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Game Modification Scale

March 8th, 2006 by

D6Veteran

Steve Kielinen (aka Wyatt_Earp) over at IW Nation posted and interesting article in which he rates games based on their performance in terms of number of times modded. Not surprising, the lack of Modification Tools seriously effects the number of conversions produced by the modding community. Most notably Call of Duty suffered due to the lack of tools.

Here is a bone chilling number. BF2 modding community has released 98 modifications to the game in six months for average of 16.3 Mods per month. It’s quite remarkable that a game is six months old and has been modified by the community 98 times. Even though there is no source code available, editors are coming packaged with the game, including documentation and tutorials. Modification scale 3/5 stars.

Call of Duty™, winner of countless awards is one of my favorite games. With 38 modifications, and 7 total conversion modifications, 3 of which I was involved in the development. How can that be? We can blame that on poor documentation, and one of the less than desirable map editors on the market. In addition, IW™ did not release an SDK as promised, much like MOH: AA™. This placed a severe cramp in the side of modification makers from the start. Therefore, Call of Duty ™ has an average of 1.46 modifications per month for 26 months. Modification scale 1/5 stars

By: D6Veteran | 03/08/06 | Mods - Game Tech | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]

7 Responses to “Game Modification Scale” »»

Scorpion

Comment by Scorpion | 03/08/06 at 7:01 pm |

Interesting comment made by Wyatt_Earp and more interesting the statistics generated by the numbers presented. I too love CoD, more so then BF2. Primarily my interest is in game play and I find WW-II FPS for more interesting then modern combat systems.

If Wyatt_Earp once to make a more profound observation, he needs to correlate game sales to modification. It is immaterial how much a game has been modified in a period of time if the core is no longer being purchased.

I would make the argument that CoD sales out numbered those of BF2, but is very hard to back this up do to the extreme difference in game play-different strokes for different folks.

I would argue it has been determined that the PC market is fickle in game purchased while console games are what they are-game systems. If you have an X-Box, you will buy games for it-period!

The real question should be is console games making profound in roads vs PC applications. If that is the case, then modification’s to the core (SDKs, APIs, etc.) are a profit loss to the company that creates them. After all who wants to dump a bunch of time (AKA money) into development if there is no return on investment for a SDK?

I say if you want to see a real change in this kind of thought process, after market modifications need to exploited for cash. RO is a nice example on how a little effort (and very few pennies) go a long way to making the core more marketable…………….

Scorp
D6Veteran

Comment by D6Veteran | 03/08/06 at 8:43 pm |

I could not help but think of how/if the Tripwire story changes the modding landscape at all. I mean we’re now all front seat to the fairy tail story where modding team becomes ‘professional developers’ releasing a product that has some of the best hype and fanfare money can buy. I’m no modder, but I have got to believe the serious modders out there are looking at there work in a different light. So in that sense Wyatt_Earp’s argument - do not buy if you cannot modify - may resonate.
Malice

Comment by Malice | 03/08/06 at 9:23 pm |

Wonder what he considers a mod. because there are alot of mods for COD ranging from weapons mods, to new gametypes, to new vehicles to realism mods and there are alot more the 38.
D6Veteran

Comment by D6Veteran | 03/08/06 at 10:37 pm |

I’ll try and contact Steve and see if he can tell us how he got those numbers. I honestly have no idea but it may be he is refering to total conversions only?
Scorpion

Comment by Scorpion | 03/09/06 at 7:29 pm |

It would be an interesting statistic if modding creates more revenue for the core. If so, it would make since for the original developers to make efforts to exploit the tools. Otherwise, it’s a hacking crew of creative people trying to make the game they purchased more interesting, not to mention bring more ROI on what they purchased.
D6Veteran

Comment by D6Veteran | 03/09/06 at 8:24 pm |

I would think the answer is yes. I mean based on Half Life (CS, DoD) and Unreal Tournament (RO) alone you should be able to argue (in the boardroom) that exposing your game to modders through a better toolset is going to create more sales in the long run. The question is how much does it cost to provide those tools and support them?
Scorpion

Comment by Scorpion | 03/09/06 at 10:40 pm |

Not sure if that is true. You would have to correlate dates of released modifications against revenue generated for a fixed period of time.

It would be an interesting study, but a hard one to track.

Unfortunately, I think you’ll find most people who have the game would reload it to play a modification, but new business wouldn’t percolate to the top of the revenue pile.

Albeit, RO IMHO is not a modification but a new game built on an engine-not a core of a pre-exisiting game. Therefore you can’t really count it into the mix.

Although, you do bring up an interesting issue of using an engine. Should the engine be open source and freely available, or should the charge money for it?

Game Modification Scale

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