BI/modder revenue stream. Charge a fee for mods.

[BeerHunter 0]

A couple of the simulators I play allow developers to charge a fee for their efforts (X-Plane , MS Flight Sim) for such things as aircraft and scenery packages. Some flyers have hundreds , some thousands , invested in various mods.

Market place determines the viability of the enterprise. If it's poor quality no one buys it. If it's excellent , word of mouth soon spreads.

Some of the mods in ArmA2 are a team effort and hundred , if not thousands , of man hours have gone into developing the mod .ACE , PR , CBA , Blast Core are just a few that come to mind. There are others.

BI could issue a small mod licence for a very nominal fee , allowing the mod developer to charge a fee for his efforts.

This I think would ensure continuity and quality of the mod and an excellent modder could even possibly look at a career here.

The majority playing ArmA2 don't hesitate to spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade hardware to enjoy ArmA2 to it's fullest , spend hundreds of dollars a year on internet service , so why not a few extra bucks to reward those whose efforts go into making the game more enjoyable?

Some do take voluntary contributions and I do contribute whenever I can , but imagine hundreds don't.

Food for thought.

[gossamersolid 155]

No

/Thread

[metalcraze 290]

No

The game dies for me the moment people start charging money for mods because 95% are of a subpar quality compared to a vanilla content.

[gossamersolid 155]

The game dies for me the moment people start charging money for mods because 95% are of a subpar quality compared to a vanilla content.

I wouldn't exactly use that as a reason. Gonna piss off a lot of addon makers lol.

[dmarkwick 261]

Oof, no :) While I would welcome some free cash :D I do it for the love of it. If I charge for it, I become obligated to make it perfect for whoever decides to comment on it.

Plus, really I do it for myself. IMO that's the motivation that works best. Otherwise, as we have seen occasionally on these boards, people can get disaffected and grumpy.

[soul_assassin 1750]

No

The game dies for me the moment people start charging money for mods because 95% are of a subpar quality compared to a vanilla content.

more like 95% is a regurgitation of someone else's work.

[gossamersolid 155]

more like 95% is a regurgitation of someone else's work.

I wouldn't place 95%, but it's a higher percentage.

[sickboy 13]

plz del

Edited August 30, 2011 by Sickboy

[rejenorst 18]

I wouldn't exactly use that as a reason. Gonna piss off a lot of addon makers lol.

He does however have a point in terms of quality control. In most cases we pay money to developers we trust in which case we expect a certain standard of quality.

If people feel they have something worth selling they should seek the support of ARMA2 developers to integrate their content as a DLC package so that at the very least BI studio can do a quality check before anyone starts forking out cash. If however individuals or groups start charging x amount of cash for their work at random then we run into all sorts of problems with intellectual property rights as someone above has mentioned and plenty of pissed off consumers who bought the/a DLC content that probably didn't go through any proper channels of quality control.

Personally and this is just my opinion, is that it will hurt the ARMA2 community more than it will do it any good.

Edited August 30, 2011 by Rejenorst

[sickboy 13]

Currently is not allowed due to the license me thinks.

I think the better solution lies in the middle - more attention for donations.

Rather hard though - how to divide money received by a mod team of a lot of guys - especially when a lot of work overlaps eachother?

Personally I have always liked the fact that money isn't involved in this scene.. At least not directly, there's obviously software/hardware/hosting costs etc.

No

The game dies for me the moment people start charging money for mods because 95% are of a subpar quality compared to a vanilla content.

So? You have a choice to buy what you want, and not buy what you don't want?

Same like you wouldnt use the addon now.

Might even increase motivation for making better works, when your mods don't sell :P

Edited August 30, 2011 by Sickboy

[BeerHunter 0]

I think the better solution lies in the middle - more attention for donations.

.

Makes sense....

[metalcraze 290]

So? You have a choice to buy what you want, and not buy what you don't want?

Same like you wouldnt use the addon now.

You wanted to say "sorry you can't play on our server now, you have to buy our addon first"

[OrLoK 20]

Hello all

an interesting topic, but as a player rather than a mod maker dev etc, if one had to pay for a mod, then I'd only have one or two of the bigger "TC" releases on my hard drive.

Possibly, I *might* buy a mod if the cost were down to the microtransaction level. but the cost would really have to be very low indeed.

Although I am an arma player, Im also unemployed so dont have cash to spend on unlimited hardware, so even though this is a "niche" game, we are not all "niche" players with full cockpit rigs and multi monitor setups.

I am however happy to pay for a full release/extension as happened with IL2. IF its a pro final release with *full* support, even if its not by the original devs Id be happy to shell out a tenner or so. But It would be a rare occasion, I couldnt do it for multi releases.

Also mod making seems to be a vocation rather than a fee earning path and it gets your portfolio out to a wider audience and can really help with your CV, so I dont see pay to play mods being the norm.

rgds

LoK

[icebreakr 3159]

Rejenorst, what quality control are you talking about? BIS has more than 1040 bugs still open (chk dev-heaven tracker) and its more than 2 years since the release and 1 year and few months since release of Arrowhead expansion. Many great members of my team left our squadnights because so many things are still the same since OFP (10 years+!). Hopefully A3 attracts them back, but its still a year away... and no guarantee from BIS that they are pushing realism ahead.

I believe modding should stay free, but as Sickboy suggested - donations are a way to go. I would like to thank everyone who donated so far, worked for/with me, donated their precious addons/100s hours of works and all those who just love to play around on my islands. But mostly there's bunch of people involved in the community (always check credits in readme) who work for free, with passion and don't expect anything in return - thats what I call good karma. And thats what I like most about A2C.

If I ever get a chance to complete my business as I've started 10 years ago, I'll try to pay out donations to various project contributors and also use donations to encourage new content that I would love to see get released. One more idea I have is to attract more people to my MP events by:

- giving out various $$$ amounts for completing a mission objective (finding a suitcase for example and bringing it to a special spot)

- somehow award players that put teamwork ahead of their personal accomplishment

- finishing a MP race in top 3 spots.

etc.

Encourage to play - thats the way to go IMHO.

Edited August 30, 2011 by IceBreakr

[Bee8190 10]

Oof, no :) While I would welcome some free cash :D I do it for the love of it. If I charge for it, I become obligated to make it perfect for whoever decides to comment on it.

Plus, really I do it for myself. IMO that's the motivation that works best. Otherwise, as we have seen occasionally on these boards, people can get disaffected and grumpy.

Yes, what Mr.DMarkwick said.

People might to start on demanding, like quicker support in case of little bug or alike and all the friendly and supportive atmosphere would wanish.

I wish i could donate every place I feel its well deserved but thats unfortunately over my capabilities.

Speaking of hardware, I imagine many ppl upgrade when it becomes real necessary just to keep them playing.

[kremator 1065]

Just plain NO.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

No only no, but hell no! Payware ruined flightsim for some of us. Not instantly, when payware actually was quality. But slowly over time, as freeware makers never got noticed anymore and payware got more and more crappy.

Buy FSX Deluxe for under $20 at Amazon.

Or get the 2MB payware FSX backup program for just $30.

What the hell is wrong with this world?

Remember the R4D/DC-3 legal case? Ugly as shit. Do you really want to see people literally go to war over "you copied my respawn script"? The issue was a bit more severe, but the threshold is lowering.

Edited August 30, 2011 by CarlGustaffa

[NZXSHADOWS 0]

Thanks is payment enough for me.

[JdB 151]

Currently is not allowed due to the license me thinks.

I think the better solution lies in the middle - more attention for donations.

Rather hard though - how to divide money received by a mod team of a lot of guys - especially when a lot of work overlaps eachother?

Invasion 1944 has had up a donation possibility for a few years now, so many people "absolutely love your work", "best mod ever" etc. How much has been collected so far? 0 (zero)

OFP.info (/armedassault.info) has had a donation option since at least 2003, with the donator being mentioned on the frontpage of the site, not much more than €100 has been collected in all those years, and that's only because Old Bear, now one of the admins, made a sizable donation. Countless TB of data downloaded for free, tens of thousands of users, barely anything donated in return. Hardly any volunteers to work on the site either for that matter.

People like having things, if they can get them for free that is. So I don't see donations making any difference, even if creators were to put more emphasis on the option.

I'm sure that paid addons would increase the likeliness of theft of an original author's (from this community or from outside of it) work because of the easy money that it brings, so I don't really see the benefits of it. If you need money to motivate you, you might not be interested in making addons for the love of the process of creating something, but in making money, and love for ones work produces better addons than a financial reward imo.

Edited August 30, 2011 by JdB

[ProfTournesol 956]

No, no, no and no.

The game dies for me the moment people start charging money for mods because 95% are of a subpar quality compared to a vanilla content.

How about helping them making things better :rolleyes:

[HR4 Elite 10]

I can see where ‘BeerHunter’ is coming from, as a non mod maker myself it does seem like people are giving away lots of hours of work for nothing. However you sell it and your retailing in essence and that means back up and the rest.

‘Sickboy’ said donations which I think is a good idea, however, mod makers don’t seem to want anything.

So why not an 'Arma2 Community Charity Collection Fund', whereas all donations are sent centrally to a moderator or anyone put forward who would do it, then they send the money collected over the year to help the forces. We ‘play’ war with this sim/game and for most of us, now, without the ‘consequences of war’, some on here are in the forces and play this game and face the consequences for real, they would know how any money raised would be appreciated by the forces charities. Maybe any on here who are in the forces should be put forward as treasurer to disburse any money collected to the charities, should there be more than one, i.e. UK, USA, GER, AUS etc, etc) divide the money. It may not add upto much but I would be happy to give £5 for every mod I use over the year, which in my case would be around £300, now don’t all shout ‘NO WAY’ just give what you can when you can, if you decide £1 is enough for each mod then give a pound for each mod, just make sure its in by the year end deadline for it to be given out to whichever charities.

A start date and treasurer is all that’s needed, then any mod’s used after the start date (or it could be backdated) that are downloaded by a user should be accompanied with a promise to donate note on here, then they can pay when they have it or split payments over the year. The totals can be listed in a thread as it goes along throughout the year...

Just a thought...

[W0lle 1050]

The EULA of the community tools suite is absolutley clear about this, no commercial use. No matter if the Mod is sold in a market or via "donations".

Besides that, the very last thing this rather small community needs is payware. CarlGustaffa already pointed at the FSX scene where you gotta pay for every little fart.

Good idea, not. :)