General Discussion

Clash of Heroes is fun, but I don't know that I'd compare it too closely with Puzzle Quest. Clash is built on a match-three system, but the combat is much more active, and the strategy deeper than that of PQ. I love both of those games, but they play very differently.

Have you played the Legend of Grimmrock games? I was interested in Might & Magic X, too, but the reviews turned me away. Most people are saying the Grimmrock games are a more polished set of that turn-based, first person RPG.

This move is basically an overnight regime change, so revolt and unrest isn't at all surprising. If this system had been implemented with a new game, it would likely be largely received in a positive light. The biggest problem today, is that current game states, for people using mods which now require payment, is broken. To fix it, and continue the game you've already been playing, you have to pay more money. Keeping in mind that we've been playing a modified game, without any license or guarantee, and we aren't owed anything (that's the risk of using mods), this abrupt change in economy still seems really irresponsible on the part of Valve and Bethesda, and reeks a bit of opportunistic greed.

I can't tell if most people upset by this are simply users or actual modders, but the arguments seem to swing from "Why should I pay for something I've used for years without paying?" to "This will ruin the existing modding scene?" Both seem unconcerned with the fact that modding a game is a privilege, not a right, set forward by the games original creator. It's a wildly amazing part of geek culture, and I'm grateful for it. If anyone is going to profit off of mods, though, the original content creator should recieve the bulk of the revenue. People are contrasting this current revenue split with that of the Apple App Store, and they are two completely different models. The 75% split going to the devs on the App Store is for content they are creating from scratch (theoretically), not modified content of someone elses creation. Not to mention that the discretion is on the modder to charge for the mod (a little publicized fact). They can still offer mods for free, but if they want to start charging for derivative content, then the curators and IP creators should get a proportional cut. Bethesda could have forced every modder to charge for mods, but they didn't.

Reminds me of this enlightening scene in Tombstone: https://youtu.be/JJ79nNquQ0c

(from http://garry.tv/2015/04/24/paying-for-mods/) ...but it’s the modder’s work that is making the money

Is it the modders mod that's making the money, or is it the original IP that drives that market? People aren't commissioning artists to paint Spider-man, simply because they are great artists. They are also, and more prominantly, paying for a composition of the character, one of which the artist likely had absolutely no hand in creating. If I'm laying the groundwork, and someone else is making more money than me because of my work, is that fair?

Now, I would totally think it logical that Valve should get less of a cut, since they really don't do much but offer convenience of execution. As of now, reportedly, the modder gets more than half of what Bethesda gets. That's totally fair. Maybe Valve should only get 15%, leaving the modder with 35% and Bethesda with 50%. Would that be better?

Skyrim is more than a framework, it's a finished house. Unreal Engine is nothing without the games that come from it. Skryim will always be Skyrim (I hope), mods are superfluous to the Skyrim experience. Fun, and some even genius, but in the end, superfluous.

"If I'm laying the groundwork, and someone else is making more money than me because of my work, is that fair?"

I heard this the other day and it seemed good. Not really what you mean, but it's about fairness and thinking about others having enough. For me, I am not as worried about Bethesda and want to see mod creators get a nicer slice.

Would you think it more fair that there was a sliding scale of profit distribution the more successful a product is, essentially taking responsibility away from the creator to be fair, and placing a restriction on excess profits? Isn't that basically capitalism vs. socialism? Is that what this is all about?

But, as you said, Travis, it's new content within the context of Skyrim. Without the context of Skyrim, that mod would be irrelevant. A new bathroom added to a house may increase the overall value of a house, but, without the house, that bathroom is fairly useless. Unless you're camping :).

Basically what I'm saying is that Bethesda or whoever could just release an unfinished game (which while I loved Skyrim, it kinda was unfinished), and rake in profits while others finish it for them.

That's a funny position, because that's what some feel the industry suffering from at the moment, only It's being done without mods (most Early Access, Destiny, Sim City, Battlefield 4, etc.). "Unfinished" also seems highly subjective these days. Most of my friends have put hundreds of hours into Skyrim. Unfinished or not, it's playable, and quite enjoyable. If Destiny supported mods, I would be ecstatic, and yet I've put hundreds of hours into it. Destiny is a proof of concept, and not much more than that. Should someone else be able to make a living helping to finish the game, without the consent from, or payment going to Bungie? Some would say "Hell, yes!", but I would argue, no. Make your own game. Look at Star Wars. In my opinion, Lucas did horrible things to his creation, but ultimately it's his creation and he can do whatever he wants with it. Yes, I think there may be cultural responsibilities, but in the end it's his art. Money has changed hands, licenses transferred, and now we are getting a Star Wars that we really want (hopefully) ;).

The house building analogy isn't perfect. Obviously, contractors are hired to build specific additions, not given tools to do what they want and then compensated retroactively based on an arbitrary scale. However, when the house eventually goes to market and sells, that bathroom contractor won't see a dime of the sale profits.

A game creator does not have to support the modding community. As I said before, this is a privilege subject to the terms of the original IP holder. Mods created outside of consent of the original creator is a breach of copyright law. Jon's comment about anyone being able to cover another artists song and not having to get permission, is only partly true. Performance of someone else's work in public is technically an infringement on copyright law, and the license holder could definitely take action. It's done so often and so widely that it's near impossible to police, but that doesn't necessarily make it okay.

We're not really arguing what's best for Bethesda, or their fans, but rather the viability of this new system, and the timing of it. To think that this will substantially change the modding community is silly, I think, and people that are taking reactionary actions are essentially protecting their own interests (and that's fine). Funny, though, that Modder A is understood, even lauded, in their actions to take down mod content because they don't want anyone else profiting off of their work, and yet Bethesda is being chastised for wanting a share in a completely optional system, if anyone cares to participate, but basically following the same principle. I don't understand that. Money isn't evil, nor is wanting compensation for work. Saying that Bethesda hasn't done any work, in regards to these mods, is missing the point. These mods would not exist without Bethesda's blessing, and Bethesda holds the rights.

What if this system was implemented with Camera Obscura (which, as of now, has a total of 2 Steam Workshop files) instead of Skyrim?

Also, @jdodson but I am not sure what I think when someone wants to lock what they do down and not allow any outside contributions to it. That's an interesting statement. Feelings aside, do you think they should have the right to do this?

I still don't know what you're arguing with "Bethesda holds the rights." Nobody has disputed that.

I thought one of the primary arguments was compensation, and how it should be divided, not whether this was good for the fans. My arguments concerning Bethesda as a copyright holder point toward the rationale of them getting a bigger cut than someone building a modification to their game (finished, or otherwise).

That was essentially my argument, that, I feel, it is fair, contrary to what's being said. Specifically as it concerns the contrast to what App Store vendors make. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/04/24/dayz-creator-weighs-in-on-paid-skyrim-mods-your-turn-rockstar/

Ugh. As a human I don't know how to seperate feelings from myself because they are part of my experience. Some say they can do it and I think they are not being accurate.

I hope you stay away from serving on a jury! :D

This might be getting off topic, but your pull quote explains exactly how the copyright laws protect creativity; by giving "exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This isn't like programming, where open-source is a cool thing. "Open source" art isn't generally considered cool, especially among struggling artists. Working from inspiration and getting better at your craft by learning from someone else's work is an entirely different conversation.

For the record, Defense Council Travis, did you read this article before making that last comment? http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2015/04/24/dayz-creator-weighs-in-on-paid-skyrim-mods-your-turn-rockstar/

I don't want to argue semantics, either. That sounds exhausting! ;)

I think it will work itself out to a good spot eventually (hopefully, maybe) but damn did they ever pick a bad game to start this experiment.

100% Agreed.

I'm betting, and this could be me being totally naive, that once Galaxy drops from GoG, you might see Valve a little more active on maintenance front. That level of a competing product, I hope, would be taken seriously by Valve. I'd like to see Riot form a relationship with GoG. I doubt it will happen, but that would be a fun, big deal ;). Now I'm getting way off topic!

I've never gone directly to Valve for support issues. I usually surf for answers on the web. Maybe I've never had a serious enough issue, but then I rarely, if ever, go to software companies for tech support. I don't know why. It might be more helpful if I did (or not, as the case may be).

I believe I signed up for the Galaxy beta, but never heard anything from GoG. I'm really anxious to try it out, as that's the only reason a lot of my GoG games have gone uninstalled. It's a sad excuse, I know, but there it is.

Wouldn't you just have to chalk that up to the risk of using mods? I don't think that QA could have helped. The fact that the game states haven't been transferable between modded and natural games is evident of that. Who would you hold responsible for that?

I'm sure they understood that save games could break, but what could they have done to prevent that from happening (aside from, of course, not implementing this system)?

I don't know how I feel about so-called "remix culture." Frankly, I think it's weird that everything has an index these days; an ism, or a culture, or genre, or whatever the next thing is. I don't really buy his whole talk either, for some reason. Good art and creativity tend to come out of adversity. The poignancy of message is lost when the struggle for art is watered down to the point where no message can even take hold. Personally, I'm not a fan of sampling, even though I like some songs that use it. I remember watching the Grammys one year ( I think it was the Grammys), and Sean Combs was on stage with Sting, and they did some weird mash-up of Every Breath You Take, with Combs rapping during what would be the verses... It was a sad moment for me. I suppose you could argue that it was creative, but to me it just looked like bad art, and a poor representation of each of those artists abilities. Remixing the works of existing art can sometimes bring about cool things, I guess, but often it just comes off as uninspired. As a creator, why would I want to literally base my work on someone else's? Then there is the misrepresentation of the original artist; how often is credit given to the original work in these remixes?

I'll have to watch Lessig's talk a couple more times. I didn't see anything in there about laws choking creativity, which I'm not sure is even possible.

After watching through a couple more times, I think I'm even more confused. I feel like Lessig is insinuating the stifling of creativity, but what he's really talking about is the stifling of innovation, which makes a lot more sense to me. Opening user generated content up for business should be the title of the talk (it's his opening statement). His examples don't seem to hold water, either. Did ASCAP suffer because BMI offered free music, or due to boycott because of an attempt at outrageous increases in licensing fees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCAP_boycott), which would be a much different story.

An argument could also be made that such uses of remixing or free access have actually hindered creativity, at least in some respects. Pieces become rehashes of rehashes to the point where we're just living in a loop of regurgitated art (this is basically why 'hipsters' are a thing). It's innovative, but not really creative. When everyone has access to everything all the time, the landscape tends to look uniform, the past and the present blur, and then how are you left to express yourself?

Why does the date on that article say April 26, 2011? What is the criteria for posting on PC Gamer? It reads more like a blog post. He doesn't really make any points as to why he should get paid as a modder, only that he deserves it because he works hard, while mocking the companies that allow modding in the first place. In fact, at one point he basically is just telling the reader to abandon opinion, and agree that modders deserve to get paid. That's not a good article.

Looks like they're pulling it: http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

That was kind of an intense two-day roller coaster! Now, we're right back where we started, except there is this thing that happened, which will hopefully come back in a better way. It feels like it was all a dream...

I haven't finished watching the video yet, but I thought I'd answer Scrypt's question to the audience. On my old PC, I was trying to use a PS3 controller and that was with Morrowind. I tried XPadder or some other program, which actually worked when it emulated as an XBox 360 controller. I did finally get it working, though it took a bit of a process. When I got in the game, it didn't quite work out as I had hoped, so I stopped trying to use the PS3 controller on my PC. Last year, I bought a new Alienware PC and instead of trying to use a PS3 controller, I decided to buy a USB XBox 360 controller. That has worked out extremely well! I plug it in and it gets recognized. Recently, I've used it playing GTAV and I really enjoy it. I didn't have to do any configuration whatsoever for it to work, the game instantly recognized that I was playing with it. So, when the game was telling me how to use the controls, it showed the XBox 360 buttons. I did try the game with the keyboard and mouse, but thought the controller would make everything a bit simpler and give me more fluid movement. Thanks goes to Jon and Travis for their recommendation on getting that controller for my PC.

As for the Steam controller, I agree with a few things you guys said. I think the buttons being under the D-Pad area on the right might be odd, especially to someone who's used to having those buttons above. I'm not sure how it's going to work and I imagine for some games it might do well. Personally, I'm happy with my current set up and don't anticipate getting a Steam controller.

Thanks for the reply, @GregoPeck. The convenience of the XBox 360 controller is certainly a good thing. I'm thankful, since, in general, I prefer playing games with a controller. I thought Sony had mentioned driver support for PC for the DualShock 4 at some point, but that could have been a dream I had.

From what I've read about the Steam controller, it seems that the games will have to support it in order to get that same type of native recognition. Otherwise, you'll have to do some button-mapping to get the games to work. I don't anticipate the controller to natively support most Steam games. I'm sure Valve will have some user-contributed database of layout options that you can download from, but then you'll probably still have to do some tweaking to suit you're needs. Native SteamOS games won't have this problem. Developers are probably already being encouraged to patch their existing offerings with Steam Controller support.

I think the Alienware Steam Machine is at the top because the list looks like it's in alphabetical order. That $5,000 one is seriously awesome (hardware wise). 8TB SSD, that sounds awesome! Still, I spent less than that on my Alienware PC and it's superb, so I don't expect to be buying another PC or even a Steam Machine for a very long time.

I seem to recognize all but one of those games by name and I haven't played any of them. So, that's why I haven't voted. I did see a demo for Half-Life 2 on Steam, perhaps I'll give it a try some time.

Yeah if there's a tie in the end we'll just flip for which one do to first, then just make the other game our next one. :)

Looks like Half-life 2 took the lead, but then again Jon apparently voted for it twice. >.>

Let's give it until Wednesday Night's Roundtable. If there's a tie, we'll flip a coin on the show. We'll start the next Games Club on the first of April. :D

I'm calling it and naming Half-Life 2 the official winner. The official start time for the event is April 1st. :D

I should probably play the demo a bit more to see if it's something I want to play. I played it very briefly and haven't gotten into combat yet. That's cool, about the update mod. Even though the game is a bit dated, I didn't feel like it looked bad. I haven't really played FPS games in a long time.

Since I'm playing Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls (see my event for why), I'm thinking it would be a good Games Club game. I also think in June, Terraria, would be a great pick for when 1.3 is released (we may even want to create another server).

Oh yes, we will definitely set something up when the Terraria patch hits.

Awesome about a Terraria 1.3 server. If you need any kind of help let me know. I could attempt to run a server from my PC and we could test it.