PAYWARE or FREEWARE?

[TteFAboB]

I'm happy with good mods, when a mod group is highly motivated because they have a price tag on their mods and they'll make a little extra money from it and even more talented modders join the group and they released a mod that is of superior quality to the original product (Microsoft Flight Simulator), I get happy, they get happy, paypal gets happy.

Marhkimov, if you had a modder group, with 5 or 10 talented people who would work like a professional dev group, would you be able to offer better mods than what you can do alone? Wouldn't you make more people happy with greater mods? Higher quality mods? I'm not judging any of your mods, I'm simply assuming a team can do better/larger stuff than a solo, given all members of the team are as skilled and dedicated as the solo modder.

So, in the end, you are being selfish for automatically excluding payware mods, you are denying to share your talent in a team to provide, supposedly, superior mods to the public.

Payware modders also get nice feedback, sometimes even more meaningfull because someone who pays 5$ for a mod is someone dedicated to that game, it's his hobby, his passion, he knows what he's talking about, it's not someone who installs a game, downloads 10 mods, plays for a month and then forgets about it.

Now, a mod is a mod and a game is a game, the game exists without any mods, so a mod can't be too expensive unless it's a complete overhaul, a whole new game, this is usually the case with Flight Simulator mods, the Microsoft team has been utterly surpassed in quality by modders, and those mods are expensive because they are aimed at FS fans, not the general kidd0, it's for people who were flying together during new years eve, it's for people who fly the real planes and want to fly it again, or other models, at home. Those mods are worth the money because they are better than the original game.

Now games like SH3 for example, have a more limited modding scope, can you charge for textures? An edited ship assembled with already existing pieces? Convoy editing? Are these little SH3 mods worth money? Not for me and I'd say there's plenty of people willing to do the same things for free, but if Ubisoft had chosen to release the SDK and we had the craziest mods available, I'd be willing to pay for them, such as a Pacific campaign, or nationality change like a British or Italian campaign or even an era change back to a WWI campaign.

[XabbaRus]

Depends on the mod.

Something that uses outside apps, eg 3DS MAX and a lot of time I guess you could say there is a fair point in charging but only if that is to cover costs.

Now what gets me is IL-2. Apart from the official expansions eg Aces over Europe and the other European theatre one, the mods I have seen for sale on X-1 and other places, eg Operation Barbarossa and Fall Blue seem to be massive new campaigns that have been put together using the IL-2 mission editor. (IIRC you can't mod IL-2 that much ie adding new models etc.) That's like me or someone making a huge dynamic mission in DW using the editor and then selling it.

It is a thorny question.

[Marhkimov]

Originally Posted by TteFAboB

Marhkimov, if you had a modder group, with 5 or 10 talented people who would work like a professional dev group, would you be able to offer better mods than what you can do alone? Wouldn't you make more people happy with greater mods? Higher quality mods? I'm not judging any of your mods, I'm simply assuming a team can do better/larger stuff than a solo, given all members of the team are as skilled and dedicated as the solo modder.

Who said anything about me being a solo modder? I was never a solo modder, and I never will be.

Originally Posted by TteFAboB

So, in the end, you are being selfish for automatically excluding payware mods, you are denying to share your talent in a team to provide, supposedly, superior mods to the public.

Are you so sure about that? :hmm: I do believe in team play, I just despise payware...


But neverminding, I'll probably buy the OFF software. They are THAT good.

IF the mod is good enough, and big enough, and IF the modders have permission from the publisher to ask a fee, then that's their business-literally. Those are important IFs, though.

[Marhkimov]

Yep, I agree... It is THEIR business.

It won't accomplish anything, but I just wanted to get a philosophical discussion about freeware and payware.

[TteFAboB]

Originally Posted by Marhkimov

Are you so sure about that?

I can only make assumptions based on illations, but nevermind that.

If you are willing to buy a mod, you recognize what's important is the quality of the mod and that a high quality mod is worth it.

[Marhkimov]

This is what I'm most interested in:

Has society turned everything into a big commercialization??? Everything takes money these days... What is happening to society?..... Free modding is almost like "the last stand" if you will..... And if we don't have free mods, then what do we have?

Just look at Christmas for instance.... These days, is it really about the spirit of giving?

[Excalibur Bane]

Originally Posted by Marhkimov

This is what I'm most interested in:

Has society turned everything into a big commercialization??? Everything takes money these days... What is happening to society?..... Free modding is almost like "the last stand" if you will..... And if we don't have free mods, then what do we have?

Just look at Christmas for instance.... These days, is it really about the spirit of giving?

Welcome to the world we live in. Nothing is sacred anymore, everything can be bought. Wealth is influence, influence is power and well, power is everything. People's lives are summed up by how well they did finanically. Unless you happen to be the pope, when you die you won't be noticed unless you were rich or relatively wealthy.

One could debate this topic for hours, it relates to everything from economic issues, to politics to war. Everything is driven by money, or the strategic gain of said money. It's not money itself that tends to drive people, but the advantages that come with wealth. You become powerful, a little money here and there and you can get anything you want. That's what is so attractive to people. That's what people kill for.

Everything has exceptions of course, but they are becoming fewer and fewer every year and with every new generation. I suppose the larger issue here, is when will this change and what will be the cost to humanity before we get head's straight and remember what is truly important? I suspect it will cost us our entire species before the problem is solved.

[Marhkimov]

Society is totally out of our puny hands. We are nothing but peons in the grand scheme of things.

But modders do have a choice to make either payware or freeware... So why make people pay, when life already does more than enough of that?


Every SH3 fan should be glad to know that I will NEVER take part in a payware project. NEVER

[TLAM Strike]

Every piece of mod work I've done, SC/DW Missions, Ships for Virtual Sailor, SHII and Global Conflict Blue, The Escape Velocity: Firefly mod, have been or will be released as freeware and have its source material available. I feel it’s the best way to help the community grow is by giving freely to it and letting others take that and built their own stuff with it. If you decide to start making stuff for money fine, just make sure your product is better than what is available for free and give support to it.

[TteFAboB]

Has society turned everything into a big commercialization??? Everything takes money these days... What is happening to society?..... Free modding is almost like "the last stand" if you will..... And if we don't have free mods, then what do we have?

Just look at Christmas for instance.... These days, is it really about the spirit of giving?

Society is totally out of our puny hands. We are nothing but peons in the grand scheme of things.

But modders do have a choice to make either payware or freeware... So why make people pay, when life already does more than enough of that?


Every SH3 fan should be glad to know that I will NEVER take part in a payware project. NEVER

I had this hypothesis, now you gave me the fundaments to base it.

Are you sure you make mods to make your users happy? I think there is a greater reason, something above that, given the fact you created this topic to despise payware and glorify your freeware mods, you are not out there to make anyone happy, you want fame and glory, you want to be recognized as the freedom fighter of freeware against the evil hordes of payware modders of the apocalypse, either to the public, to yourself or both.

Now you are a contraditory fellow, you deem little importance to money yourself, but then, to your users, money matters, money is so important to them they shouldn't have to waste it with your mods.

Why make people pay? Why bother making mods? Why should professionals waste their time with mods while they could be working on a game development? The full length of your question could be: "Why make people pay when a mod is not worth it?", that sounds fair for someone who understands what both options offer, but you chose to exclude payware entirely from your realm, that means you automatically exclude 50% of your modding possibilities, like tribes in Africa who exclude women are missing 50% of their talent, you pompously believe freeware to be the last stand, but that is a comfortable position for you to take with a game like SH3, where Ubisoft does not grant rights to sell payware mods to anyone other than X1 (who packages stolen mods) and considering how limited the game is, without an SDK it is difficult to offer any mods other than superficial editing.

I'm glad you will never sell any mod, I'd tend to believe it is a pitty you decide to always work as an amateur, always in your spare time, but you must be a master in the art of divination to know the future and this must be the right choice, you have probably noticed all your payware projects weren't good enough to be worth money.

But you could at least respect other modders, who decide to make a payware from scratch and create a product worth the money, because you make it sound as if your mods and all future mods you will ever make were and will be worth the money and you made the decision not to charge for them, and that payware modders want to suck the last drop of life off their clients. Good for you, shine, liberator angel of the helpless gamers, we shall follow your swanking.

[bradclark1]

Free is great but if the modder wants to be paid for it power to them.
A lot of people are doing that nowadays. Microsofts FS, Train Sim, RB3d, X-Plane and Falcon 4 are cases in point.
I've bought a few add-ons for a few games and enjoy them. They were worth it to me thus I didn't mind paying for them.

[XabbaRus]

Like I said it depends on the mod.

If it is something like FS wheere high quality well researched models have been made and the flight profiles sorted out along with scenery that is one thing.

If it is like the massive mission packs/campaign things made in the sims own editor like IL-2 then no.

[Wildcat]

I've only come across a few mods for flight sims worth paying for. I haven't tried over flanders field, but if they originally designed and released it to be freeware, it leads me to believe they have forgotten the original reason they created it now that they want people to pay for the rest of it.

Not that it's bad that they want money, but it's kind of like a money grab. I am a mod developer and have been for many games for many many years. I have put in thousands upon thousands of hours modding certain games but even still I haven't asked for any money, the reason I mod is because it helps me enjoy the game more and it helps others enjoy the game more. The moment I start charging other people for my work, I feel like the purpose has been lost.

[Marhkimov]

@ TteFAboB,


Sure, I AM being a little contradictory... But then maybe I'm just a little pissed that OFF began as freeware, and is all of a sudden going payware. Who wouldn't be pissed, right?

Maybe I AM saying that I stand on a higher ground than the OFF Mod Team, but then again, that is my business. I am allowed to think and feel however I want.

And to quote Wildcat's last line in his post:

The moment I start charging other people for my work, I feel like the purpose has been lost.

I dunno about you, but I feel the same way. The challenge of modding is to enhance the gameplay for others, WITHOUT having to go out of your way to empty their pocketbooks. Well, that's just how I feel.



But lets forget about me for a second... Let's forget about OFF for a second...

Ya' know what? It really sucks to run into payware... Hah, simple as that.