[Question] Do you want people to mod your game?

Hey everyone,

So there is a rather large group of people that enjoy putting custom content into their games. See Games such as Grand Theft Auto, Any of the Source Engine games, Unreal Tournament 2k4, or The Elder Scrolls series. There are many more but I feel that these are the most prominent.

Now with that said - Would you want people to modify your game? or add new unofficial content into it. Yes? No?

I am linking a video about the subject and why it can be important for an indie dev as well as the AAA dev.

 

I remember that with Doom and Wolfenstein although I worked and didn't have time for that type of activity.

It seems nowdays that type is using Unity to try and make money anyway so the interest is much less, particularly since 'modding' has been turned into 'microtransactions'. So the answer is if modding your game means microtransactions you can bet they do.

 

Honestly, I just want to sell my game with a mod toolkit. Mods can mean longer life time sales which means more money

 

What? There's still plenty of people doing modding.

If people want to mod my game then hell yeah more power to them. I'll be building it with modding in mind.

 

I'm surprised I really don't care either so I won't investigate. Building with modding in mind isn't a concern. Using any type of game engine makes modding implicitly possible.

 

^ This
I'd say that modding isn't disappearing directly, but the lack of modable games causes problems.
I mean, BF2, CS, CS:S and lots of other games are still being played by lots of people despite being so old. BF3, the new CoDs? Good luck with that.
It's just something AAA publishers don't want. Better remove modding tools: "Then we can charge you extra for a few maps that you'd otherwise get for free."
Afterwards remove dedicated servers: "That way you cannot keep playing those games in future because we'll shut the servers down. AND NOW BUY THE NEW ONE ALREADY!!!"

Modding is where everything started for me. From messing with textures in CS:S to writing my own game with Unity.

But modding is more to me. In a way the modding and indie scenes remind me of how much more the games industry could be if the people in charge wouldn't be completely incompetent.

 

Sure, I would want people to mod my game.

 

I'd say anything that extends the life of your game is something you would reasonably want to do. I've been thinking we were in a new golden age of modding for a while now (uh, dayz anyone?)...

 

This is not really true. It depends on how you design/code your game. You really do need to build it with modding in mind. You can't just hand out your Unity project over.

 

I'd want for people that mod my game to be able to make money for their time. I think those mod makers deserve some $$ too. These games, especially Skyrim, needs to setup an Asset Store and allow these mods to be purchased.

Sooner or later these publishers will finally get the idea to do it. But because they tend to be uncreative business types- it will take a successful independent game to do it and show them how.

 

I think valve is doing this with Counter Strike: Global Offensive. I will agree that mod developers need a marketplace for them to sell their mods or something similar.

 

Yes modding would be cool. The system in Might and Magic X legacy looks kind of cool(But obviously needing Unity pro ruins it)

 

If it can be fit into a game design without too much trouble, I'd agree with having people mod my games, at least where it fits. Simple texture changing isn't really worth it for small indie games I would think, but something with level editors(and similar like campaigns, etc...) makes great sense if it fits the game. And indeed, anything that extends the life of a game pretty much has to be a good thing.

 

Do I want to like my game so much that they will be want to spend time customizing it, extending it, and building on it? Hell yeah!

Can I afford to spend the time and/or money to make that possible? Probably not.

 

Depends on what type of game of course, but for the FPS I have in mind, Surely yes. All the goodies...New maps, character and vehicle parameters, spawn points, gametypes. Is it possible to make a level editor and save it out as a map?

 

I don't think modding is possible with Unity Pro, because the modders would need to buy Unity Pro as well, right?.

Though as for the direct question, yes, though some particular games don't really need mods.

 

I'm building my games with modding in mind. This means I'm working on creating custom editors that should workat runtime, a lot of parsing and reading of external files.

Isn't a quick task, but I'm also not a pro programmer or anything, but had to take in consideration a lot of things. Importing custom models, so reading them at runtime.

Surely you can do like Ubisoft with the latest Might Magic, using Unity Pro features (I think it exports stuff into assetbundles?), but I would avoid to make people the need of unity pro.

Another example I guess is Shadowrun Return, it uses a custom made external editor, then from the game it just read all the custom files and construct the scenes appropriately. So if you build your game without modding in mind, well people can't just inject new stuff into your game that easily, is all about building a framework behind your game to support modding.

 

I don't care and don't know but I'll voice my opinion anyway <-- the internet.

No you don't need Unity Pro take a look at KSP.

 

It's possible to add assets to my scenes using external text files after publishing, I had once created an application that loads the scenes realtime, translates the text files and loads the data real-time in a 'level editor'. I scrapped this as I needed to focus more on the game itself.

This was the process I used about a year ago-
exe loaded > level001 loaded > check for level001.txt, level002.txt .etc > check current level name > if corresponding level loaded level001, level002.etc > read level001.txt, level002.txt .etc > list of assets to load checked > load asset xxxx from dir xxxx > render at XYZ > rotate to XYZ >

 

Hm, right, how did they do the modding support though?, and what is the modding like?, I'm no expert on KSP, so I don't know much about it other than how they worked around the floating point errors and the idea of making spaceships to do stuff.

 

Personally I would pay for a solution like that. Just to get modding in my game off the ground

 

I think modding allows for great community-driven content creation, which considerably extends playability of a game. I myself am trying to make my game as data driven and modular as possible, to make modding support easier

 

Modding is different for every game. If you want players to edit levels, you need to create a level editor. Want to import models? Need to set up your workflow for it too.

There's no "plug and chug" modding with Unity.

 

I've got a nice little idea with a large part of it being community driven contributions and mods. It's currently up on my shelf of possible future projects as it's quite involved. Allowing player contribution can work really well for some games but it also adds quite a bit to dev time and support.