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Comment by petermcneeley | Hacker News Reader

You dont want your users creating content IF that is your primary source of profit as a game studio. If your users can effectively create new items, new maps, DLC, new missions, new characters etc what do you sell to them after your initial release? The easier it is to create this new content (aka non expert) the more likely that the price of this content (even if there was a market) would basically be free. (discounting network and intellectual property effects)

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Allow all of that except for creating new items/assets. Release DLC which when purchased lets you use its assets in your own levels. Then others who want to play them have to also purchase the DLC.

See the game Trials Fusion for an example of this, I think it worked well for them profits wise?

Sounds like Little Big Planet as well. The majority of content was user-created but they still sold content DLC which then allowed you to use those new items in your own levels.

People who play with mods are a tiny-but-vocal minority. Most people just download the vanilla game and play with that. Even if the game supports Steam Workshop, most players won't even bother to look.

Enthusiasts are a pretty small segment of any customer base.

That depends on the effectiveness of the platform in integrating mods. DOTA was far more popular than normal Warcraft RTS games at its peak.

You sell them quality. Mods are shit quality, across the board. They’re full of broken English, half baked assets, and tons of bugs. Sure, fun can be had, but when it comes to my wallet, I want quality attached to fun.

You have to be sarcastic. Thats just a nonsensical generalization. Far from all mods are broken shit just as far from all DLCs are polished. You have stuff like Enderal when it comes to mods and I hopefully dont have explain to you, how unpolished and simply broken many games are, let alone dlcs. There is a giant list of games which are only playable after years and years of community patches, made surprise surprise mainly by the modding community. But thats if modding is possible. If not you are left with the shitnugget you preordered.

Yes, there are good quality mods out there. But they sit on top of mountains of shit. You can’t point to the top of shit mountain and say “see, look at how good it is”

I can and i will if you say "across the board"

The better the "mod" tools the higher the quality of the modifications and additions. Also the simpler the game the easier it is to make such modifications. Many of the minecraft mods were vanilla level quality.

If that is the case, the the end goal should be a marketplace to sell mods, and the company can move up the food chain. Basically the sims works this way.

> If your users can effectively create new items, new maps, DLC, new missions, new characters etc what do you sell to them after your initial release?

You're discounting the value of good design and creator experience.

There might be a decreasing barrier to entry for creating more content for a game, but that doesn't mean everything will be of the same quality.

You sell them your brand and the quality behind that brand. This is arguably what is being sold for any product.

For games in particular, it's also not a new concept. Mods never really competed with expansions since the expansions promised a higher level of quality.

Today, you can look at games like Tabletop Simulator, Minecraft (to a degree), Mario Maker, or anything with Steam Workshop that also has DLC. The existence of usermade content is not really an obstacle for selling (well-made) DLC.

Your DLCs also expand the capabilities of the editors, because you need to add new functionality to program the levels hopefully (otherwise, you haven't really done much worth paying for).

Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne was an amazing hit, partly because it opened up the editor even more for content like DOTA.

Yes you can totally sell new versions if they expand the engine/editor in ways that allow for new games.

However you can think of it this way. The game shipped is a point in space. The possible mods to the game are nearby points in this gamespace. Given tools dictate the work involved to get to that new point in gamespace. The better the tools the larger that isosurface is for some given max amount of work. The problem for game studios is that the things they want to sell might exist within the space that is work path accessible to the mod community.

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