Mods and ARMA 3 on the same level as FSX?

[gammadust 12]

IP issues are definitely to be uphold to the highest consideration.

As you put it appears the issue will be only about increasing the efforts that bit above keeping "blatant rips of copyright material at bay", and extended to a wider range of source material. The secret here will be the licensing terms of the material wich one includes, what they allow or not allow.

Speaking for myself and in regards to eventual paid mods i could release, i would be extremely careful in what way the fact that such mod would be commercialized could be violating any source material. For any serious modder it would first of all be his own reputation at risk, other liabilities are not cleared either. With such a development in the scene there would be higher requirements of responsability, it would be up to the modder to opt-in or not to that increased load.

Those who had their cake and ate it too, would face higher exposure to trouble too, this by itself could actually serve to disuade already ocurring foul play. Current wrong plus eventual future wrong don't make it a right.

Ignore for a moment about "paid user-made addons". Would you welcome at the current state of things for this community to adopt a IP dispute procedure?

Ultimately i think the community would have nothing to loose in addressing in a more serious manner IP violations. Your argument apparently is only concerned with the increase of possible incidences on violations. Which is has bad no matter how the community actually moves forward.

[max power 21]

Gee I wonder who you're talking about.

Area51sim FSX studio, for example.

It's funny how the turns of event came to be. I rememberer commenting on my willingness to charge people for addon's few months ago. Didn't took long before Fufu and you came up at me lol. Not taking this as offensive tho, just pointing it as funny that everything went south so suddenly. So what is your general take on this? are you ok with it or it's kinda bother you in a way?

I can only assume that by 'came up at me' you mean 'informed me about the tools license'. The tools license is still in effect. His handle is Pufu, btw.

I don't really know what you mean by 'went south' though I don't care to speculate. As far as this issue goes, I'm not really aware of any southward motion.

Edited September 29, 2013 by Max Power

[mistyronin 1181]

Gnat;2519439']Everyone seems to be avoiding the unspoken about source material.

Two extremes' date=' iOS apps where all content is scrutinised before it can be saleable, or GTA mods where all sorts of ripped shit is thrown up.[/quote']

IMO I love how iOS app store works.

And I do believe that a BI filter is needed if money is charged. That or a requirement of certain amount of votes for every addon/mod before being sold ( "pro" addon makers could let it for a forced free beta, and then when accepted everyone must pay or the software disables the addon automatically, like in Steam ).

[bad benson 1733]

Not that anyone such modder would be supposedly forced to sell their mods. Not that anyone choosing to sell their mods would necessarily be forced to adopt a different attitude towards it's dedication, as far as love for modding goes.

This will be, of course, all on a voluntary basis. Those modders ambitioning more than simple self-gratification, already condition their current dedication to current available gratifications, the change of scenario would mostly address these. I don't actually see the big risk of those remaining changing their attitute (that is if they are trully in love with modding) just because of this idea being implemented. Than again it would be a shame if they would vanish.

that's kind of where i agree with icewindo though. if certain people get paid and in addition (which happened before) get extended support from BI, then i see people changing motivations of modding and attitudes towards eachother if they want or not. i personally wouldn't want to share as much for free if it becomes a "market".

i mean it's all vague and hard to foresee but assuming everyone, who wants to, will just adopt and everything will be as before is as specualtive as foreseeing the opposite.

another point that is troubling is the way more and more mods pop up that "fix" arma 3 and how the same interview the "incentive" stuff was brought up in pointed towards views, that say asking for a full set of content a la arma 2 is just too much. i have no problem with arma 3 and i immensely enjoy it, eventhough i have a few things i'd like to see changed, but if i'll have to pay for several packs to fix the game, then that's where it gets bad.

[Pac Man 10]

... but if i'll have to pay for several packs to fix the game, then that's where it gets bad.

That's when you may aswell just be playing a vbs title, but probably not quite as costly in the end. Still though, when you have to pay ~hundreds of dollars for several DLCs, is when it will go bad. Even if BI screens payed user DLCs for quality control, I couldn't see this going well at all. The forums have been hot lately, over the last months, imagine what would break out then.

[PuFu 4591]

It's funny how the turns of event came to be. I rememberer commenting on my willingness to charge people for addon's few months ago. Didn't took long before Fufu and you came up at me lol. Not taking this as offensive tho, just pointing it as funny that everything went south so suddenly. So what is your general take on this? are you ok with it or it's kinda bother you in a way?

both me and max pointed you out the current EULA for the tools available. That was obviously prior to Maruk's announcement.

My own view on paid community content is somewhere in between.

That said, if you one creates quality content, they can always put it up for sale on turbosquid or similar, as long as the said content is made with commercial tools (read not with BI tools). No eula prohibits this.

It bothers me only the fact that the communication and willingness to share information (in an environment where the said information is limited and a lot undocumented) between members, not the fact that there might be content to pay for. Again, i doubt BI will allow monetisation of any sort of content anyhow.

[Tonci87 163]

What brings you to that conclusion Pufu?

What do you make out of Maruk´s announcement?

[PuFu 4591]

What brings you to that conclusion Pufu?

What do you make out of Maruk´s announcement?

It is not maruk's announcement that brings me to that conclusion (which i haven't detailed thus far on purpose), but knowing what happens behind the scenes since before A3 made it to public alpha.

I could, obviously, be wrong though

[tpw 2314]

As someone whose primary enjoyment of Arma3 (and previously 2) is from modding, I've been watching these paid mod threads for a while and feel like I might chip in with my 2c worth.

It's always struck me that the BI gaming community seems to be divided pretty starkly into 2 groups. On one side there is Group A: an incredible range of friendly communicative and helpful people with a diverse range of opinions who are willing to contribute in numerous ways to make the game better for everyone. And on the other side there is Group B: some of the most chronically overentitled, rude, hyper-opinionated people I've ever seen on a forum. I'm not talking about those people with passionate viewpoints on how to improve things. I'm talking about people who seem to actively hate the game, its developers and anyone who admires either, but who don't seem to hate these things enough to just leave. People who are incapable of acknowledging an alternative point of view. People who think that if they shout their opinions loudly and often enough they will become facts. People who use the supposed anonymity of a forum to talk to others in ways that would probably get them hurt in real life.

I have spent 4 years on this forum working for/with and benefiting from my interactions with A, and doing my best to ignore B. Unfortunately the last 3-4 months have seen nearly every thread discussing any aspect of this game taken over by those who think that their relentless non-negotiable negativity and disappointment is somehow going to achieve something positive. And all because they along with the rest of us paid a few movie tickets worth for an impressive and imperfect game that has given many people hundreds and hundreds of hours of enjoyment.

The point of my preamble (ramble) is this: as a volunteer modder I make small simple mods for the challenge of improving and extending the game in the way that suits me, and for the satisfaction of interacting with other people who find my work useful. Whether that be by using it directly, or examining the code for ideas and inspiration etc. As a volunteer modder I feel perfectly justified in telling anyone who wants to complain non-constructively and unreasonably about my free work to find another thread. Or to #$% off. As a volunteer I can choose to throw my hands up and walk away at any time.

The moment I or others start charging for content is the moment I have to start giving the same consideration to the opinions of the rude and overentitled as the polite and thoughtful. Just like the poor developers have to. I'm not sure I could manage it. As a paid modder the game suddenly becomes a responsibility. I already have children to be responsible for.

But even worse, should I choose to remain a volunteer while others don't, I begin to lose the fundamental satisfaction of sharing code because some people can chose to exploit my free work for financial rather than gameplay benefit. Tragedy of the commons. And while there are various open source licences that might help to mitigate this, a community that is forced to interact and operate on the grounds of what is legally/financially acceptable rather than in the spirit of co-operation and respect, is not one that I'd really want to be a part of any longer.

Of course, all of this presupposes that individual modders are going to let people vote with their wallets via paid mods on steam. I'd actually be very surprised if it happens beyond the current system where people can paypal donate to the likes of Jarhead and Icebreakr if they think their content has enriched the game experience sufficiently. Instead hopefully it will be BI identifying high profile modding groups and offering to pay them to develop content that can be released as DLC. Interesting times.

[Tonci87 163]

It is not maruk's announcement that brings me to that conclusion (which i haven't detailed thus far on purpose), but knowing what happens behind the scenes since before A3 made it to public alpha.

I could, obviously, be wrong though

Well I really hope you are not wrong.

[FredAirland 13]

I would personally love to pay for quality mods, if you get my money you owe me quality.

Also before publishing a mod, there could be some quality check and review from bi or volonteer testers very much like download.com does....

I believe this will end in a world of free and paying mods each competing with the other for quality and downloads, very much like FSX is...

Fred

[nodunit 397]

And then we have to categorize a variety of quality..for example X addon looks terrific but behaves basic, Y addon doesn't look as good but can do so much more in terms of gameplay.

I'm really hoping things just go the donation route, just watching the community reacting to BI's arma 3 release fills me with dread, to see that kind of mentality turn on each other.

When money comes into the equation all bets are off and people are going to be scrutinizing every detail, looking for any flaw, and there won't be the generosity of "well this is by a community member, and it is free so perhaps I'll let it go." It's going to be I paid money, and they likely won't appreciate what would, or perceived as an unfinished product or one that doesn't meet some set of standards.

Edited September 30, 2013 by NodUnit

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

That is it, have a council collect the best modules, mods, including vehicle mods, sounds, and effects, and pack them into one big pack that makes sense. Call it, Arma Simulator mod, and boom. Now, you have a mod that can run in its own launcher just like DayZ was done, except, this is strictly for showing how much more interesting Arma 3 can be with user made mods that make sense. Such as Factions that go with the era and theme, vehicles that fit the era, and sound mods that make is sound as realistic as the real deal. Ba-da Bing, Ba-da Boom, what do you have? Epicness in it's purist state.

[noubernou 77]

I think this would severely limit what goes into making Arma great. There is too much reliance on community cooperation behind the scenes to make pay-for mods work.

Also, a lot of people will probably hate me for saying this, but while there is a LOT of content creators in this community there are very, very, very few that I would actually pay for their content. Lots of good models but hardly anyone can do proper configs or scripting in this community.

Sorry to sound blunt, but I've been around for a long time, and I think I have one of the more in depth grasps on this engine and really the quality of code coming out of the community is mostly sub-standard with little actual knowledge of what needs to be done to make things work properly (at least at a level that I'd ever pay someone for).

[max power 21]

So this great community full of amazing cooperators produces almost nothing but total shit. I'm convinced nothing must change. :icon_lol:

[gammadust 12]

i mean it's all vague and hard to foresee but assuming everyone, who wants to, will just adopt and everything will be as before is as specualtive as foreseeing the opposite.

Yes, i may tend to believe that the risk is lower due to my belief in this community to coordinate the efforts and finding acceptable compromises. Despite accepting the valid scepticism i am trying to keep a positive prospect based on mitigating solutions we as a community may conceive.

i have no problem with arma 3 and i immensely enjoy it, eventhough i have a few things i'd like to see changed, but if i'll have to pay for several packs to fix the game, then that's where it gets bad.

Can totaly agree, then those mods would become "patches" instead. Not addons adding features/functionality/content. This is still a nebulous discussion, this would represent defining what criteria makes an addon "eligible". Which relates with the supposition of Pufu (as i interpreted it), that of doubting Bohemia would "allow monetisation of any sort of content anyhow". With the side issue of who actually defines that criteria, presumably Bohemia, and if alone or with the contribution of the Community. This leads me to one base conclusion:

The more advancing the goal is towards modders being directly compensated for their creations the more curation becomes a necessary requirement. Curation can be very powerful in addressing many issues (ie. Quality, IP, Creativity, Standards, etc), but has the unwelcome ability also of excluding those disagreeing with the underlying criteria. Drawback which i could only see mitigated if Bohemia would cooperate closely with the Community at large. Curation which in my opinion is inexistent or already very lacking in regards to Steam Workshop, as far as it affects missions only, while this entire goal would extend the issue to broader mod types.

In a way we are already involved with the issue, disregarding any future monetization. With the exception of terrains and config addons or models, which can't currently be shared through SW and are safeguarded that way, mission and SQF code can in the current state be quite abused. I see opportunities here to improve that status. While i was and am sceptical of current SW implementation serving as a "registering base" which barely prevents impostors to hijack authors IPs, monetization could impose the required push on the part of Steam to be more serious in this regard.

Of course, the obnoxious all encompassing SW license issue stands. It's relatively recent update shows some overture of Steam to compromise. If Steam concerns leading to its catch-all phrasing can be secured / approached, perhaps it also becomes more acceptable for them in allowing a better moral and monetary deal to adhering modders. Personally i would see a modders increased responsability compromise better rewarded that way than the current state allows.

---

Some may wonder why i am giving myself so much trouble, why i am being so verbose, why i am apparently taking such a pro stance, why am i pushing so much the agenda. Here are the reasons:

Bluntly, as a modder i could use some incentive, yet experience makes be disbelieve in donations in it's current state. Additionaly, and very relevant, some may had noticed my scepticism towards SteamWorks licensing issues and distrust of Steam proper care for SW contributing and non-contributing authors which may fall victim of IP abuse, present issues which I still stand by. Ultimately, and not too appreaciative of Bohemia's favour, i fear Bohemia may be too inclined to materialize this idea.

I very much share many of the concerns already shared in this forum. In this way i am very, very sceptical, given so many risks which much be considered and appropriately addressed by Bohemia.

Personaly and anyone individually will ultimately support or disaprove the actual implementation of "paid user-made content" when it's details become public. We must choose between passively letting Bohemia (primarily a business) be reasonable enough to consider all the risks by themselves and hope for the better when the time comes. Or we can early on, actively engage Bohemia in an organized fashion in an attempt to focus on the risks that affect us most and how different parts of our community are stressed and/or may benefit. These include Players, Modders and Wider Community - excluding here Bohemia and Steam since their coordination, interests and risk taking are implied.

I believe we are better off pushing this effort, much beyond than straight-of-the-bat support or disapproval, we should let our concerns be known, define our conditioning and eventually compromises (which implies eventual compromises from Bohemia/Steam? too). But mostly i believe this Community should be up to the challenge ahead.

Since i consider myself a sceptical optimist, with all my bias disguised as objectivity, here's another contribution:

[noubernou 77]

So this great community full of amazing cooperators produces almost nothing but total shit. I'm convinced nothing must change. :icon_lol:

Half of the "Arma runs like poo in multiplayer" is because most mission makers have no idea how to properly code missions and a lot of addon makers have no idea how to add scripted functionality to their addons that doesn't degrade significantly under any serious amount of load.

If people were asking money for stuff that is going to ultimately degrade play than you can bet the amount of rage is going to be high.

Anyways, not sure if anyone mentioned this in the thread already, but FSX is not Arma. FSX is basically singleplayer or when it is multiplayer the payed content doesn't affect play for people that do not have it. Arma is a totally different beast in that regards. Good luck getting large communities together when they have to pay out for every little tiny thing in the mod pack.

If you want to seriously injure the community then payed content is the way to go, at least when its regarding small addons like single models or very small content packs. Larger projects I can see some justification for, and though this feels a bit ethically wrong to mention, critical gameplay mods like ACRE would be in that category. So would things like Nod and Franze's AH-64 (though I imagine even they could use a good code work over for performance sake) and RHS's Soviet/Russian stuff.

Still though, I do not think this is the best model to go with. Even critical things like ACRE being paid content will fracture communities greatly.

If BIS wants to try it though I think they should, and see if its actually successful and if anyone in the community goes for it.

[max power 21]

Oh, I don't think I'm disagreeing with you. Your argument for no change just wasn't very convincing if taken out of context.

End users don't care how well something is coded, as long as it's fun. The performance competition would be to create something that's more efficient than your nearest competitor, so that their frames per second would be higher, so more people would have fun with your mission, so more people would buy it. There are more factors than performance in fun.

...and lots of people bought The War Z so there you go.

But I do agree that it would change the community. Money changes everything.

Edited October 1, 2013 by Max Power

[ProfTournesol 956]

But I do agree that it would change the community. Money changes everything.

The community has already changed a lot i'm afraid.

[Pac Man 10]

Sorry to sound blunt, but I've been around for a long time, and I think I have one of the more in depth grasps on this engine and really the quality of code coming out of the community is mostly sub-standard with little actual knowledge of what needs to be done to make things work properly (at least at a level that I'd ever pay someone for).

Yeah there hasn't been one mod I'd have payed for so far. I think the only mods I would have even considered to pay for were for Arma1. cameron mcdonalds & shadowNXs russian federation units / weapons and also Cm's 1st infantry division. The bigger mods I've seen are usually really buggy and try to over extend features, which seem to not even work as intended half of the time. Which is what I would be afraid of. Paying for a jumbled up mess.

In Short: payed content will kill this franchise. While there are some valid arguments for it, there's simply too many ways this could go wrong.

Edited October 1, 2013 by Pac Man

[chrisb 196]

Well I play my own missions, so no need for those, but others I would pay for, at varying amounts.

I sort of collect most of what is released for the whole series, here and elsewhere, so the tally over the series is very high indeed. I have hundreds of terrains alone, the amount of stuff I have collected is ridiculously high, stored on HDD’s here and there, most of which I don’t use, obviously. But all have been looked at and tried, if only for a short time for some of them.

I find it interesting as I don’t/can’t make mod/addons myself, only missions. I love to see what people have made, from the plain daft, to the important game changing ones, I like them all.

So yes, I would consider paying for them, from say a few pounds to more than a few pounds, depending on how important they are to me and of course the quality. AI & terrains would be the ones I would pay highest for, all new ones coming through would be worth looking at and considering. (Don't forget a good quality terrain is a new game almost)

It would focus the mind more, for me anyway, if I had to pay I’d obviously be more choosy, but that’s good.

All communities change at some point, this one is now. I have been war-gaming many years/decades so you get to see lots of changes, in various communities, people come and go, communities come and go and games move on etc.

But yes, pay for them, how much would be a fair price would be the next question ? ;)

[icewindo 29]

The community has already changed a lot i'm afraid.

This thread is an example of that.

I partly blame DayZ - with more people attracted to ArmA3 - statistically, there are more people having (imo) weird ideas such as in this thread. I'm probably sounding like a old man, but we didn't have these strange ideas back in the good old times.

[BL1P 35]

So if I wrote some code and sell it as part of my mission or addons. Then it was used in someone else mission or addon and they sold that addon. Would I get a percentage because they are using my code ?

If I don't and they are making money of the mission or addon can I then take them to court ?

This is where this type of idea fails.

Leave arma alone and go back to trying to sell Hats in TF2.

Q. How to destroy the Arma community ?

A. Make selling missions and mods a reality.

[iceman77 18]

I'm probably sounding like a old man, but we didn't have these strange ideas back in the good old times.

^ This. I'm not afraid of "new things". But I'm reluctant to support such an idea as this. I think in a game where the community lives & dies by community mods, it isn't a good idea. People can argue that there would also be free mods, but:

A. This wouldn't sit well with alot of modders, and they will be very hesitant to make or at the very least share their work for free. Especially when BIS screens for quality control and they feel left out and excluded. Think they're going to be very happy & eager to make more mods? I don't think so. While I'm not saying that poorly made addons are acceptable, but, there are some very good novice modders, that lack some skills, but do infact provide a fun and rewarding modification / missions, through brilliant concepts. Their motivation & morale will plummet, possibly causing some serious "in-fighting".

B. With the long term in mind, it's a very large risk for BIS to allow this. Do we really want to risk the freedom we currently have as a community?

[tortuosit 485]

So if I wrote some code and sell it as part of my mission or addons. Then it was used in someone else mission or addon and they sold that addon.

Yes. So it goes on and on. de-pbo'ing will be evil, BIS needs to implement DRM, they need to do quality control because crappy addons make their product reputation suffer, first addon makers meet on court... I feel as old as Icewindo :D Not in case of ArmA (I'm no veteran here), but I am close to an open source project which has been poisened by money after all.

---------- Post added at 12:11 ---------- Previous post was at 12:01 ----------

Again, i doubt BI will allow monetisation of any sort of content anyhow.

It is not maruk's announcement that brings me to that conclusion (which i haven't detailed thus far on purpose), but knowing what happens behind the scenes since before A3 made it to public alpha.

I could, obviously, be wrong though

I hope you are right, but before we will discuss over thousands of pages we really need clearance here.

Edited October 1, 2013 by tortuosit