I was thinking last night while I was looking for a particular modification for a certain sim about how user made content has not only extended the life of sims, but saved a few. I then realized I dont really judge a game anymore by the developers, but by user made content.

Take SH5 and CLoD. Both abandoned not too long after release. Both really great sims now because of the users that practically saved them from being buried and forgotten. Now the devs of these titles have are not reaping the large portion of the re-birth of them, but the end user is getting the rewards.

Some may disagree, but I think IL2 original would have faded out if the crack never happened. Now its list of mods and content can reach the size of 60+gigs for an install. And its still being worked on. Amazing.

Then you have the ARMA series, that basically gives you "ok" content from the devs and turns the tools over to the users to make it something special. Same with the X space series (barring the latest...lets not go there). Also have the latest X-com that modders have given a very long shelf life as opposed to vanilla.

I also know that I could not (ok, I could technically), but dont want to play DCS without certain mods for my blackshark like Richardos HD cockpit, etc. It makes the stock one look like a cartoon.

I was wondering why it seems user made content seems to blow the original vanilla games out of the water? Is it the fact devs have a deadline? The fact mods outnumber devs therefore more ideas and time to implement? Why dont more companies rely on talented users like BI do with ARMA or X3 did with implementing good mods into future builds?

All in all I have to say is the talented fellow simmers that make these mods for the games I enjoy are awesome. On top of it, they dont get paid for it. I usualy try and donate via paypal or whatever just because I feel like I am getting so much cool stuff for free. Anyway, thank goodness for the selfless community of modders. Without them I would not be able to enjoy my sims as much as I do now.

That's exactly it and it makes all the difference in the world. Modders don't get paid so there's no pressure on getting a project done in a certain amount of time so that you don't have cost overruns. I think most developers of sims are just as passionate about their sims as modders are though. You just simply have the economic reality and constraints that often times causes a simulation to be released that is not 100% complete.

True. I remember Slightly Mad Studios getting screwed with Shift2 and not being able to "fix" certain issues on the PS3 release that they even said they do for free. After that huge FU from the producer they set out to make a game THEY wanted to make with help from the community. Welcome to Project CARS.

I wish more studios had the chance to do that.

Good post Loxitexas. I only play CloD and SH5 because of the mods,otherwise they don't get installed. I have also donated to modders in the past. They are a very talented group of people that give us so much more over the std game.

Once they get their hands on BoS I'll buy that too....

Lol Chucky.


Yeah you bring up some good points in your initial post Loxitexas. There's no doubt in my mind that both IL-2 and the ArmA series would have died a long time ago had it not been for their modding communities.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that an amateur that has basically limitless time to finish his work often delivers better quality than a developer that has only limited resources and a tight schedule to create a given content.

Projects done for love vs. projects done for money.

I don't think it's that cut and dry. Many developers love what they do but they also have to eat. None of us here would want to work for free right?

There's also the matter of talent. With modders, you usually have a talented guy that wanted to do something because he could. Sorta natural flow, got talent > create something.

Whereas in commercial endeavors you set up your team to work on a project, you have to find the appropriate people and convince them to work for you, and you don't have all the time in the world, nor the money, to do that. It's more: need to create something > find talent or best available given our budget/time.

Only because of the prevailing construction of society.

I think most people would happily work for free, by preference,
if food clothing and shelter were adequately taken care of
independent of their "work" activity. They would spend their
time working on things they were interested in and wanted to do,
rather than things they had to do for money, in order to get
the aforementioned FC&S, and would generally be far happier than
under the present conditions.

Typically a publisher will make a contract with a game development studio to create a certain title. Either the publisher already has a specific idea about what he wants (e.g. if it is a sequel of some sort), or he accepts a sales pitch from the studio.
The studio must predict the outcome of a creative process - how many programmers and artists it will need for how long in order to create the title as specified in the contract. The amount of personnel and their qualification level multiplied by the duration of their employment will reveal the rough budget of the title. The publisher will then probably not disburse the money in one big chunk but rather make partial payments that are tied to certain milestones.

And that's it, essentially. Only in very rare cases will a developer see any substantial money from sales. There is only one point where the developer has any leverage over the publisher, and that only at the price of ruining its reputation - if the publisher has already poured a lot of money into the development and the studio claims that it isn't release ready yet. It might then be able to convince/blackmail the publisher to fork over some more money to finish the title, but it will probably not get a new development contract from that publisher again (and if word gets around, probably not from other publishers either).



Even if you are looking at independent developers things aren't much better. Somehow they must finance their development work too. It may not come from a publisher, but it will cost. You have essentially two options - subsidies, or trading development cost for time. (Incidentally we used both.)

A very small team won't cost as much and is disproportionally more efficient in its work. Three programmers aren't necessarily three times as fast as a single programmer, maybe just two times. So you cut your costs to a third but the development speed to only 40%. Self-exploitation (paying yourself less than what you could earn, working overtime without paying yourself) is a form of subsidy. You sacrifice a social life in order to create a game - a success formula that doesn't appeal to everybody, but it can work. So, with a small team you can accomplish more than what one might think, but still there are clear limitations of what's possible. I mean, look at Outerra. THE (one) guy behind it is working on this engine for six years now. It looks amazing but whether an actual, finished product, let alone a good one will come from it, I don't know.

Burning a personal fortune to fund your game development is a form of subsidy too. Probably foolish, but ...
REAL subsidies as the other option will come in if you can somehow apply your game code to some other use, and find people willing to pay for that - or if there is some stupid government shelling out taxpayer money to nascent game developers. The number of cases where a game prototype can be put to productive use elsewhere is probably very small. There may be more cases than have been discovered yet, but I doubt that it will be a viable option for more than a handful titles. Government subsidies are also rare, and I'm not sure if the associated paperwork is really worth the hassle. Crowdfunding can apparently be another form of subsidy (see Star Citizen).


Modders essentially subsidize development work. They invest their personal time, usually without expecting payment. As a professional game developer you don't have that option. You must somehow pay your bill, and typically you only make money from a finished title. Until then you depend on someone else's money which usually is tied to certain conditions (such as a delivery deadline).

Another issue is a modder doesn't care about commercial viability. If you're making a plane/map/3d model/etc for free, do you really care whether 90% of the game's users install it or only 90 users? Lots of the planes in Strike Fighters are there because the modder wanted it in the game, not because of any community demand. Years after release it's possible that only a few hundred ever tried it and maybe only a few dozen still fly it, but that doesn't matter to a modder.
If ONE person enjoyed it, that might be worth it to them (unless they have a mega-ego). In some cases, that one person is the modder themselves.

No commercial product can include content that is not popular that takes just as long to create as content that is. I guarantee DCS P-51D got more sales than a DCS P-26 ever would, yet it would probably take equivalent resources to create. That makes a P-26 a losing proposition--unless a modder makes one for free and gets ED to put it in.



The Jedi Master

Taken care of by whom or what? The government? If the answer is the latter that would then mean it would have to be taken care of by tax revenue raised from the income earned by individuals. Correct?

Ah no, I wouldn't work for free. I don't think most people that value their freedom would

I wouldn't even if the food, clothing, and shelter were provided without government intervention...

I'll take the contrarian view - I stopped flying IL-2: 1946 when it was broken and then modded to hell and back.

It wasn't a perfect sim, but I'd been down the rabbit hole of chasing mods back in the RB3D era along with the mini campaigns of Fetch This Mod to Play and Forget What You Knew About the Sim, The FM is Different Now.

Sims should work out of the box. And I shouldn't have to chase down poxy mods in order to play with my friends.

Yup, thats why I said some may disagree about IL246.

I still cant fathom why this view is taken though. If IL2 was never cracked it would not have the following, content, or graphics to live today. If CLoD was not modded, it would be almost unplayable even today. I doubt many people loved SH5 unmodded, and even further doubt it would played today it wasnt.

The fact that you have different mod packs such as HSFX for IL2 online and just about any server either coop or pvp clearly states what "pack" you need to play makes is simple. Switching from HSFX to "stock" or to another mod pack is as easy a couple button presses as well.

ARMA squads run mod packs specifically for their squad. The ones with 500+ members dont seem to have an issue with mod packs, because they are easy to switch on and off, and make the game better in many way.

Basically I am not buying the "pain in the butt" to DL and install mods. They are easy, come with instructions, and enhance the game well beyond stock.

Sims or any other genre of games should work out of the box, in a perfect world they would. Most do not. I honestly cant think of one sim that is better vanilla over modded.

I agree with that for the most part. I don't want FM mods or AI mods or environment mods or whatever. My mods are almost always extra planes or ground units to use/fight against, like an unofficial DLC/expansion pack.

The one exception is if they're in an all-in-one mod installer that's one-and-done. Things like NATO Fighters or ODS for Strike Fighters, or the TD patches for Il-2, whatever they may contain, it's a single install.

I probably had one of the most modestly modified Skyrim installs ever seen (surpassed only by unmodded ones) as I just added a handful of companions, a couple of houses, skill book glow, and a couple of quest markers. In essence, the Skyrim equivalent of grabbing a couple of new planes and a carrier.




The Jedi Master

Some mods are made not because the stock game is "broken" but because many of the avid gamers/fans of the game have disagreements over some of the design choices made by the developers. The Total War series is a perfect example.

I have a lot of respect for guys who take the time to create mods.
And have used them in the past my self. Some of them were game changing and brilliant.
But I remember having a conversation with a guy who works in the game design industry and is a avid gamer and Milsim player
He made a valid point about mods, the opportunity exists for a Modder to give a character or vehicle
A unfair advantage lets say he created a tank and gave it super armour in a simulation type game.
I Have never seen this done but it is possible.
I would like to see a situation were mods are submitted to the original game designers for testing especially in military simulations.

Well, if it's a mod that's allowed online it's a valid concern. If it's offline only, who cares?

We've had F-22s fighting MiG-21s and making mincemeat of them in SF2 for years. You want nukes? A whole array of bombs and missiles are in there. Need to take out the fuel storage at an airfield? Fire an SRAM! Takes out the tanks, every ground and air unit in a 2 mile radius around the airfield, and you never deal with ADA around it! Sure it's not realistic, but it's a mod, who cares?

If you want only realistic, only install those mods that fit. If not, don't. It's your game.
Why should you care if someone else is dropping H bombs on cities in their SP game?


The Jedi Master