Originality in mods

[FrieChamp]

I first staggered when I read "business cards", admittedly also with a bit of a smirky face, but thinking about the effort you guys put into this, going to these events to present your work, collecting feedback, making connections, I don't think that's laughable, in contrary it is respectable in my eyes! Sad to hear that it didn't work out in the end

I really don't see anything we made as a deliberate "marketing strategy", it was just stuff that got into the mod naturally, and opportunities that where presented to us that we, as a small humble mod team, couldn't afford to refuse.

"PR" strategy as you were getting publicity from editorial content, not advertisements

[Ginger Lord]

At the end of the day there is no one method to creating a successful mod. Nobody can really write a guide to it as it varies for each and every mod.

[Steppenwolf]

Thanks for the link barrakid. That was a interesting read. We faced similar problems during the development of Insurgency. At one point (summer 2006) Insurgency was very close to share the same destiny with Nightfall. At this time we lost our domain, ftp and forums, our leader was busy with real life, development was slow, the build of the game was unplayable for months etc. Our luck was that many members worked on at least one released mod before so we had the experience on board to sort things out. But it was very close.

[dux]

what about fmpone trying to start a revolution

[Steppenwolf]

I don't exactly remember this. Just too many things happend during my years on the team. But "political movements" inside the mod used to happen here and there, thats true. If you have a mod team without a strong leader this can be the downfall for the project in the worst case. But Jeremy never was a fan of too much democracy so these things usualy got dealed with even if some people had to leave the mod in anger. In the end it was necessary in order to bring the mod to success.

[Minos]

what about fmpone trying to start a revolution

What revolution? I dont remember that

[dux]

Good to see I was more active than you two while I was around!

[Ginger Lord]

All I remember about FMPONE is him "joining" the Ham and Jam team and being tasked with something to do that day, then later in the day quitting and joining Insurgency... :roll:

Must've been all of 8 hours, possibly our shortest try out ever.

[Minos]

Good to see I was more active than you two while I was around!

Knowing gossips or taking part in failed revolutions doesn't make anyone more productive

All I remember about FMPONE is him "joining" the Ham and Jam team and being tasked with something to do that day, then later in the day quitting and joining Insurgency... :roll:

Must've been all of 8 hours, possibly our shortest try out ever.

He also quit INS to join ND or something like that. FMPONE was quite the mod whore lol

[Steppenwolf]

fmpone was a mod hopper. don't think he ever finished anything anywhere. i remember the map he made for Insurgency was only a single room of a mosque made of 8000 or so brushes

[Sentura]

fmpone was a mod hopper. don't think he ever finished anything anywhere. i remember the map he made for Insurgency was only a single room of a mosque made of 8000 or so brushes

how'd he get accepted into the team then?

[Steppenwolf]

He had a talent to create good looking "scenes" for his portfolio. I guess all mods who hired him fell for that. You can't tell from screenshots that nothing else is behind that. You will only find out later when you never get anything playable from the guy.

[m8nkey]

Is it just me, or does the mod community lacks a lot of ideas these days ?

Personally, I think originality is overated, ideas are a dime a dozen. For me it's about how well those ideas are executed. A mod that uses simple, tried and true gameplay mechanics that are well imlpemented and fun is a fair accomplishment. Of course unique gameplay elements are great but they greatly complicate things too.

The cool thing about modding is it's readily accesible to anyone. Of course this also results in a plethora of absolute shit as seen on modDB. 99% of them are dreamt up by kids that never see them to fruition, they are by no means an accurate litmus test for the quality of what's out there.

Saying there is no originallity is a gross generalisation. The Source engine alone has an impressive range of original mods that impliment unique gamelpay mechanics previously unseen in the engine.

[BaRRaKID]

I first staggered when I read "business cards"

It was just a card with the mod's logo, and a link to our site. We figured it was the best way to make people remember our site URL, which was rather long and hard to memorize

[Corwin]

I think many wannabe modders (i.e. the kids that you guys are mentioning) focus way too much on the communication aspect modding brings (showing off your work, building up hype, winning awards) than actually working on the projects themselves. A friend of mine suggested a few years ago that we don't announce anything we work on until it's well advanced (or pretty much ready to be released): it saves time because you don't have to handle any fanbase, and if it turns out you gotta drop it for any reason, then you haven't wasted everybody's time.

Of course, even though that's a solution that would clear out the modding community from the shitty and canceled mods, it can't really be applied in every case as it might be hard to get the most talented people to join you if you don't showcase your project, but I do think it's a good rule and I've been sticking to it for a long time, successfully.

Is it just me, or does the mod community lacks a lot of ideas these days ?

Personally, I think originality is overated, ideas are a dime a dozen. For me it's about how well those ideas are executed. A mod that uses simple, tried and true gameplay mechanics that are well imlpemented and fun is a fair accomplishment. Of course unique gameplay elements are great but they greatly complicate things too.

The cool thing about modding is it's readily accesible to anyone. Of course this also results in a plethora of absolute shit as seen on modDB. 99% of them are dreamt up by kids that never see them to fruition, they are by no means an accurate litmus test for the quality of what's out there.

Saying there is no originallity is a gross generalisation. The Source engine alone has an impressive range of original mods that impliment unique gamelpay mechanics previously unseen in the engine.

I agree, a mod like Minerva for HL2 is great and doesn't add much to the gameplay. Refining the original game gameplay is good enough in most cases. That feeling that the modding community is regressing in terms of originality is mainly that good mods tend to get lost in the mass of useless crap.

Also, I believe the game dev industry keeps specializing, dividing what was once one job into numerous sub parts, so I feel like it's hard to keep on modding the recent engines and create original works without having to recruit dozens of talented people to cover all the grounds, and we all know it's a pain in the ass to manage large teams online, and usually leads to projects being canceled no matter how willingful the funders were. Thats why I think we see much more interesting and quality levels than mods. A single or couple of guys working on a level on their own have much more chances to get it done, at the price of originality and custom assets.

BTW, I hate these mods that take a game and try to recreate it in another engine. It's even more annoying when they come up with quality work (for a while at least), and I can't help but think they should have come up with a new concept instead.