The potential issues between them deserve their own discussion thread, as such:
Deltax wrote:If the DLC can be edited via XML like the transcendence.tdb, then I will be happy to pay 10$+ for it, because that would allow nearly unlimited replay value!
You can make mods for Corporate Command, as Corporate Command can be decompiled into its XML sources like Transcendence.TDB.
One catch: You can't upload mods made for Corporate Command to Xelerus - they can only go on Multiverse Mod Exchange, with the following conditions:
1) Those wanting to play the mod must have a Multiverse account to download it (Since a Multiverse account is required to access the Mod Exchange).
2) Only those with Corporate Command can download and play it (Since Corporate Command assets such as source code or ship images may not be freely redistributed).
These are inferences, but still seem to be the case. Clarification welcomed.
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One of the advantages of being a small company is having flexibility in these kinds of questions. The guidelines for modding on paid content will be roughly along the lines you mentioned, but there will be flexibility on a case-by-case basis. The most important guidelines, however, is simple:
Enhance, extend, and improve Transcendence and the community with your own original creations.
For example, obviously if someone clones Corporate Command or a significant portion of it and tries to upload it to Xelerus, then we will take it down (and admonish the poster). That is not helping Transcendence.
But what if someone clones a single ship and uses it in a brand-new adventure? What if someone wants to create a new mission with Anton Nasser and wants the graphic for it? What if someone wants clones of some weapons in a brand new extension? In many cases I believe such use will encourage more people to play Transcendence and thus, indirectly, lead to more purchases of Corporate Command. As long as the large majority of an extension is original work, then some amount of cloning will be allowed.
Just for completeness, let me list the various ways in which people can use Corporate Command (or any extension) in modding:
1. You may, for your own personal use, decompile, study, modify and play any extension you legally own.
2. You may create and freely distribute an extension which requires Corporate Command (or its libraries) to be installed. In this case, however, your extension will only work if the player has Corporate Command installed.
3. You may create and freely distribute an extension which takes advantage of Corporate Command (and/or its libraries) if installed (but works without it). [This requires some additional work in the Transcendence engine, but it will be possible.]
4. You may clone and include appropriate portions of Corporate Command, including images, as long as they are part of a much larger body of original work. This is subject to case-by-case review.
These measures may increase the effort required to use Corporate Command and other paid extensions in mods, while at the same time limiting their playerbase and thus likelihood. It is possible that mod authors and mod players may stay with the base game only.
Additional measures can mitigate this, but they would require structural changes to the business model. Would these changes be worthwhile if they increased the size of the community, and thus demand for Transcendence extensions, paid or otherwise?
You may clone and include appropriate portions of Corporate Command ... This is subject to case-by-case review.
Given that the community is expected to expand, mod submissions by extension, compounded with further paid-only content, this may be more difficult than stated. Are you expecting to review many cases per month?
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I for one would, with the rules laid down as above, steer clear from basing *anything* in my mods on paid extension content. I would choose to do so because the rules are 'soft' ones; they can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. What's worse, the interpretation can change over time (it likely will).
This is what lawyers call a swamp: you can work your way through the rules, but it will be slow going and if you don't mind your step, you may drown in a pool you never saw comming.
Once again, I'm not against contributing money to the game development. I'm just very afraid that the paid extensions business model is not compatible with an active modding community and might kill the game.
I'd love to explore solutions. Assume that the business model is set in stone (not necessarily true, but let's make that assumption for now). How would you approach modding? Surely there are creative solutions to all of the issues you bring up. What modding rules would you suggest for Corporate Command?
Maybe mods that require Corporate Command get a slice of the revenue? Or maybe they get advertising support? Maybe we create a subset of Corporate Command that is free but only available as a library (needs some other extension)?
Modders seek appreciation, not financial compensation - it is silly to spend dozens of hours for a potential 20-30 USD (unless one were unfortunate enough to be born in a third world country, but I digress), and it is even more silly to establish a payroll so soon in a startup business. They want comments, feedback, downloads, approval, gossip in general, and even bug reports if desperate enough. So something appropriate that could be done, to encourage modders to make mods for Corporate Command, is to personally write reviews for each CC mod submitted. Your favor may be worth the extra effort required to make a Corporate Command mod, and may offset the lower potential playerbase. In addition, these modders would also be required to obtain paid extensions legitimately, because you obviously wouldn't need to consider any mods not uploaded to Mod Exchange.
Ultimately though, the predicted lack of mods is just a symptom. I strongly recommend considering the benefits of a free-and-open-source distribution model funded by Kickstarter-like pledges, because it is the only model that will allow modders to offer unrestricted downloads of their mods, and thus all the exposure they can get. Every increase in mod availability and exposure, of course, also benefits you through a proportional increase in free advertisement of the base game.
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TVR wrote:Modders seek appreciation, not financial compensation...
I agree. Are there ways of providing appreciation?
Perhaps such mods can be featured as part of the main Transcendence advertising?
Perhaps we can make it easier to download their mods (e.g., by automatically sending them to everyone who buys Corporate Command)?
George Moromisato wrote:Perhaps such mods can be featured as part of the main Transcendence advertising?
Advertising the game mod to some who has never played the game... questionable at best.
George Moromisato wrote:Perhaps we can make it easier to download their mods (e.g., by automatically sending them to everyone who buys Corporate Command)
The best way to do that is to make it freely available, such as by not requiring a Multiverse account to download mods, not shoveling them onto unwary customers! That is not a good way to get appreciation!
George Moromisato wrote:
TVR wrote:Modders seek appreciation, not financial compensation...
I agree. Are there ways of providing appreciation?
Yes, you, Mr. Moromisato, should play mods that are made for your game. Guareentee that you'll do this, perhaps even do a write-up, for every mod made for a paid extension.
Don't be afraid to get involved with the community, indie developers need to get personal, not corporate with their players. Try joining the next succession, for example.
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TVR wrote:Yes, you, Mr. Moromisato, should play mods that are made for your game. Guareentee that you'll do this, perhaps even do a write-up, for every mod made for a paid extension.
Don't be afraid to get involved with the community, indie developers need to get personal, not corporate with their players. Try joining the next succession, for example.
These are both excellent ideas. Write ups certainly make sense and it'd be fun for me. Thank you!
FourFire wrote:+1 to TVR's idea, it would be great to play a succession with the developer of the game, see how players play your game...
And for us to see how the dev does it. He may be better than all of us, or like me, ignores his own work and so is n00bish when it comes to skillz compared to us at his own game!
I've been thinking about this, even discussed it with some people. The thing is: you try to mix two business models. On the one hand, you try to earn money on paid extensions, while on the other hand you want to support people building free mods on both the free core as the paid extensions.
When modding in an environment with copyright rules and paid contents, the modder will always walk a bit of a tightrope. Providing free to use libraries that are a subset of, for example, Corporate Command, would help, but not solve the issue.
As long as the source of the paid content is readable, you run the risk that modders use parts of it in their mods. This will put a strain on the modders and the community. You don't have the resources to check each and every mod that comes out. You could appoint trusted community members to do the task for you, but that would create a community of imbalance: some people will try to gain a higher position in the food chain, some will dislike those power struggles a lot and leave. Some will be accused (be it false or correct) of borrowing too much of the paid content in their mods, some will steer clear of the paid content to prevent problems.
In all these cases, a lot of energy that was previously aimed at constructive thoughts (be it modding, playing, just hanging around reading the discussions or whatever else people enjoy) will now be diverted to discussing what is allowed and what is not. Where boundaries lay and who crossed them.
If you would opt to keep the source of paid extensions closed, people will crack it open (for some this is a game all by itself). The result would still be a community that has to be on the lookout for people using content they did not pay for or mods that try to reproduce (for free) content previously provided as a paid extension. Once again a lot of the constructive energy would go wasted on discussions having to do, not with playing the game, but with the rules you need to respect while playing the game.
You can already see this happening, it kicked in just after the announcement that paid content would be introduced for Transcendence. You are reading one of the post on such a can-or-cannot thread right now, and this is not the only discussion about it on the forums at this moment.
In summary, I think that the paid extension model will always be an obstacle to the open-source modding model. They just have different aims that are, to some extend, mutually exclusive.
Solution: Set up a different modsite (like xelerus) for mods made for CC and make it so that you log in with your multiverse account.
For mods that have some CC content: Honer system, and we learn as we go.
