasn’t just greedy players that complained about paid mods - a lot of modders thought it went against the spirit of modding because of how it harmed collaboration in the community. Suddenly, they couldn’t trust that others would not steal their work or profit from it unfairly. And, that seems like a reasonable take to me, given all the abuses that modders claimed happened in the short time that paid modding was a thing for Skyrim on Steam.
It feels like the issue is that it was offering the convenience of payment to mods, but not really thinking about the necessary friction of assuring licenses/legality/etc. All of that CAN, of course, be an issue for cheap Unity games too. I remember back when Steam Greenlight started, they required each game to donate $100 to charity to even be considered, basically placing a bet of assurance that it wasn’t a stolen asset flip (I don’t know if they still do that).
I think you’re exactly right - it is the combination of money + little oversight that is the big problem. Warframe seems to do a good job with tennogen but they limit it to only cosmetic mods and seem to be pretty restrictive about what they accept into their store. I don’t see how you could have good oversight for a game with as many mods as something like Skyrim has.
It’s not “oversight”, but if a modder needs to create their own storefront and Paypal integration, and advertising through word of mouth and their own social contacts (as in this case it seems), then that’s going to offer a lot more scrutiny than a low-effort asset flipper presenting themselves anonymously through Steam’s given storefront.
I remember that discourse and am going to call shenanigans. None of that was new and a lot applies to actual software development
Mods have been plagiarized for as long as their were mods. It was pretty common to find out that mod A stole scripts or even assets from mod B and that mod C is just completely bundling in an outdated version of mod D. “Gamers” generally don’t care and would shit on any creator who wanted credit because they were “causing drama”. I personally know two different Oblivion modders who bailed on “the scene” after someone straight up stole their interiors for one of the high profile mods.
Utility and support libraries are a thing. Been a minute, but I want to say it was two years ago that almost the entire internet ran the risk of shutting down because someone pulled their color code package out of npm?
This has always been true and was a big part of the “drama” about the Make Something Unreal contest. But you also get people who try to become “rockstar developers” because they are the main creator. Kojima is notorious for this but a decent number of the folk who came out of the modding scene did the same shit.
THIS is somewhat unique to Bethesda’s development “model” but, like with DLC, people have a tendency to very much stretch the truth. There was a prototype of a character six years before the DLC about that character was released? Fucking developers are just cutting content so they can sell it to us later!
I am not saying any of these aren’t issues and I do think that adding monetized mods a decade in to the life cycle of a game was a mistake. But, like with most things, if The People are suddenly fixated on and caring about something they had outright mocked a few weeks prior… they still don’t care. They just see a way to be morally righteous while they get what they want.
You don’t go into modding for the money. It’s like making a non profit for the money. That’s why they’re getting backlash, they’re asking money where money’s not supposed to be involved.
God forbid we pay for a fucking cup of coffee because that person should want to work for free. This is the same bullshit as “work hard play hard” and “we are family here”. Might as well start telling modders it’s not about the pay, it’s the people and experience we’re paying you in. Rent what’s that?
You are all on a lemmy instance after 2 months of non stop bitching about non paid reddit moderators. Make up your damn mind.
Yes, again you don’t mod for the money. If you’re looking for that, you can create your own software. Other people in this thread made other good points, and this guy was trying to make a dlss mod subscription based, so fuck that guy. It’s literally better if the mod doesn’t exist in that case. Like I said with my analogy, it’s like trying to create a non-profit for the profit. There’s a million other avenues available to them if they want money. Especially because they are basing their work off of other’s work whom are not getting paid, yet they are?
Also idk what you’re talking about with the mod stuff but I do think it’s dumb internet janitors do work for free lol, and they do it for power. I don’t think they should be paid either.
Remember, the patreon sub is $5/MONTH. This means if you buy 1 month at $5 to download the mod, and the author “conveniently” comes out with an update one month later, you need to subscibe for another $5. So basically it’s a fucking subscription for a god damn dlss 3 mod. You know the author is milking this bullshit to keep subscibers and keep his income flowing. Marty mcfly does the same fucking dogshit with his stupid ass RTGI reshade shaders. Fuck that shit. Those people can go get fucked.
If you want to charge $5 or $10 for your time spent making the mod, fine, whatever. But if you are trying to make it a subscription model then I have ZERO sympathy for you.
Ultimately, the guy is being upfront with his pricing and what he’s asking for. What’s the reason to hate on him? Either it’s worth it at that price or it’s not.
So you’re invalidating the feeling of being upset when something that used to be free (modding games) is no longer free. Modding has always been a free hobby that was run by good-willed pc gamers. Now monetization is fragmenting and ruining the modding experience.
You’re also justifying paying a subsciption on top of a fucking $70 game. Do you rip up a $5 bill every time you take a shit? Try it out. You may enjoy it.
No, I’d just choose not to use it and move on. Or if I’m broke and really wanted it, sure, pirate it. Not act like an entitled brat and whine and moan and it
The history of monetization and mods is a pretty complex one.
Back in the UT/Quake 3 era, it was not at all uncommon to pay someone to make a skin or model for you. Those would be put online “for free”, but the Influencers of the era (clan folk and prolific forum posters) would get the warm and fuzzies from knowing there was a 420_JustBlazeIt_696969 skin for the nali warcow.
The first time I can really think of there being actual premium content you had to pay for was Neverwinter Nights and, to a lesser extent, The Sims. Yeah, there were the titties and fucking mods and the better ones were behind paywalls. But NWN in particular had a few cases where prolific modders might want some cash to give you access to their really cool campaigns. And Atari/Bioware took advantage of that for premium mods (although, I don’t think any community mods ever got an official release? I know AL3 or AL4 was supposed to be but ended up getting released for free when the program ended).
But that was arguably the beginning of the end for the golden age of mods. Because a year or two later we had Unreal Tournament 2003/4 and the “Make Something Unreal” contest. Which was a competition held by epic where the best mods in different categories would get huge cash prizes and games like Red Orchestra actually came out of this. And… it almost instantly killed the modding community. Sure we got Chaos UT2k4 and a few others, but basically every large modding effort was part of this contest rather than “for fun”.
And… the reality is that the contest and atari’s half ass efforts were pointless. Because the reality is that, by the early 2000s, modding was of comparable difficulty to making a game from scratch. And tools kept getting better (UT became The Unreal Engine, if that is not obvious) and between UE and Unity it was a lot easier for people to just make their dream games and sell them rather than make a mod for someone else’s game.
The Bethesda games side was a lot more gradual. There wasn’t a massive exodus of modders but… the number of quality quest mods for Morrowind versus Oblivion and Skyrim very much shows that the particularly talented folk were off doing other stuff. And a lot of the old hats realize this. A mod list for Morrowind might have been hundreds of quests. A mod list for Skyrim is bugfixes, a few UI/UX fixes, a graphics mod or two, and… that is it. Like, you still get the occasional magnum opus. But… yeah.
So you get this push back over the idea of modding “dying” even more. Because people aren’t going to put in hundreds of hours of work to give something away when they can do the same work and get paid for it. But… that also means they aren’t putting in 10 hours of work to make a hilariously bad map that simulates what it is like to have Comcast internet.
And then you just have the children who throw a temper tantrum the moment they are deprived of something they want.
Wtf are you talking about, Skyrim has dozens of amazing quest mods, and hundreds of quest mods overall.
It has major gameplay overhauls, it has custom skeletons for animation, it literally has mods that rework the animation system entirely. Modders added a survival system almost a full decade before Bethesda did.
There are mods that add new continents ffs, what’re you talking about? One of the quest mods was so good it literally got turned into its own game.
Edit: There are currently 60k mods for Skyrim Special Edition, and about 70k for the original Skyrim. Meanwhile Morrowind has 11k. Wtf are you talking about??
they are likely referring to The Forgotten City. Which is more than a bit more complicated than “one of the quest mods was so good it literally got turned into its own game” but is close enough to not matter. I enjoyed it but it also felt very reminiscent of the MSU mods that became full games (Helldorado? The shitty steampunk third person shooter with demons). Just with the added benefit of being artistic and a critical darling. If people weren’t huge on Outer Worlds for not feeling enough like Skyrim, they aren’t going to be a fan of The Forgotten City.
A friend referred to it as “an arthouse game” and… she isn’t wrong. The people who like it are going to LOVE it. And everyone else is going to say they like it so that people don’t judge them for not being a fan.
it is also a case of traditional modding dying out in favor of people just making their own games. But that person seemed confused and angry as is because I didn’t consult them before making a generalization so let’s cut them some slack.
The Forgotten City has “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam with many people praising it for its Bethesda-like systems, so I’m not sure what you mean. Maybe you felt it wasn’t enough like Skyrim and disliked it for that, but clearly you don’t speak for others.
Also, no other Skyrim quest mod, out of the near 2 thousand quest mods for the game, had a full game built off of them. So while that does happen sometimes (ie Dayz), it’s exceedingly rare and far from some sort of “tradition” as you put it. If anything that was far more common a decade or two ago than it is now. The original Star Wars Battlefront mod was quite a long time ago after all.
And no I’m not mad, I’m just confused as to how you could think Skyrim has only bug fixes, UI, and graphics mods, when in reality it has nearly 7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has and is the primary example of a thriving modding scene. Idk if you just spouted that out without knowing, or what.
Eh, that was close enough to a response rather than a frothing rant that I’ll respond.
Plenty of niche games have “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam. Because that is a function of the reviews by those who played it and cared enough to leave a response. Its one of the great things about Steam reviews. I don’t have to adjust a metacritic score because space dogfighting games always score 10-20 points lower than Call of Duty because I know the vast majority of people leaving feedback loved Freespace and are vaguely aware Tachyon existed.
But as far as the wider world? It was almost immediately forgotten. It got a lot of great reviews, but not a lot of play. Which is more or less the case for any arthouse movie. I know it can be hard to keep reading after you see something that MAKES YOU SO ANGRY but you should try. People have a tendency to elaborate on points.
As for Skyrim having “7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has”. First, that ignores how many quests and mods were lost to time. I genuinely can’t remember where we went for Morrowind mods (I want to say a mix of the official forums and back when UESP still had forums? It has literally been decades). But just looking at Nexus is only part of the picture. Hell, I think Nexus came out of Morrowind modding? Or did it only get big with Oblivion?
But also? of course it has more mods. The same way that basically every new game in a franchise SHOULD sell more than the previous one did. The audience for gaming has exploded over the decades.
The website makes me vomit, the citations are weak, and the visualization is just bad. But https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-years-gaming-history-revenue-stream/ gets the point across and looks roughly correct from figures I have seen given in interviews and the like. And the actual specific numbers matter a lot less (and weren’t even recorded in any way that is reliable).
As of 2020-ish, we are looking at approximately 73B according to “Visual Capitalist” (ugh). So if we assume roughly the same market share were playing TES games in both eras (and it is pretty safe to say that Skyrim is a MUCH more mainstream game than Morrowind was…), we would expect at least a 3.5x increase in the amount of mods. Oh, I am also assuming the same percentage of the userbase were interested in hobbyist game dev (ha) and that the tools have not gotten easier to use (TESEdit or whatever it was called was pure hell back in the day).
So… if we assume all else has remained equal (and ignore all my somewhat mocking points about how they clearly haven’t)… Oh, I forgot. Since TES games are basically the only ones with a thriving modding community these days (unless you count roblox and minecraft where monetization is even more standard), let’s also not assume that anyone who would have made an NWN mod or a UT mod or a Half-life mod decided to not make any Skyrim mods.
Oh, and revenue is also a horrible metric due to a combination of inflation and increased cost of game development, but it gives a rough idea of the audience size.
Uhm… where was I? Look, I can’t even keep a straight face on this. 7x is really not the win you are thinking it is. It should be a LOT higher than that if Skyrim modding really is thriving to the degree things were in the golden age of modding (late 90s, early 00s).
And that isn’t a bad thing. Like I said in the first post that set you off: This is just the trend we have seen. When it is literally easier to make a game in Unreal Engine than it is to make a quest mod in Skyrim… what are you going to do? This is why Unreal Tournament 3 flopped so hard. The expectation was that Epic would release a game and modders would run wild with it. Instead, modders were making UE3 games and getting paid. And the same happened with a few other games (arguably Half-Life 2). Neverwinter Nights 2, and CRPGs in general, largely died out for similar reason. People were less interested in paying for a 20 hour campaign that was “okay” if they weren’t going to have really cool user generated content waiting for them afterward.
And… I’ve already pissed off enough people so I won’t say anything beyond: How did Dreams do?
This is pretty long response lol so I’ll tackle each point individually.
Plenty of niche games have “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on…
Your whole argument on niche games getting good reviews, I actually fully agree with. The problem is that those reviews are literally the only metric we have to discern whether or not the people that played it enjoyed it - anything else is pure speculation. Including your point about people not liking it if they felt it didn’t feel enough like Skyrim, or people saying they like it just to appease others. It’s frankly bizarre that you’d make an argument for Steam Reviews not 100% showing the accuracy of people’s opinions, while simultaneously making statements like those with zero anything to back them up.
At the very least the reviews tell us that people who played it say they liked it. That’s just a fact. And considering that that’s all we have, I think it’s fair to use it. Anything else, again, is just pure speculation.
I know it can be hard to keep reading after you see something that MAKES YOU SO ANGRY but you should try.
This was weird lol.
“7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has”. First, that ignores how many quests and mods were lost to time.
No, it doesn’t. Skyrim has over 70k mods while Morrowind has roughly 11k. Even if there were over one hundred missing quest mods for Morrowind, which I doubt, it still wouldn’t affect that massive difference.
But also? of course it has more mods. The same way that basically every new game in a franchise SHOULD sell more than the previous one did. The audience for gaming has exploded over the decades.
This… just isn’t how modding works. Most new games releasing will have some reshades and a trainer, max. Once in a great while you’ll get some nudity. The size of the audience doesn’t change that - most games releasing simply don’t garner much mod support.
By your logic a game like Call of Duty should have a massive modding scene, as the new entry will be newer and have a massive audience, an audience multiple times bigger than any Bethesda game. But no, that’s just not how that works. Hell, even a game like The Witcher 3 only has half the number of mods that Morrowind does.
Also I’m confused as to the point of those links. Are you arguing that gaming has… gotten more popular over the years? Yeah no shit. As I said earlier, numbers going up doesn’t magically guarantee a thriving modding scene.
So if we assume roughly the same market share were playing TES games in both eras (and it is pretty safe to say that Skyrim is a MUCH more mainstream game than Morrowind was…), we would expect at least a 3.5x increase in the amount of mods.
As I went over before, no. Lol absolutely not. I don’t believe that you actually think this could possibly be true. Lets apply your logic to other mainstream games releasing nowadays and see if that logic holds water (hint, it doesn’t).
The reason why he charges does not matter at all. Anyone wanting a service for free is not in the position to demand anything. Would it be nice to get stuff for free? Sure! But demanding free service and badmouthing if you don’t get it? Fuck off.
The game has just launched and the mod had been released and cracked already. This isn’t about making bread, it’s clearly a trivial hack for him to do, not something that requires full time job maintenence.
People spend hundreds of hours modding free of charge, what he does is a joke in comparison if we are talking about lost time that could have been spent earning money. The groundwork was made by Bethesda, AMD and Nvidia.
For real. You want it for free? Cool go ahead and make the mod yourself. All the tools are there. Wait, you don’t want to spend your time learning to code? You don’t want to spend your time learning modding tools. Our time is our most finite resource and you get mad when someone asks for something in return for theirs? People are just up their own asses.
Out of this whole thing, I just want to say something about this.
Everyone needs to make bread. Someone asking for money from their mod or map or whatever isn’t against any spirit. It’s just a human being asking to make bread. Now some don’t agree with the price tag and that’s fine.
But we all need to recognize humans asking for some dough for their hard work is in the spirit of existing. Some folk do it for free just for the feelings and we love ‘em for it. But those asking for some cash are no different.
This world is already full of dog eat dog. Let’s not hate on someone just trying to get through it. You don’t have to pay the ask, but let’s not go making enemies just cause we don’t agree on that number on the price tag.
I am not disagreeing with the premise that it’s fair for someone to be paid for their work. However, during the Skyrim paid mod controversy (on Steam), I learned that there a lot of situations where having paid mods did hurt the modding community and created ethical concerns.
I would also point out that it wasn’t just greedy players that complained about paid mods - a lot of modders thought it went against the spirit of modding because of how it harmed collaboration in the community. Suddenly, they couldn’t trust that others would not steal their work or profit from it unfairly. And, that seems like a reasonable take to me, given all the abuses that modders claimed happened in the short time that paid modding was a thing for Skyrim on Steam.
It feels like the issue is that it was offering the convenience of payment to mods, but not really thinking about the necessary friction of assuring licenses/legality/etc. All of that CAN, of course, be an issue for cheap Unity games too. I remember back when Steam Greenlight started, they required each game to donate $100 to charity to even be considered, basically placing a bet of assurance that it wasn’t a stolen asset flip (I don’t know if they still do that).
I think you’re exactly right - it is the combination of money + little oversight that is the big problem. Warframe seems to do a good job with tennogen but they limit it to only cosmetic mods and seem to be pretty restrictive about what they accept into their store. I don’t see how you could have good oversight for a game with as many mods as something like Skyrim has.
It’s not “oversight”, but if a modder needs to create their own storefront and Paypal integration, and advertising through word of mouth and their own social contacts (as in this case it seems), then that’s going to offer a lot more scrutiny than a low-effort asset flipper presenting themselves anonymously through Steam’s given storefront.
I remember that discourse and am going to call shenanigans. None of that was new and a lot applies to actual software development
I am not saying any of these aren’t issues and I do think that adding monetized mods a decade in to the life cycle of a game was a mistake. But, like with most things, if The People are suddenly fixated on and caring about something they had outright mocked a few weeks prior… they still don’t care. They just see a way to be morally righteous while they get what they want.
You don’t go into modding for the money. It’s like making a non profit for the money. That’s why they’re getting backlash, they’re asking money where money’s not supposed to be involved.
it’s like theyre making a non profit for the money, except the without the making a non profit part
This is such a shitty attitude 🤣
God forbid we pay for a fucking cup of coffee because that person should want to work for free. This is the same bullshit as “work hard play hard” and “we are family here”. Might as well start telling modders it’s not about the pay, it’s the people and experience we’re paying you in. Rent what’s that?
You are all on a lemmy instance after 2 months of non stop bitching about non paid reddit moderators. Make up your damn mind.
Yes, again you don’t mod for the money. If you’re looking for that, you can create your own software. Other people in this thread made other good points, and this guy was trying to make a dlss mod subscription based, so fuck that guy. It’s literally better if the mod doesn’t exist in that case. Like I said with my analogy, it’s like trying to create a non-profit for the profit. There’s a million other avenues available to them if they want money. Especially because they are basing their work off of other’s work whom are not getting paid, yet they are?
Also idk what you’re talking about with the mod stuff but I do think it’s dumb internet janitors do work for free lol, and they do it for power. I don’t think they should be paid either.
deleted by creator
Like what
Remember, the patreon sub is $5/MONTH. This means if you buy 1 month at $5 to download the mod, and the author “conveniently” comes out with an update one month later, you need to subscibe for another $5. So basically it’s a fucking subscription for a god damn dlss 3 mod. You know the author is milking this bullshit to keep subscibers and keep his income flowing. Marty mcfly does the same fucking dogshit with his stupid ass RTGI reshade shaders. Fuck that shit. Those people can go get fucked.
If you want to charge $5 or $10 for your time spent making the mod, fine, whatever. But if you are trying to make it a subscription model then I have ZERO sympathy for you.
Ultimately, the guy is being upfront with his pricing and what he’s asking for. What’s the reason to hate on him? Either it’s worth it at that price or it’s not.
So you’re invalidating the feeling of being upset when something that used to be free (modding games) is no longer free. Modding has always been a free hobby that was run by good-willed pc gamers. Now monetization is fragmenting and ruining the modding experience.
You’re also justifying paying a subsciption on top of a fucking $70 game. Do you rip up a $5 bill every time you take a shit? Try it out. You may enjoy it.
No, I’d just choose not to use it and move on. Or if I’m broke and really wanted it, sure, pirate it. Not act like an entitled brat and whine and moan and it
You must be one of those whales that buys $4k worth of micro transactions. You do you man.
they cant invalidate the feeling of being upset when something that used to be free (modding games) is no longer free
modding games is still free, so your feeling of being upset wasnt valid in the first place
The history of monetization and mods is a pretty complex one.
Back in the UT/Quake 3 era, it was not at all uncommon to pay someone to make a skin or model for you. Those would be put online “for free”, but the Influencers of the era (clan folk and prolific forum posters) would get the warm and fuzzies from knowing there was a 420_JustBlazeIt_696969 skin for the nali warcow.
The first time I can really think of there being actual premium content you had to pay for was Neverwinter Nights and, to a lesser extent, The Sims. Yeah, there were the titties and fucking mods and the better ones were behind paywalls. But NWN in particular had a few cases where prolific modders might want some cash to give you access to their really cool campaigns. And Atari/Bioware took advantage of that for premium mods (although, I don’t think any community mods ever got an official release? I know AL3 or AL4 was supposed to be but ended up getting released for free when the program ended).
But that was arguably the beginning of the end for the golden age of mods. Because a year or two later we had Unreal Tournament 2003/4 and the “Make Something Unreal” contest. Which was a competition held by epic where the best mods in different categories would get huge cash prizes and games like Red Orchestra actually came out of this. And… it almost instantly killed the modding community. Sure we got Chaos UT2k4 and a few others, but basically every large modding effort was part of this contest rather than “for fun”.
And… the reality is that the contest and atari’s half ass efforts were pointless. Because the reality is that, by the early 2000s, modding was of comparable difficulty to making a game from scratch. And tools kept getting better (UT became The Unreal Engine, if that is not obvious) and between UE and Unity it was a lot easier for people to just make their dream games and sell them rather than make a mod for someone else’s game.
The Bethesda games side was a lot more gradual. There wasn’t a massive exodus of modders but… the number of quality quest mods for Morrowind versus Oblivion and Skyrim very much shows that the particularly talented folk were off doing other stuff. And a lot of the old hats realize this. A mod list for Morrowind might have been hundreds of quests. A mod list for Skyrim is bugfixes, a few UI/UX fixes, a graphics mod or two, and… that is it. Like, you still get the occasional magnum opus. But… yeah.
So you get this push back over the idea of modding “dying” even more. Because people aren’t going to put in hundreds of hours of work to give something away when they can do the same work and get paid for it. But… that also means they aren’t putting in 10 hours of work to make a hilariously bad map that simulates what it is like to have Comcast internet.
And then you just have the children who throw a temper tantrum the moment they are deprived of something they want.
You’re fucking with us, right? RIGHT?? 😂
Wtf are you talking about, Skyrim has dozens of amazing quest mods, and hundreds of quest mods overall.
It has major gameplay overhauls, it has custom skeletons for animation, it literally has mods that rework the animation system entirely. Modders added a survival system almost a full decade before Bethesda did.
There are mods that add new continents ffs, what’re you talking about? One of the quest mods was so good it literally got turned into its own game.
Edit: There are currently 60k mods for Skyrim Special Edition, and about 70k for the original Skyrim. Meanwhile Morrowind has 11k. Wtf are you talking about??
I didn’t hear about the quest mod getting its own game, what’s it called?
The Forgotten City
they are likely referring to The Forgotten City. Which is more than a bit more complicated than “one of the quest mods was so good it literally got turned into its own game” but is close enough to not matter. I enjoyed it but it also felt very reminiscent of the MSU mods that became full games (Helldorado? The shitty steampunk third person shooter with demons). Just with the added benefit of being artistic and a critical darling. If people weren’t huge on Outer Worlds for not feeling enough like Skyrim, they aren’t going to be a fan of The Forgotten City.
A friend referred to it as “an arthouse game” and… she isn’t wrong. The people who like it are going to LOVE it. And everyone else is going to say they like it so that people don’t judge them for not being a fan.
it is also a case of traditional modding dying out in favor of people just making their own games. But that person seemed confused and angry as is because I didn’t consult them before making a generalization so let’s cut them some slack.
The Forgotten City has “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam with many people praising it for its Bethesda-like systems, so I’m not sure what you mean. Maybe you felt it wasn’t enough like Skyrim and disliked it for that, but clearly you don’t speak for others.
Also, no other Skyrim quest mod, out of the near 2 thousand quest mods for the game, had a full game built off of them. So while that does happen sometimes (ie Dayz), it’s exceedingly rare and far from some sort of “tradition” as you put it. If anything that was far more common a decade or two ago than it is now. The original Star Wars Battlefront mod was quite a long time ago after all.
And no I’m not mad, I’m just confused as to how you could think Skyrim has only bug fixes, UI, and graphics mods, when in reality it has nearly 7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has and is the primary example of a thriving modding scene. Idk if you just spouted that out without knowing, or what.
Eh, that was close enough to a response rather than a frothing rant that I’ll respond.
Plenty of niche games have “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on Steam. Because that is a function of the reviews by those who played it and cared enough to leave a response. Its one of the great things about Steam reviews. I don’t have to adjust a metacritic score because space dogfighting games always score 10-20 points lower than Call of Duty because I know the vast majority of people leaving feedback loved Freespace and are vaguely aware Tachyon existed.
But as far as the wider world? It was almost immediately forgotten. It got a lot of great reviews, but not a lot of play. Which is more or less the case for any arthouse movie. I know it can be hard to keep reading after you see something that MAKES YOU SO ANGRY but you should try. People have a tendency to elaborate on points.
As for Skyrim having “7x the amount of mods that Morrowind has”. First, that ignores how many quests and mods were lost to time. I genuinely can’t remember where we went for Morrowind mods (I want to say a mix of the official forums and back when UESP still had forums? It has literally been decades). But just looking at Nexus is only part of the picture. Hell, I think Nexus came out of Morrowind modding? Or did it only get big with Oblivion?
But also? of course it has more mods. The same way that basically every new game in a franchise SHOULD sell more than the previous one did. The audience for gaming has exploded over the decades.
The website makes me vomit, the citations are weak, and the visualization is just bad. But https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-years-gaming-history-revenue-stream/ gets the point across and looks roughly correct from figures I have seen given in interviews and the like. And the actual specific numbers matter a lot less (and weren’t even recorded in any way that is reliable).
Going off https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/history-of-gaming-by-revenue-share-full-size.html so I can see it (and I am specifically citing the URL because I would not be shocked if it was actually different than in the article…), in the year 200 where was approximately 20 billion in PC revenue. And while Morrowind DID have an xbox version… it really didn’t.
As of 2020-ish, we are looking at approximately 73B according to “Visual Capitalist” (ugh). So if we assume roughly the same market share were playing TES games in both eras (and it is pretty safe to say that Skyrim is a MUCH more mainstream game than Morrowind was…), we would expect at least a 3.5x increase in the amount of mods. Oh, I am also assuming the same percentage of the userbase were interested in hobbyist game dev (ha) and that the tools have not gotten easier to use (TESEdit or whatever it was called was pure hell back in the day).
So… if we assume all else has remained equal (and ignore all my somewhat mocking points about how they clearly haven’t)… Oh, I forgot. Since TES games are basically the only ones with a thriving modding community these days (unless you count roblox and minecraft where monetization is even more standard), let’s also not assume that anyone who would have made an NWN mod or a UT mod or a Half-life mod decided to not make any Skyrim mods.
Oh, and revenue is also a horrible metric due to a combination of inflation and increased cost of game development, but it gives a rough idea of the audience size.
Uhm… where was I? Look, I can’t even keep a straight face on this. 7x is really not the win you are thinking it is. It should be a LOT higher than that if Skyrim modding really is thriving to the degree things were in the golden age of modding (late 90s, early 00s).
And that isn’t a bad thing. Like I said in the first post that set you off: This is just the trend we have seen. When it is literally easier to make a game in Unreal Engine than it is to make a quest mod in Skyrim… what are you going to do? This is why Unreal Tournament 3 flopped so hard. The expectation was that Epic would release a game and modders would run wild with it. Instead, modders were making UE3 games and getting paid. And the same happened with a few other games (arguably Half-Life 2). Neverwinter Nights 2, and CRPGs in general, largely died out for similar reason. People were less interested in paying for a 20 hour campaign that was “okay” if they weren’t going to have really cool user generated content waiting for them afterward.
And… I’ve already pissed off enough people so I won’t say anything beyond: How did Dreams do?
This is pretty long response lol so I’ll tackle each point individually.
Your whole argument on niche games getting good reviews, I actually fully agree with. The problem is that those reviews are literally the only metric we have to discern whether or not the people that played it enjoyed it - anything else is pure speculation. Including your point about people not liking it if they felt it didn’t feel enough like Skyrim, or people saying they like it just to appease others. It’s frankly bizarre that you’d make an argument for Steam Reviews not 100% showing the accuracy of people’s opinions, while simultaneously making statements like those with zero anything to back them up.
At the very least the reviews tell us that people who played it say they liked it. That’s just a fact. And considering that that’s all we have, I think it’s fair to use it. Anything else, again, is just pure speculation.
This was weird lol.
No, it doesn’t. Skyrim has over 70k mods while Morrowind has roughly 11k. Even if there were over one hundred missing quest mods for Morrowind, which I doubt, it still wouldn’t affect that massive difference.
This… just isn’t how modding works. Most new games releasing will have some reshades and a trainer, max. Once in a great while you’ll get some nudity. The size of the audience doesn’t change that - most games releasing simply don’t garner much mod support.
By your logic a game like Call of Duty should have a massive modding scene, as the new entry will be newer and have a massive audience, an audience multiple times bigger than any Bethesda game. But no, that’s just not how that works. Hell, even a game like The Witcher 3 only has half the number of mods that Morrowind does.
Also I’m confused as to the point of those links. Are you arguing that gaming has… gotten more popular over the years? Yeah no shit. As I said earlier, numbers going up doesn’t magically guarantee a thriving modding scene.
As I went over before, no. Lol absolutely not. I don’t believe that you actually think this could possibly be true. Lets apply your logic to other mainstream games releasing nowadays and see if that logic holds water (hint, it doesn’t).
This comment was truly a trip, thank you.
The reason why he charges does not matter at all. Anyone wanting a service for free is not in the position to demand anything. Would it be nice to get stuff for free? Sure! But demanding free service and badmouthing if you don’t get it? Fuck off.
The game has just launched and the mod had been released and cracked already. This isn’t about making bread, it’s clearly a trivial hack for him to do, not something that requires full time job maintenence.
People spend hundreds of hours modding free of charge, what he does is a joke in comparison if we are talking about lost time that could have been spent earning money. The groundwork was made by Bethesda, AMD and Nvidia.
For real. You want it for free? Cool go ahead and make the mod yourself. All the tools are there. Wait, you don’t want to spend your time learning to code? You don’t want to spend your time learning modding tools. Our time is our most finite resource and you get mad when someone asks for something in return for theirs? People are just up their own asses.