Quote Originally Posted by Spino
Thanks to the ground laid by Id with their Doom & Quake games and the phenomenal long term success of Valve's Half Life via Counter Strike and other mods it seems the rest of the industry is finally waking up and taking notice.

EA, being the corporate monolith of gaming, stuck to its 'f--k the modding community' guns for the longest time and were absolute bastards for their withholding of the SDK for the Medal of Honor games. Countless fans were screaming for user made MP maps, let alone mods, and EA did nothing. As if Valve's jaw dropping success with Half Life and Counter Strike wasn't enough to motivate EA to follow suit! Fortunately someone in EA eventually got a clue and Battlefield 1942's moddability produced one of the best mods of all time, Desert Combat. I wonder how many people bought BF1942 just to play that mod?

The good news is modding has become so widespread that publishers who discourage modding risk becoming the odd man. Furthermore they risk watching their investment jeopardizing the long terms sales of any given game by This situation is worsened if a competitor publisher releases a similar game that IS moddable. Modding also gives the opportunity for the community to fix bugs, balance issues and implement new features that the publisher would ordinarily have to devote time and money into implementing in a patch. Despite the risks and headaches associated with releasing a mod friendly game it really is a win/win situation for developers and publishers.
According to the BF1942 modding community, BF1942 is not set up for modding at all. Its just that the folks that did Desert Combat are very very good at figuring stuff out. EAs support for modding in that game was the same as all other EA games. Dismal.

EA has a 'stabilize and pump' philosophy of software distribution. They get the games so that they are relatively stable, but don't concern themselves with 'tuning' issues. For single player games this generally means they keep selling those games until they are superceded in some fundamental way by a better game.

For multiplayer games, it means that they have a very limited shelf life (because once multiplayer communities discover that one team is stronger or one type of playing is stronger (i.e. imbalanced) they tend to lose interest). This is why Starcraft and Warcraft 3 are so ever-popular, but CnC Generals is losing ground. Starcraft is still being sold, 8 years after its release.

With single player gaming, keeping sales alive is the name of the game, and that means stability and a reasonably fun game. Add ons help, but add ons don't get anywhere near as much revenue as original releases.

With multiplayer gaming, keeping sales alive is more about 'fair and balanced' along with (possibly) 'extensible'. EA sucks at that model. I think the only reason that BF1942 was so successful was that DICE pretty much got it right very quickly after release, it was a very good new concept in shooters, and the modding community for it just rocks (these were folks that cut their teeth on figuring out Quake 1 and Quake 2 modding, when modding was extremely difficult due to how games were packaged).

The games that get the whole model right are: Warcraft 3, Starcraft, QuakeX, UT/2003/2004, and I'm sure a few others. Those games are built around either 'balancing' combat models or 'extensibility'. It would almost be better if EA didn't even include a multiplayer component in MOH and games of its ilk. They just don't do the right things to support those communities... They are fun, to be sure... but they will never be the stellar successes that they could be given some support. And don't get me wrong, I don't think EA is 'bad' for not doing this. Their production/sales model has made them huge, and I still buy/play their games!

Cool if they are trying, but trying isn't succeeding, so I'm not holding my breath. To me they are still 'stabilize and pump'. I like their games and play them, but don't overly expect support other than 'it won't crash on my system'. And I can tell you I haven't played any of their games for more than a year, which is simply not the case with games like MTW, STW, Quake, UT, Age of Empires 2, Starcraft, and Half-Life and its mods (counter-strike for instance). Those games are just phenomenal (for various reasons)