Does the games industry encourage Total Conversions? Thread

umm, I think the gaming industry as a whole loves the whole modding scene. It's how so many talented developers got their way into the games industry in the first place and we are among some of the harshest critics when it comes to new games and technology.

Creating total conversions takes a long time, alot of planning, alot of dedicated hard working individuals and requires a real passion to create something unique and challenging, that's why for every total conversion there are likely a whole load of server side mods for games. Alot of people like to create maps or models or simple gameplay changes (which has always been the favourite for modders with Unreal series games, simply adjusting the gameplay and the way the game works). I don't find it surprising that Epic only opened up these sort of modifications for UT3, as there would no doubt be alot more work for them to do to enable third party total conversions to work on the PS3 and PC using the same set of assets and codebase.

I think what Epic have done, enabling custom content with UT3 is a good step along the way for more games to allow cross platform mods and will allow us all to target not only PC gamers but the console market too, just as Valve have done with the recent release of the Orange Box, let's hope in the next few years that Valve, or Crytek or Epic do put the work into enabling full total conversions to work on their PC and console games at the same time.

UT3 is a crappy single player campaign, but a fantastic online game. They shouldn't have tried to hype it as something it isn't .

As for the PS3 audio thing, that's a Sony choice, not an Epic one. Sony doesn't want the general public getting their hands on their audio format, and Epic had no choice in the matter. Other than the Audio problem, the only limit of what you can run on the PS3 version is the memory restrictions. If you can squeeze it into the memory limit you can cook it for PS3.

On the whole, I'd say that the industry is as supportive of total conversions as they ever have been. That is to say there are companies that put the tools out there, but no-one will hold your hand when attempting it, and they never have done. If anything, the support is better than ever - in the Doom days, the community had to build their own map editors. Nowadays all the major mod platforms come with a toolset that covers most aspects of production. Epic, Valve and Crytek all have staff members posting in their respective editing community forums. Short of them coming round to your house to show you how it's done I don't think things can get much better than they are now

Rockstar does innovation because they can afford it, they made GTA now they can do their pet projects without worry even if they tank because they just made half a billion in a week. Indiana Jones and an example I'm more familiar with, Riddick, can afford innovation because they're publishers don't care if the game is a total flop: they know it will sell because of the title and that's all that matters. The industry lacks innovation because it doesn't want to risk the cost of innovation, business has always been that way and there are shining examples of failure more than there are success.

The modding scene is necessary for innovation because what's the risk of coming up with something innovative if it flops? All that happened is you spent time and effort on something that no one likes, but I'm sure the coders are wiser and the artists more talented because at the very least they got some meaningful practice in and at the most they learned what doesn't make a game. I think modding is supported to the extent of the interest there is in the users that want to mod. A lot of people just want to sit and play their game until the next best thing comes out, they don't want to be a part of it and the few that do don't have a realistic idea of it and the fewer that do make it happen and the fewer that do actually make something good and the fewer that do end up making the games that people just want to sit around and play until the next best thing comes out.

I think in time modding will become larger, like Gibberstein said the tools are getting better and the developers help out on forums which is more than what you could ask for. The fact that you can put a mod on a console today without hacking is amazing to me, it wasn't two years ago that you could turn on your console and download a game a single person not in the gaming industry made. Modding, while it's been around for a while, is still in it's infancy and will continue to grow. Maybe it doesn't need anymore stimulation from the industry, maybe it needs it from itself with self-organized conventions, classes, books, et cetera. Maybe one day modding will be like independent films and the people that already do it out of passion can get a budget to do it.

Okay, you win.
I was pushing modding into an extreme, like hacking is the extreme of codeing. I felt modders could be as feared by game developers, as hackers are to programmers, because we can see through their ideas and preconceptions.
Apparently modding doesn't want any "glam" factor and personal cult and thus will never be cool - what a relief!

However, I do like the underground appeal of modding. the idea of creating something from something else, thus expanding and conversing the original invention into something new and creative. Perhaps I will found a militant modding wing now, just to have the illusion of belonging to a hip underground group ;-) I need to fight against the machine that is my raison d'étre and if there is no one to fight... well, I guess I'll have to make someone up, soon! Hah

When I worked on Planescape Purgatorio, which started out as a simple campaign and evolved into a total conversion for NWN2, Obsidian Entertainment invited some of the team out to California for the unveiling of the new official expansion in development; our team put together a working demo of our mod and were able to present it right along with the official expansion in front of Atari executives, some press, and Obsidian staff.

So, with that in mind I can't really say the industry is against total conversions, at least in the area I've been apart of.

Edited by: Davion

The truth of the matter is, that it doesn't matter if it's a total conversion or not. A project is considered on the merits it has, not the merits it does not. Total conversions generally are more impressive, because of all the coordination and extra work they require - but the majority of mods that are played are much smaller, and the total conversion itself gives nothing to the developer.

I think most don't. Compared to the overall gaming industry only very few titles are truly mod friendly I'd say

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