Interview with Garry on Shacknews

[FMPONE]

It was a mega anticipated event for me (first big real mod release for Source) and I probably spent alot more time than most people learning it, so maybe its just that the learning curve was a bit much.

It was worth it though, sweet stuff

[MrBaracuda]

hrrm FMPONE confuses me again; didn't you say it's an utterly failure some pages back?

[Thrik]

He quite obviously meant in the sense of how well it penetrated the HL2 player base (read: not very, apart from an initial buzz).

[twiz]

He quite obviously meant in the sense of how well it penetrated the HL2 player base (read: not very, apart from an initial buzz).

Yeah, he didn't say he personally didn't like the mod, he said its popularity with the general public is... hmm not so good.

[MrBaracuda]

thought as much but I couldn't recall him being specific so it was a little weird to read that now

[Sentura]

completely off topic now,

to steppenwolf: just returning the favor

[Bluestrike]

Some weird measurements of fail/succes.

I really doubt the time you work on a mod has that big of a influence on its succes, neither does the looks (but these do help get media attention tough)

I also agree that times have changed since HL1 mods, and that players have higher expections what modders have to consider to get their mod of the ground.

But if you ask me the key to a succesfull mod is what it brings to the player: The gameplay.

About HL2ctf:

There are dozens of ctf mods and games, yes I supose that translates into a bigger audience, but it also means there is alot more competition.

The only new thing it brought was physics,

other then that it might attract players form the HL2 scene.

The mod didn;t do that bad, and I would not call it a failure.

But if people want to call HL2ctf a failure, then its mainly because the developers just quit on it, considering it done.

About Insects Infestation:

Another important issue for the succes of mods is its user friendlyness, I always tought Insects Infestation looked great and unique, and if they had asked me to map for them I would probebly have said yes if I wasn't busy with my own stuff and Insurgency.

But when I played it , hosted my own game to learn the maps and started not knowing what to do in a room I could not get out of, i exited, and never tried again. And thats how it goes with alot of players.

Yeah I know Insurgency also suffers a bit from that same problem (player getting no objective and no maps to figure anything out)

And while I'm talking about Insects Infestation, I think it also was a bit unlucky in media attention.

Now what make succesful mods?

CS was the first game of its kind, I think the same holds true for DOD and you can place G-mod right in that same list.

Games like Insurgency, Fortress Forever and Black Mesa on the other hand don't bring any groundbreaking new changes, and besides the great looks, they draw players mainly on pulic interest (Insurgency) and the audience of the game they are modding on (FF/BMS).

I haven't played Natural Selection so I can't place that one :-P

As a insurgency mapper, what do I think/expect?

If we have 1k players after a year I think we did pretty well.

And I think we will have to work to get to that ...

(and then we still have alot more then most retail games)

[FMPONE]

(and then we still have alot more then most retail games)

Thats an interesting point, almost all of these games have more players than retail FPS games multiplayer mode (with the exception of a few)

[R_Yell]

Another important issue for the succes of mods is its user friendlyness

Completely agreed on that, that issue alone can kill a mod in extreme cases. Empires mod suffered a lot from general noobiness, that mod has a lot of peculiarities, one of them is the commander vehicle (a team loses when it gets destroyed). Now imagine new players, with no idea about the game, looking at that vehicle, getting inside it, and driving to the other base... Silly? Yes, a lot, but it happened many times.

[Erratic]

(and then we still have alot more then most retail games)

Thats an interesting point, almost all of these games have more players than retail FPS games multiplayer mode (with the exception of a few)

Being free for one of the most (if not the most) popular PC game is the primary reason.

[e-freak]

allthough I love Steam as a tool I think it is the reason why so many mods die nowadays. The "Userfriendliness" argument hits the nail - players expect Patches to deliver themselves. Look at the times we played Half-Life in the WON and you had to download every patch yourself (or even got it from a gaming magazine once a month) - the willingness to patch a mod back then was bigger because people were used to fiddle around with version numbers and download hotpatches every here and there. But get used to Battle.net or Steam and then try to convince yourself to visit the modpage of all the mods you have regularly. I think the popularity and support and community-strength of the mods would be rising if they would give steam-access to the mod-teams or release custom-map-patches over battle.net.

[FMPONE]

allthough I love Steam as a tool I think it is the reason why so many mods die nowadays. The "Userfriendliness" argument hits the nail - players expect Patches to deliver themselves. Look at the times we played Half-Life in the WON and you had to download every patch yourself (or even got it from a gaming magazine once a month) - the willingness to patch a mod back then was bigger because people were used to fiddle around with version numbers and download hotpatches every here and there. But get used to Battle.net or Steam and then try to convince yourself to visit the modpage of all the mods you have regularly. I think the popularity and support and community-strength of the mods would be rising if they would give steam-access to the mod-teams or release custom-map-patches over battle.net.

Yes I think you're right on the money.

Steam needs to figure out a way to securely deliver patches

[Zeta]

auto patches would be pretty awesome

[Thrik]

Although with the above point made, it's worth bearing in mind that most non-Steam games these days require separately downloaded patches. At best, they have some kind of news area on the main menu which lets everyone clearly know there's a new patch by hooking into a web server.

This is something I'd imagine any HL2 mod, including Insurgency, would benefit from.

The process of downloading patches is far from something players aren't used to. It's just generally better communicated to them in the games themselves nowadays rather than relying on people reading about them in magazines or on sites.

[Psy]

So people today are too lazy to download a patch?