What happened to Mod of the Month? Thread

What happened to Mod of the Month and other features of Moddb?

I don't see many well-written articles any more, and it seems like ongoing, interesting discussions about games, gaming history and mod development have shifted to other sites or limit themselves to their own (gaming) blogs now. We get things like the Overgrowth development blog, for example.

My guess is you're either short on staff or the paradigm that is Moddb shifts attention even further away from documentation and more towards servicing the mod community (like what Desura does technically). I feel it's a pity there are so few quality projects to follow and draw inspiration from. Discussions from and with the developers used to be a highlight. I loved Nightfall's mod documentation, among others. It was very helpful and inspiring. So, a follow up questions would be, if mods have any future or if we'll see most developments shifting into the indie realm, essentially creating what used to be called Total Conversions, or building entirely their own game from scratch.

We got busy. It might come back one day it really depends on a lot of factors. We have never been an editorial site, so if mod teams want to create post mortems we will absolutely support them.

Henley wrote: We got busy. It might come back one day it really depends on a lot of factors. We have never been an editorial site, so if mod teams want to create post mortems we will absolutely support them.

Yeah, but you know - there was something different going on on Moddb when I first joined about 5-6 years ago. It was a thriving community with actually quite some quality developments. Of course there were always people posting the first model they made and being proud about it. "Look, my Glock!" threads were never rare, even then.

Yet, the overall quality of member and projects was high and diverse, discussions were avid and sometimes emotional. There is so few of that left and I feel not a lot is going to happen to bring that back to Moddb. Overall the quality of the site and assets is what drove people here. I have a friend, who simply laughs his way through Moddb, when he is here and spends all his q+a time on polycount, where the real action takes place.

I suggest either opening a few interesting new chapters for modders and moderating discussions in helpful and educated ways. Bring up topics we care about. Make them feel relevant to anyone. Also, you say mod makers are free to create post mortems, etc. yet in some cases I think a little incense would help. So give small Desura prices to people who actually work for your site. Maybe there can be a point system, which gets you a free indie game for participating several times and being an active member. Find themes that interest us and make us stay.

Generally, I like the Moddb crowd. Not to good at what we do (mostly), not too shabby, either. What I'd like most though is that less people use Moddb as a transition between the mod stage of their life and the employed in games and game development phase. Even when people left the page for the professional working world, they should still be inclined to come back and communicate. In order to do that, every artist on Moddb should be placed in one of several categories and his "professionality" should be voted by the community. You could work that into the useless Karma system, which I have no clue about what it does, up to today.

Moddb added a lot of features that don't improve the community and seem like Ghouls of the internet: Karma points, Rank, blablala - where is something real? The way you can make projects and form groups is great, but why do you only think that far. Why not incorporate the system I talked about, so you can actually find good people for a project.

I feel like Moddb has an identity crisis. Henley says it's not an editorial site. It also isn't just the storage room from Inidiana Jones. There are people along the crates and they are all looking for something. I anything you could help us get in touch better. I'm not suggesting you make a Linked-In for gamers, but a way to search for professions and find interested people would be a start to help people communicate more. There are great artists on Moddb and it seems like only a handful always post, but if there was a better way to interact and check everyone out, I'm sure we'd have a more active and interesting community here.

SinKing wrote: Maybe there can be a point system, which gets you a free indie game for participating several times and being an active member. Find themes that interest us and make us stay.

This is a win idea.

Though:
1) somebody would have to implement it (and DesuraNET people have little time)
2) and somebody else would have to give out rewards (would somebody from game developers agree to that?) or alternatively on the house (which is additional cost for DesuraNET)
3) it'd be have to be completely public and straightforward system to avoid any confusion

SinKing wrote: You could work that into the useless Karma system, which I have no clue about what it does, up to today.

Karma system is a form of self-moderation, especially against comments containing links to warez (added by regular members not spammers), random trolling and insults, etc. Also a form of a reward system for well-thought and objective comments.

SinKing wrote: I feel like Moddb has an identity crisis. Henley says it's not an editorial site. It also isn't just the storage room from Inidiana Jones.

Why? What identity crisis? ModDB is Mod DataBase, as it always has been. It's more of an educational site, a library of mods with some serious focus on social and promotional side of it.

Edited by: feillyne

Henley wrote: We have never been an editorial site

Now that isn't true at all.

feillyne wrote:

SinKing wrote: Maybe there can be a point system, which gets you a free indie game for participating several times and being an active member. Find themes that interest us and make us stay.

This is a win idea.

If not thought properly of, that feature can and will be easily exploited if implemented.

Everything can be exploited. This feature would have to be extremely well monitored if implemented, just like Mod of the Year awards. Thanks for pointing that out.

Edited by: feillyne

moci wrote: BTW DesuraNET, here's a tip. We've been getting this "we're busy" reply for quite a while now. So here's my suggestion: stop making new sites (or hire extra people).

Not sure if you know this but ModDB and IndieDB do not make enough income to support additional staff. If we were to hire people it would be for the new sites. So the "we are busy" remark is true, I have my fingers in a lot of pies.

ambershee wrote:

Henley wrote: We have never been an editorial site

Now that isn't true at all.

We did have editorials but do you know what happened with them? Nothing. The energy put in to make these things were not justified from the response and from the user count. What I mean by editorial site is a site that creates news pieces maybe 3-5 a day that is the sole objective of the site and staff. Our focus is different and has been this way since I started working here some 4-5 years ago, we focus on bringing the news developers create to the world, not our own opinions.

Someone wrote: 2) and somebody else would have to give out rewards (would somebody from game developers agree to that?) or alternatively on the house (which is additional cost for DesuraNET)

Developers would agree to it because 1. its free publicity and 2. they can just write it off as a promotional expense. So no problems there I think. The only issue you'll have is with the number of indie games coming into the site, you might be limited on how much you could give away per month as not everyone will be releasing always.

I've asked this same question. I wanted to bring this back myself but I'll need help. Anyone interested contact me. It's a community effort for the community.

TechnoOnyx wrote: I've asked this same question. I wanted to bring this back myself but I'll need help. Anyone interested contact me. It's a community effort for the community.

I did it by myself outside of work. I never got paid to do it, so when it came down to crunch time I had to stop doing it. You should have no problems handling it on your own if that is what you want to do.

Sure Henley. But I don't think you're in any position to talk. You just contradicted yourself in that sentence. You said yourself, when the crunch came down on you, you had to quit. Well, I'm not a quitter. And if I am to get something moving because it's what the community wants, I'll need just a bit of assistance and a little less sassy talk from you. Got it, princess?

besides it really doesnt take much to set it up... or take very long, if you have things setup properly.

it should have been run by the community anyways.

TechnoOnyx wrote: Sure Henley. But I don't think you're in any position to talk. You just contradicted yourself in that sentence. You said yourself, when the crunch came down on you, you had to quit. Well, I'm not a quitter. And if I am to get something moving because it's what the community wants, I'll need just a bit of assistance and a little less sassy talk from you. Got it, princess?

WTH? It seems like you misunderstand the idea of work and the concept of getting more work, the work is all ModDB/IndieDB/Desura/Indie Royale stuff. The Mod Spotlight never EVER made sense to do, it never made money, it took a lot of work to do like: video capture, editing, scripting, voice work, editing the voice work, rendering time, upload time and promotion. Not to mention the 3D work myself and others put into it. I spent days creating music, intros and text overlay animations.

If I had to choose from doing my actual work or doing something I like to do that does nothing for me other then a pat on the back I will take the work. However I did it for 3 years and every month had a new video.

I really do not like your attitude towards all this.

"I really do not like your attitude towards all this."

Well then I guess that makes two of us. Because all you're doing is whining that it's a lot of work to do, and I'm telling you that that's why I would need assistance. Now, I COULD do it myself. I could do everything all by myself. And then I can just drop it when the going gets tough. Or you know, I can have assistance so I would be able to continuously do it without having to worry as long as I do my part. Mod Spotlight is something casual users and long-time users both want. So we can direct ourselves to what's good around here. For you to make it seem like it has no importance to me and then complain about how much work it was for you is just ridiculous. I think you underestimated your importance to Moddb and how many people want to see it come back.

But for anyone interested, like I said, I've made a decision that I AM bringing this back for the first month of next year. Anyone interested in assisting me please PM me.

To be honest, I don't feel this is a big drop from what the DesuraNET guys gave us instead. Look at Desura! It's one of the best clients out there to support indie devs, and the staff is just super awesome and supportive. The recent Linux addition is also great, and the DesuraNET staff is working hard to support modding through the client as well. I've seen no other digital distribution platform to support people this much. Huge thanks for it, is all I can say.

@TechnoOnyx Your idea to bring it back via users, is imo the best. I know what you feel, I feel the same - but please be a bit objective and look at it from a different perspective (read above). So, here's what I would suggest: Let's make a group on the site that will handle these monthy posts, and both us and DesuraNET guys will be fine. I'm into this entirely, as long as the DesuraNET guys have no objection for us to form such a group.

You know - a user group for Mod of the Month is probably the best idea! Even if the editors change, the structure would be the same. We could make some rules to the group, like everyone has to find their successor for the job before quitting, so the group would see some transitions but doesn't come to a stop. I also feel it would be a good way to get lots of input from the community. There should be the possibility to submit articles to the group by anyone, who wants to write one. They should just be looked over by the editors in charge. I don't expect the same two people to write all the articles, because that would soon be a grind. I sympathize with Henley here. It's work and not easily done without motivation. The main drive has to come from the member itself and the editorial should mainly be structuring/planning and editing stuff.

Additionally; I'd like to suggest the idea of covering WIP mods to give their creators public exposure and motivate them to work on their stuff. I know it's been done, but I suggest writing more article series about WIP mods in the future. I found that I follow continued and deeply investigative and documentary articles more than single ones that superficially describe a project. There could also be a category called "What happened to...", where the group finds interesting projects that are either on hold or were abandoned. Perhaps they would even inspire new teams to work on these mods again. Let me summarize the features again that I'd like to see represented in a group:

- Mod of the Month
- WIP Mod of the Moment
- What happened to (e.g. Talon 1-5, Dreamcaster, Mortewood Plaza...)

These three features wouldn't be represented equally in every episode, as I am sure sometimes there isn't enough interesting stuff to report about, but at least one of the topics should be fully covered in the monthly update; the other parts can be kept short.

Desura - hmm, yeah - maybe I'm just not flexible enough, but I prefer my Moddb community. I didn't check Desura's forums and don't often go to IndieDB, so maybe I'm barking at the wrong tree. What I expect from Moddb and its/our community is to discover interesting modding gems and unique ideas and fair and intelligent discussions about modding/gaming topics.

I am in a lot of groups, but they don't do much for me. They are helpful for grouping members in a project, but then again everyone uses MSN/Skype and often SVN when the project develops. Moddb - to me - doesn't only document mods, it lays the foundation to future projects and unique developments. I see a huge potential for bringing people together and discussing game development. It's happening, but it used to happen more in the past. Starting, by bringing MOTM back and making it a community responsibility to maintain the feature seems like the right way to me.

Edited by: SinKing

It might not be good of me to bump this, especially realizing how much of a sassy little prick I used to be. But for everyone who posted in this thread I am sure you'll be excited and interested to know that am just about there on bringing it back and then some. Details.