The ethics of modding

[tommh]

Proletariat, I'm afraid your logic is flawed. Saying someone has no responsibility does not make them immune from critique nor does it mean anything about the satisfaction level of the user. It is simly refering to what is the personal responsbility of the modder involved. The original posters argument is that since the modder recieves next to no benefit and to the extent that his mod is enjoyable at all, the reciever does, the modder owes the reciever nothing.

I think this argument is flawed but not because of the reasons you stated. It is because while the modder recieves little or no benefit it is not conversly true that the reciever accrues no cost. Their are two costs you pay for trying a mod. Obvously the first is time. You have used your time to download, install and play the mod. If the mod is unplayble or unsatisfactory this time is lost. The other cost is what is refered to as the exclusionary cost. By playing that mod you are not playing any other mods (which might be much better).

So is the modder responsible to meet this cost even if he accrues little benefit? I would say a qualified yes. There is a reasonable minimum that can be expected. Of course, some will except much less, (perhaps I'm in this camp as I like to tinker my self anyway) and others expect much more (a completely polished product).

I have not currently joined a modding team (no one has asked me ). And am pretty green when it comes to modding, and RTW . I'm not inexperienced in Game dev as a whole but I'm not used to having to be a one man band. This means that some of my early efforts have been plagued with installer errors etc. I try my best, but doing it all by yourself limits effective testing etc. Still I try to be responsible and fix bugs as fast as possible etc. I don't know what more I could do, short of not modding at all.

[Proletariat]

Proletariat, I'm afraid your logic is flawed. Saying someone has no responsibility does not make them immune from critique nor does it mean anything about the satisfaction level of the user. It is simly refering to what is the personal responsbility of the modder involved. The original posters argument is that since the modder recieves next to no benefit and to the extent that his mod is enjoyable at all, the reciever does, the modder owes the reciever nothing.

This implies someone complained, "Arg, you owe us better, Gaius!" or that any of the protests discussed were out of a sense of dissatisfied entitlement. AFAIK, noone argued from such a position and if they did, I apologize.

I don't understand the line;

The original posters argument is that since the modder recieves next to no benefit and to the extent that his mod is enjoyable at all, the reciever does, the modder owes the reciever nothing.

Are you saying that if the downloadee finds the mod enjoyable at all then the modder owes the receiver nothing?

The concept of responsibility and owing someone something is completely irrelevant here.

Anything you can download for free on the internet (and especially on a forum) is by nature self-correcting. If this process is happening to a particular mod (if people don't like it, interest will wane and the product weeds itself out), it's immature of the author to take a position of "Well, I worked on it for free so you all can go screw."

From what I know, this mod wasn't ever presented in the manner lt1956 presented his (ie, 'hey, I made a few changes to this that I find enjoyable so I'm going to throw it out here for anyone that may be like minded.)

[NaeBlis]

Look, if its done for free, it has absolutely every right to be positively criticised. However, when you flame someone for making a crap mod, then that's just wrong. The modder is not getting paid anything. The modder probably designed the mod for either personal satisfaction or as a "gift" to the community. In either scenario, you can't flame a modder, or point out flaws - it is much more courteous (and "proper") to actually point out specifics and state how they can be changed/removed or perhaps even additions.

If they were getting paid for their work, then go ahead, say whatever you want. As the end-user, you have every right to have recieved a decent (and probably above-average) finished piece of work - IF YOU PAID - you had a financial loss from buying a product which wasnt suitable for commercial release. But once again, I reiterate, if you lost nothing from a "crap" mod, then why would you complain and whinge. Infact, the smart thing would be to design a better mod yourself (which is exactly what someone on this thread did, I believe).

[tommh]

Quote:
I don't understand the line;
Quote:
Originally Posted by tommh
The original posters argument is that since the modder recieves next to no benefit and to the extent that his mod is enjoyable at all, the reciever does, the modder owes the reciever nothing.

Are you saying that if the downloadee finds the mod enjoyable at all then the modder owes the receiver nothing?


Uh, no as it clearly says it my post thats what the poster you were responding to was saying. I then go on to disagree with this.

As to the discussion not being about responsibility, I think thats not entirely true. While your point about the "marketplace" wroking itself out is no doubt true in the abstract, I for one don't want to be the one download loads of crappy mods to make it happen. And don't forget as it goes with mods so it goes with whole communities.

[Duke John]

Topic has been split from the RTR rant thread. I think this topic is worth his own thread since it is good to sometimes to think about what you are doing and perhaps improve yourself.

As a modder you should remember that you have a pretty large market. If you plan out well and either have talent or attract talented people then it's not unusual to have your mod installed on thousands of computers. The more eye-cathing mods will get a place in magazines.

I think it's a waste when mods have a professional quality to think lowly about the players. We can expect from companies that they don't think much beyond the sale, they need to make money afterall. But the internet community has the great potential of being the perfect company. People aren't modding for the money, the are doing it because they like doing it. Perhaps it seems that some seem to be also concerned with getting fame and boosting their ego. Then there are people who have the opinion that players should either spit or swallow.

I can only hope that arrogancy is limited to the less talented, since otherwise we would be stuck with great mods but nobody besides the creators knowing how it was done.

And that brings to me my next statement:
Modders should not only have the "responsibility" to properly test and inform the players, but they also need to share their wisdom with the community.

If people are taking profit from one person's wisdom then they should not hesitate to share one own's wisdom.

I am trying my best to motivate myself for writing guides and answering questions. This is not because I am moderator, in contrary I was made a moderator because I was doing that. Luckily there are like-minded people and that should make it easier to find my replacement.

In either scenario, you can't flame a modder, or point out flaws

You should not flame anyone, wether is modder or not. You can certainly point out flaws, but it's up to the creator to decide wether he wants to change anything. However, you cannot demand a change, and that is what most modders find irritating. But if you cannot critisism then you shouldn't publish your mod. It's like an artists who defends his painting against everyone who doesn't like it. Of course it can hurt since it is something that you created and you put alot of time into it, but you should realize that there as many opinions as there are people.

I think that in the case of the Total Realism mod (badly named IMO), it had the advantage of being the first large mod who fixed alot. There will be more and more alternatives. There are some who take their time (Europa Barbarum for example) and I think those mods will win over the quick-fix-mods since the former are created with a well thought vision. When released those mods will be more finished and the player will be far more satisfied then with a mod which is patched every week.

[Myrddraal]

A major part of modding is that the player appreciate the effort of modding (at least for me). If the mod is crap, but nobody criticises or points out flaws, then everyone is denying the modders chance to make his mod enjoyable, and that, I think is a goal all modders have.

If everyone pretends the mod is good, never criticises, never argues, then the modder will never know if he has achived his goals. In my oppinion, thats worse for the modder than being criticised. At least he can change that.

PS That doesn't mean you should grill modders ;-)

[Silver Rusher]

This topic is going deep beyond it's point I think. This reads like a backroom thread.

There don't seem to be any "sides" to this, as everybody has their own opinion, which is interesting IMO. Anyway, my opinion is that at the end of the day modders can do what they want, and if they release it to the public then "whatever". The only thing the public has a right to say is either suggesting ways of improving it (partly by pointing out bugs) or complement it. The modder isn't paid by the public, so who cares if they dislike it? It's his/her mod, he/she can do whatever he/she wants with it. I think it really is as simple as that, to be honest.

[tommh]

Well I don't see it as that simple. What if the mod deleted save games? A recent videogame demo in a major mag for a PS2 game erased any save carts installed, was that OK because it was free? As I said becasue the modder gets little direct reward doesn't mean there isn't any cost for the user.

What about the host? If a mod is broken or malicious do they have any responsibility? If their are more bad mods then good then what happens to the games mod playing community?

It's interesting to look at a very heavily supported and deep community like NWK. The major mod sites all have elaborate rating systems for mods which include breakdowns by feature and even reviews by users as wll as by staff. This sort of infrastructure is nessecary to support the sheer number of modders and users. It will be interesting to see what sort of changes the introduction of the profit element brings to the table.

I think a lot of the posts here are are in reaction to posts that complain about a mod in immature and useless ways. We've all seen these sort of posts, quibbling about every change, complainng about any percieved reduction in power of a favorite unit, lots of use of caps and !'s and the word crap. I don't think anyone objects to useful constructive criticism.

For instance with RTR, it was rushed out and it did have too many bugs but posts saying that it should'nt have been released unless it was completley bug free or that "THE NEW BUILDINGS ARE CRAP!" doesn't help anybody.