Blockland Forums > Suggestions & Requests
Blockland mod market system?
Headcrab Zombie:
--- Quote from: Gartanium on March 04, 2013, 01:13:46 AM ---Money as a motivation promotes bad practice? lol? I guess motivating people to work for a job is bad?
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People get jobs for the sole purpose of getting money. Nobody (or at least very few people) wake up in the morning and say "Oh boy, I get to go to work today! How fun!"
They might be very passionate about their work, but if told "Hey we can't pay you anymore but you can still work here if you want" how many people do you think would stay?
Add-on makers are quite the opposite; we do it for fun, with no expectation of a return. Some add-on makers even spend money on it (such as RTB server hosting)
--- Quote from: Gartanium on March 04, 2013, 01:36:05 AM ---.
But since for the most part people have to work for a living, there is a real limit to how much time and effort they can put into it. Most skilled, professional developers who love making mods don't have all that much time to put into making mods. But if someone can charge a bit for making high quality mods he can put a lot more time and effort into doing so. This doesn't mean that he is just doing it for the money. Someone doing this just for the money probably wouldn't make quality mods anyway. He would still be doing something he loves to do, but would be able to put a lot more time into it, because now he is making part of his living by doing so.
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People with the skills to develop things for money are already doing so, or are currently on the way (school, etc) to doing so.
Hell I've seen sites out there where you can upload models and people can pay to download them. There's probably something similar for code.
Please, before you continue trying to argue in support of this, tell us how it would even work
If someone buys an add-on, how do you prevent them from sending it to all their friends?
When you join a server, you download all image, model, and sound files for the add-ons the server is running. What if some of these files are from add-ons that cost money? How does the server handle it? Send it to them anyways? Kick them off and make them buy the add-on?
How would this affect licensing? Would it bring up any legal issues?
Twenky:
just grabbed a sweet deal on funky shirt
only 15$
Gartanium:
--- Quote from: Gartanium on March 04, 2013, 01:36:05 AM ---If the game maker chose to allow mod makers to sell their products, people would still be able to do it for free if they chose. Most people who make mods as a hobby sill would.
But since for the most part people have to work for a living, there is a real limit to how much time and effort they can put into it. Most skilled, professional developers who love making mods don't have all that much time to put into making mods. But if someone can charge a bit for making high quality mods he can put a lot more time and effort into doing so. This doesn't mean that he is just doing it for the money. Someone doing this just for the money probably wouldn't make quality mods anyway. He would still be doing something he loves to do, but would be able to put a lot more time into it, because now he is making part of his living by doing so.
The game maker benefits also, because his game becomes more popular because of the high quality mods.
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This post was written by an experienced software developer and investor. Please take the time to read it.
Remember I was suggesting this under the pretense that there would be a system inplace to stop addons from being distributed freely (Like the Key system for Blockland). The fine details would be worked out by Badspot obviously, but it can be done.
Other games have found success in allowing users to sell their mods as I have said before [Mount and Blade Warband, Napoleonic wars]. Starcraft 2, Created by blizzard, has also toyed with the idea of allowing users to sell their custom maps.
Its been shown in other communities that some players are willing to pay for addons. Again, not all things would cost money, just the high quality stuff that wouldn't be developed under our current conditions. The last time I shelled out money for Blockland was like in 2007 or 2008 (I forget). I would be more then willing to shell out a few bucks here and there to get major improvements to the game that could only come from our modding community.
Twenky:
so uh
you're comparing huge game overhauls made by a team of experienced devs with blockland addons which are made by dudes who just learned how to script?
Sevara:
--- Quote from: Gartanium on March 04, 2013, 01:27:18 PM ---This post was written by an experienced software developer and investor. Please take the time to read it.
Remember I was suggesting this under the pretense that there would be a system inplace to stop addons from being distributed freely (Like the Key system for Blockland). The fine details would be worked out by Badspot obviously, but it can be done.
Other games have found success in allowing users to sell their mods as I have said before [Mount and Blade Warband, Napoleonic wars]. Starcraft 2, Created by blizzard, has also toyed with the idea of allowing users to sell their custom maps.
Its been shown in other communities that some players are willing to pay for addons. Again, not all things would cost money, just the high quality stuff that wouldn't be developed under our current conditions. The last time I shelled out money for Blockland was like in 2007 or 2008 (I forget). I would be more then willing to shell out a few bucks here and there to get major improvements to the game that could only come from our modding community.
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I regularly do microtransactions on STO, and I think this is a terrible idea. Blockland, as an average, has a much younger audience than most of the games you're talking about. There's a difference between me, with a job, shelling out a couple bucks every so often for a goody and Mom and Dad's credit card going on a shopping spree for every weapon on Blockland.
There's huge, industry-wide disagreement about how deep developers should go in monetizing parts of the game. You want to see an example of it backfiring, platform-wide? See the Facebook settlement. Nobody knows how much money they had to throw in to pay $5 to everyone that claims their kid bought stuff in FB apps, and some people are going to show their receipts and get a lot more back than that. You're talking millions of dollars in liability. For a game developed primarily by two people.
ETA: the mods people would probably pay the most money for are client-sided. If we were going to lock out peer-to-peer mod transfers, those same mods that would make money would become unusable.