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A comment on A video game that lets you make video games.

Re:A video game that lets you make video games by formalsystem on Sunday February 23, 2020 @02:28AM (#22395615)
Is anyone aware any similar product that also pays back game developers and modders for how many people download their games or how many times people used an asset they created?

Modding on PC isn't the best experience since it requires a lot of work on the developer side to create an API for you AND you need to go ahead and learn how this API works by staring at a small number of samples.

If the game doesn't have an API you need to disassemble the game and figure out how to actually integrate your changes but you can't distribute it since you're violating the developer's intellectual property.

However, modding is amazing, it's the best part about PC gaming. Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Dota, all mods. Modding increases the potential play time of a game in an unbounded way. Why isn't it commonplace for me to be able to command alt click and then just add a new character to the game with 3 basic abilities and then share that to my friends. You can't mod a movie, there is no underlying code you can change freely to add whatever dialog you want or change the position of a camera.

Is there no way to align the economic incentives of players and creators when it comes to modding? How would you split up the pie between modders, original creators and consumers especially considering that modders can increase the size of the pie. What creator wouldn't want to increase the longevity and relevance of their game?

I'm optimistic that more games will be more moddable more easily. Giving modders and creators the tools to distribute their work AND make money off of it, will create a platform that will dethrone Steam and produce memes for ages to come.

If anybody wants to talk more about this, please feel free to email me.

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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by smaddock on Sunday February 23, 2020 @02:55AM (#22395677)
Roblox supports modding and has a "Developer Exchange" program [0] in which, from what I understand, there's an exchange rate for each microtransaction related to modders' content.

Steam Workshop [1] is a platform for distributing mods for games which support it on Steam. A few years back it introduced support for paid content [2], but was soon after removed due to community backlash [3].

[0] https://www.roblox.com/developer-exchange/help

[1] https://steamcommunity.com/workshop

[2] https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/aboutpaidcontent

[3] https://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements...

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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by mamurphy on Sunday February 23, 2020 @03:32AM (#22395782)
Fortnite has the support-a-creator program, where players can enter a creator's code in the in-game item shop to choose to divert a percentage (5%, but they have upped it to 20% once for a special event) of all in-game purchasers to a creator of their choice. The creator can be a map-maker, streamer, blogger, etc.

The program incentivizes continued content creation by creators, and dis-incentivizes moving on to another game, as the creator's SAC revenue would dry up over time.

[0]https://www.epicgames.com/affiliate/en-US/overview

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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by jpindar on Sunday February 23, 2020 @09:49AM (#22397043)
For those who haven't tried it - in Fortnite Creative you can create a lot more than fps levels. I've seen puzzle games, mazes, obstacle courses, scavenger hunts etc., and there's a wide variety of differently themed assets available.
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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by simion314 on Sunday February 23, 2020 @12:16PM (#22398044)
Monetizing mods is hard, you will need to police the community to make sure assets are not stolen, handle QA and refunds, compatibility between mods, you also need to keep the community happy - you see with latest paid mods from Bethesda where people are asking questions like "why should I pay 5$ for a few armors and a weapon when a 15$ DLC had new teerain, new NPCs, quests, armors etc.
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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by intenscia on Sunday February 23, 2020 @09:14AM (#22396894)
We’re working on this actually at mod.io (we are also the creators of ModDB which you may be familiar with). Still early days but momentum is building and we are seeing plenty of experimentation going on. Feel free to AMA as we’ve done and continue to do a ton of research in the space
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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by formalsystem on Sunday February 23, 2020 @12:10PM (#22397995)
Amazing, I have used ModDB in the past so I'm glad to see you building something even more ambitious.

How are you thinking of paying people? If I make a really popular mod of a game do I get a % of that games sales or just some fixed per download amount. How do you deal with popular plagiarism, I minimally change a mod and figure out how to be featured prominently in ranker.

Would you say a significant part of your player base consists of game developer?

What does the easy modding workflow look like right now? I'm looking forward to checking out https://github.com/modio/UnityPlugin

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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by EamonnMR on Sunday February 23, 2020 @12:46PM (#22398250)
So the way I see it, when modding became a thing because back in the 90s and 00s, the barrier to entry for a new game was really high, but the barrier for entry for making assets and such was really low. The situation is reversed now-anyone can pick up Godot, Unity, Unreal, etc and start making whatever they can imagine but they can't just start making AAA quality content. That's why you see lots of assets for a few titles where the community has really gone in deep, but also plenty of games that nobody even tries to mod-without the developer tools there isn't much hope, and if you just want the basic gameplay of, say, a FPS building it from scratch is no longer insurmountable.
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Re:A video game that lets you make video games by LegitShady on Sunday February 23, 2020 @10:58PM (#22401528)
> Is anyone aware any similar product that also pays back game developers and modders for how many people download their games or how many times people used an asset they created?

It's called a video game engine. You make and market a game, then people buy it, and depending on how many people buy it you get paid.

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