Mods keep 'Sins of a Solar Empire' PC game vibrant five years on | Hacker News Reader

Mods keep 'Sins of a Solar Empire' PC game vibrant five years on

alist.ly

These guys also successfully fought a multi-year legal battle against Rebellion Developments (makers of the Sniper Elite series), who claimed that the use of the word "rebellion" in "Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion" was a violation of their trademark.

[1] https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/455527/page/1/

My mind boggles with the idea that it made it to court.

That they where forced to considered settling.

How are those even vaguely connected?

The article mentions the whole Scrolls debacle, which similarly hurts my head.

I just don't even...

If you think that's headache-inducing, don't look up the history of "Edge Games".

My favorite part about the Scrolls dispute is that Notch, not wanting to waste thousands of dollars in a legal procedure (he was likely to win but nothing is ever 90% sure) proposed, seriously, to its opponent to settle the matter with a Quake 3 match:

"I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors. We select one level, you select the other, we randomize the order. 20 minute matches, highest total frag count per team across both levels wins.

If we win, you drop the lawsuit. If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you're fine with. Regardless of the outcome, we could still have a small text somewhere saying our game is not related to your game series in any way, if you wish.

I am serious, by the way."

http://www.shacknews.com/article/69777/persson-proposes-quak...

Trial by combat does have a very long history! So it wouldn't be an entirely novel method of settling the dispute.

It's actually a very efficient way to resolve disputes.

But then we discovered mercenaries, and the mercenaries discovered that, if you settle it all in court, its so much cheaper on the blood and so much more expensive for the customer. And they named themselves from free_lancers to fee_lawyers. Thus ended the story, and if it offends you, sue me.

And, depending on your belief system, perfectly fair, because the winner is determined by a higher power.

Sad to see Rebellion sinking so low. I was a big fan of 2000ad in my youth. In the 90s, the Kingsley brothers - also life long fans - bought the comic and started making games from its IP. It was a dream come true for me. Unfortunately none of the games were anything to shout about, and eventually rebellion moved on to generic ww2 shooters. Then they became legal trolls. I wish they'd just concentrate on making a decent 2000ad IP game. An open-world MegaCity-One would be incredible but they don't have the money for that kind of thing anymore. They should go retro, return to their roots. Make a Hotline Miami style Sinister Dexter shooter. Or a Slaine roguelike. Or a Judge Anderson point and click adventure.

At least the dredd movie was good.

Edit:

Just remembered this story. Back when I was a wannabe mod maker I had grand plans to make a Sinister Dexter total conversion for Max Payne. I didn't want to plow ahead and get sued, so I emailed and asked permission. Jason Kingsley personally emailed back and very politely told me that although it was something they'd love to see, they couldn't give me the all clear because they had something shopping the same lines in the works. It never came to pass unfortunately. Still, it was nice of him to reply. I don't know how they got from there to legal battles against people making a game that had nothing to do with their IP

> If a product continues to do well, you want to continue to support it. That’s just a simple business thing for us. It still makes money, so we still put resources into it.

This has got to be the most honest approach to business there is: basic profit seeking incentive for continuous improvements.

That's literally all business. It's just that some industries are easier to sympathize.

No, there is a difference between profit-seeking and rent-seeking [1]. Rent-seeking outfits tend to want monopolies, captive audiences, and other massive barriers to entry.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

If the publisher or developer doesn't share the revenue that comes from mods with the mod creators they are technically rent seeking

Not really. The publisher and/or the developer is not diverting revenue from the mod creators to themselves. They created a platform that someone decided to extend...they are a passive beneficiary of someone else's elective work, but they aren't actively rent seeking.

The wikipedia definition linked above says:

>Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee (or rent of the section of the river for a few minutes) to lower the chain.

The company is the feudal lord and the chain is their claim on their IP. They made a base game for people to buy, they arranged bits in a very precise order. They sold those bits to consumers. They are not arranging the bits for mods, and yet they get the revenue for it (charging boats as they pass). It's easier to sympathize with game companies because people are indeed doing things free of charge because they like the game.

If you charge money for a mod of a game, you will get a letter from that company's lawyers.

TBH thats pretty much what happened with Minecraft the main modding group was taken apart by Mojang doing rent seeking behavior.

To be fair though, a good fraction of the Minecraft modding community is rotten; especially with mod authors trying to make money from their mods by relying on a reverse engineered Minecraft.

In an effort to make money, they have put clickthroughs to ads that people have to go through to download the mod. Keep in mind that Minecraft is rated 'E' for everyone, the modders are deliberately ignoring the fact that they put children in a spot where advertisers can abuse them.

I am specifically going to point out the 'Feed the Beast' team on promoting this behaviour, and them promoting that modders are the ultimate authority. It's pretty bad that permission has to be obtained from each mod author to include it in a modpack, even if it is just for a private server. It's pretty hypocritical of them, I'm pretty sure they didn't ask Mojang for permission to use the Minecraft game for their mods.

Note that I am not criticising all the Minecraft modders, just the ones who created the current toxic culture that pervades the Minecraft modding community. If you look at other modding communities, say for Skyrim, you will see it is completely different and someone coming from that community to the Minecraft modding scene will be shocked at the awfulness that pervades the culture there.

(Slightly off topic) Looking at the wiki page, In what universe is that criticism of capitalism considering taxation/statism is most obvious example of rent-seeking behaviour ???

Great question!

1. taxation/statism is most obvious example of rent-seeking behaviour 2. rent-seeking is bad QED capitalism is bad

I can see why you don't think this works.

But then he mentions he does it in his free time. Go figure.

Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind just turned 15 years old. There's still an active mod community for it.

Doom's community is wildly active also.

Reminds me of Warcraft 3. The last expansion came out in 2003, and the mod community was still going strong into at least the late 2000s when I was still playing.

My dad still plays war3 on a almost daily basis on bnet (random 4v4s). I definitely wonder who the other 7 are

Even Warcraft 2 is still being played - check out https://www.youtube.com/user/war2combat which is truly amazing!

A friend hit me up yesterday asking if I wanted to play a cool new RPG he found, installed, and the custom game lobby was full within 3 minutes.

Warcraft 3 is alive and well, which makes me incredibly happy.

And I think this ties in with the Mod theme of the title very strongly. I don't _love_ RTS games, I can play them but it's not my biggest hit. But the Warcraft III custom games simply blew me away. As a teenager with a fairly limited game budget I have gotten a ludicrous amount of enjoyment out of the countless hours I've put into Warcraft III.

I'd be surprised if you told me I've played the RTS/classical mode of the game over 30 hours over my life. But if you told me I've played over 4000 hours in custom games I wouldn't even bat an eyelid.

Heck, as I said even nowadays I still reinstall and play a couple of fun maps every now and then.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that modding support is an extremely positive thing, and derivations of your creation can truly breed a life of their own which I can only see as positive for your consumers.

OMG, custom games!

Warcraft 3 custom games is probably the most influential game engine/custome game system ever created.

War3 has produced multiple genres, including MOBAs (dota, lol, etc), and freaking TOWER DEFENSE.

I play custom games on starcraft 2 every day.

i thought tower defense came from starcraft custom maps?

Its basically the same thing, though right?

By the way, you can play "custom maps" 100% free with Starcraft 2 Starter Edition. The only things that aren't accessible to free versions of SC2 are the campaigns and ladder competitive mode. Many maps in SC2 are direct ripoffs of popular Wc3 ones (many even use Warcraft 3 assets, because Blizzard ported them to SC2 engine), but there are some original ones too.

And over here in Age of Empires 2 the community is so strong that Microsoft actually rebooted development on the game and keeps adding more expansions after almost 20 years. Wololo!

But it's more of the same, and it's cheap for them. It's a far cry what would be possible if they do a real reboot of the AoE franchise, with a triple-A budget doing a new RTS game in the AoE universe. Not just milking the community and new users on old assets labeled as "HD" (which is a joke).

But please spare us from a console first RTS game like Halo Wars. This dumbed down gameplay is a joke compared to real RTS game genre. It's all about controlling many individual units over a huge map, building building wherever one things it makes sense, gathering several types of resources, managing a economy, scale everything, defend from smart AI enemies, conquer enemy bases, play on random generated maps against AI enemies, etc. Halo Wars and Command and Conquer 4 were the worst breed of RTS games, console first games with casual gameplay, very limited base building on predefined spots, limited units, slow gameplay, narrow field of view, smaller maps. Basically everything worse than what PC gamers were used to with previous RTS games. This cancerish development destroyed the RTS genre - and since 2005 (beside SC2) no triple A RTS worth mentioning got released. No "new real" Age of Empires/Mythology, Empire Earth, Command and Conquer. E-sport focused SC2 got several low budget RTS clone games in futuristic settings, and strategy fans in general got several games outside of the true classic RTS genre, but they are different in style in many ways. Also tower defense and Moba originated from RTS from mods of Age of Empires 1/2 and WarCraft 3, and got several clone games, but have little in common with the true RTS game - no free base building, no resource gathering. "Modern games" are simply too much casual gameplay, too much grinding mechanic, just a few units, no strategic planing, no micro+macro management of hundreds of units over a 2hour timespan. It's more like true RTS games are for educated people loving grand scheme of strategy and historic war strategy to try out new things, and "modern games" cater only the Free2Play crowd that never experienced good games, are more about simple gameplay with a lot of repetition and casino tricks to get the crowd addicted plus a few gamification tricks, random generators with in game stores to buy cards. wtf have cards you should buy with real money to do in an RTS game during real time strategy action - ask those who brought you Halo Wars 2, the latest trainwreck. Nowadays there is 0 A.D. an open source RTS like AoE and the possibility to play decade old RTS games - but it's boring as well. No cheap "HD" remakes will "reboot" RTS games, only real new classic RTS games with good old mechanics and PC first development can surface good games. And console gameplay is possible, e.g. WatchDogs2 has complex controls to steer a drone in 3D space and controlling physical objects in a RTS style fashion all while playing a 3D character - so innovation is possible, and WD2 is basically a possible way forward. Beside that WD2 is also the better Deus Ex game, having all the things that made Deus Ex 1 so great, and non of the later Deus Ex parts achieved. WD2 is also very funny and plays in SF ad the valley, it's a persiflage, and a superb game.

Also reminds me of how Bungie released an update for Halo PC a few years ago to allow multiplayer to continue despite the shutdown of the Gamespy servers. They even included a higher resolution mode(up to 4k!) as part of the patch. Say what you want about Halo or Bungie, but that's an awesome thing to happen for a game that's over a decade old. I have so many great memories playing online multiplayer and making mods while I should have been doing my homework!

The fact that there are still communities around these games kind of goes to show that modern variants of their gameplay can be overvalued. I haven't bought a new game in years because classic titles hold up so well and I still get a ton of enjoyment out of them as an adult with limited time on my hands.

Interestingly enough Warcraft 3, despite being almost 15 years old, still gets new patches. The latest one came out just a month ago [1].

[1]: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20753797075

The old Command & Conquer series (Tiberian Sun/Red Alert 2, 1999/2000) still have an active mod community. A significant factor is a few dedicated people who reverse-engineer the engine and make C++ patches/additions to it, giving regular modders much more power.

I used to be one of those people reverse-engineering Red Alert 2, and those years were certainly fun and challenging, as well as illuminating in the "this is why you don't <bad coding practice>" sense.

Fun fact: When EA repackaged those old C&C games for The First Decade bundle, they removed the No-CD checks. Most of the games were recompiled to achieve that, but since Red Alert 2 had these engine patches relying on absolute addresses, they went through the trouble of hex-editing the executable to keep the patches working.

C&C Generals is also still kind-of-active, with competitions running, mods being made.

It will be interesting to see what modding will look like in five years. I imagine total conversion mods will no longer be a thing for starters given how easily accessible development tools are now.

With services like patreon becoming really popular the mod authors who are good I imagine will be able to self sustain to a degree finally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com