Since as far back as I can remember mods have been apart of the PC gaming community. Mostly in the form of cheats in the early days but you could completely change a way a single game was experienced. Some of the most iconic games we know like Counter Strike and DotA started off as modification to an existing game. Whether they are good or bad they have deeply impacted the gaming community.
Lets talk about the Creation Club. Creation Club is the brainchild of Bethesda where people who mod game could now receive funding from the company for the products they create. Now programmers can submit plans for original content to Bethesda and they will be paid to create those plans. These plans will have deadlines and a development cycle along with testing.
I am going to reveal a few things about myself so I can show where my bias is coming from and that way a reasonable opinion can be formed off of what is being presented and argued in this article. I am a software developer myself. I work for a company making in house propiatary software so not necessarily video game. There are several games that were started to be made on my PC but time and boredom found a way to stop production. There was also a point I ran a minecraft server full of mods in which I would have to update and patch. I have a good understanding of the time it takes to make anything.
My background has led me to really like this idea but at the same time I have a fear of what a company can do to stifle creativity. Lets go on the positive. Mods take can take a lot of time to create. There are some people out there who have accidently caught a signficant other, suffer from full time work, or even worse, caught the baby. Even with these huge life setbacks, people will spend their free time improving the games we all love to play and let's face it people do not donate for free patches. Compensation can go a long way in getting talented people to make some really cool things. It can also give younger programmers some real world experience.
Now on the other hand I can see this as micro transactions gone crazy. It also has the chance to stifle some of the possible next game trends. Imagine if Nexus Wars was a paid mod. Would anybody have played Starcraft II? (I don't mean that as ironically as you might think.) Nonetheless games like DotA might never have had the success they did if their was a pay wall. Paying for a game on top of games is a very large ask and if some creators go down the Creation Club path they might not be able to get the same exposure they would have otherwise received. This will stifle possible new and unique game types and give advantage to primarily skins and weapons.
The Creation Club is still something new so I am not surprised at the reaction it has garnered. Bethesda reps have said that free modding will still exist along side this program.(pcgamer.com) I am still cautiously optimistic about what this could entail for up and coming programmers but the key word here is cautious. The back of my head is still ripe with the idea other studios will take this idea and run with it. Leading to possible scenarios as modification bans or mandatory paid mods. All in all, with the ability of many programmers to crack whatever security game devs try and use, I don't think modding is going to go anywhere.
Now on the other hand I can see this as micro transactions gone crazy. It also has the chance to stifle some of the possible next game trends. Imagine if Nexus Wars was a paid mod. Would anybody have played Starcraft II? (I don't mean that as ironically as you might think.) Nonetheless games like DotA might never have had the success they did if their was a pay wall. Paying for a game on top of games is a very large ask and if some creators go down the Creation Club path they might not be able to get the same exposure they would have otherwise received. This will stifle possible new and unique game types and give advantage to primarily skins and weapons.
The Creation Club is still something new so I am not surprised at the reaction it has garnered. Bethesda reps have said that free modding will still exist along side this program.(pcgamer.com) I am still cautiously optimistic about what this could entail for up and coming programmers but the key word here is cautious. The back of my head is still ripe with the idea other studios will take this idea and run with it. Leading to possible scenarios as modification bans or mandatory paid mods. All in all, with the ability of many programmers to crack whatever security game devs try and use, I don't think modding is going to go anywhere.
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