Mods fail to release because

Reallife™ kicks in, and then you realise "****! I've wasted the last 3 years of my life" :D lol

I disagree, Cyberpunk. Modding can be extremely rewarding if done correctly. Don't believe me? Look at many of the successful mod teams (Red Orchestra team, CS team, Gunman team, 50% of the people over at id software, 50% of the people over at Epic, etc).

Developing a game is more difficult than it looks, I think. Too many mod makers don't take it seriously enough. And everyone on the team needs to be really dedicated to it. Most of the time you get people who just wanna make models and wallpapers all day, or redesign the mod's website every month.

I was joking :P

Modding is a very challenging field creatively, I consider modders to be better than the original game designers, well to an extent, modders take something that is already good and try to make it better, which is a very very difficult task, when you take games like half life 2 and such.
reallife will always kick in, because u never left reallife in the first place, it's always there no matter what. I agree with Joker_mx

Actually designing a game is simple when you put it into simple concepts.

The real problem I've found is having a great idea, and still be motivated after 2-3 years to keep working on it.

Its even tougher to motivate others.

add to this the changing technologies that power games, and the constantly raising expectations gamers have of graphical and audio fidelity in the games they play.

A mix of 1 and 2. People will always think "hey you know what would be REALLY cool?" and perhaps have a good idea, but quickly become overwhelmed as they've never worked on a mod before.

Probably a mix of all three, but from my experience the biggest factor is when real life catches up with you. Mod teams depend on members being motivated, and when work is getting done and there are results you become more motivated, but as progress slows, because of real life stuff, that motivation goes out the window. Sure, modding is hard work, and that kills off plenty of mods, but not the teams with 20+ members who work on promising mods.

1+3 are the same :3

I agree with LoneWolf6. Creating a mod is much more difficult then it seems. To find team members who are actually dedicated to finishing a mod is a rarity. Also, many think that just creating a pretty model here or there will get u good publicity thus creating an awesome mod. When, in reality, theres so much more to it (scripting/programming/animation/compiling/etc etc etc). I even know this and I am a composer for mods.

Reallife for my part, i started modding when suddenly my health dropped down and it was hospital visit after hospital visit
i still try to mod but it just doesn't go as fast as before

Problems can come from multiple areas, and motivating others is really hard. And getting the talent you need, too many people join mods just to mess around or design a vehicle that resembles a box, so i think mods fail because people don't take it seriously, even the big mods like NMRIN, with no media coverage and the collapse of the audio updates it seems all has gone silent, BMS and then how can anyone forget NightFall and Nowhere, so its not just about having this amazing idea, everyone else has to share it. Its sometimes so hard for the team leads and mod leads to take all the blame, but with personal life and commitments its very hard to continue forward with certain things and objectives.

I voted for real life, but a real issue can be with an ongoing project, a mod made for a game realesed in 2002 might lose a following when compared to modern crysis, or UT3 mods.

I think mods fail to release because it's impossible to find other people that are as dedicated as you to help.

Developing a game is more difficult than it looks, and the industry is giving conflicting messages to developers.

Take the following for example. On the one hand Valve say: "release early and often" on the other hand the industry is buying out the successful mods. So there is this desire for a mod to be successful, which a lot of developers (and players) translate into "make it look like a game that would sell".

I do believe that releasing early an often is correct in principle, but it is too generic a statement. Releasing early has proved itself to be a death blow for many mods because people have so much choice they will not be going back to a buggy, laggy or boring mod if it failed to captivate them the first time round.

The development model that should be adopted is to develop a mod in modules and release one module at a time. A modular development model means you look at what you want to do and you split the releases into modules: you start with the basics and concentrate efforts on completing one major step towards the final design. Once you have combined the basics with this main feature you release your first module.

Modular development has many plus points:
- sense of completion and achievement for dev team
- easier for the lead to manage the team's tasks
- focus all members on a similar goal, instead of disjointed tasks
- the promise of more features in future releases, so a mod gets better instead of simply getting fixed

(I'll write a tutorial on this since there's a lot more to be said)

'Reallife™ kicks in'

That is the one excuse everyone uses to get out on making a mod, they tend to usually say 'We may return' but they mostly never do.
if your gonna run a mod make sure theres no collateral, obviously if there is some sort of tragedy crisis that happens in your life then that can help postpone a mod etc.
But I really doubt that 70% of the time when a mod team kills their mod is it because of such a thing.
I mostly it's just a kid or a few kids who thinks its easy but when it comes to it, they cant compete or have their limits to what they can do and they need to surpass that limit, which they give up on and thus mod dead.
Then they say something in real life came up, mod dead.
Seriously, if you have to kill a mod because you cant do certain things either;
A) Request for help and by pointing out the mod cannot progress without the help then it will be dead until otherwise.
B) Find a way round it, there is more than one way to get a mod done, its a pure release that will give you more attention and that could help with point A.
C) If you have to kill a mod, don't go and give a lousy excuse, some occasions these are true but mostly they are not, no one will give a **** about your problems, they prefer to know about the mod, claim it dead without a stupid excuse.

there, I doubt this will stop people from doing it but I prefer to give people the hint.

Chandler makes a good point, ive found maybe 2 other guys (who form the core team of my main mod) we work on it almost everyday however even then (we used to have a fourth guy) who would pump out stuff for us but after a year he just became disinterested in the project. So not only is modding very hard, also finding dedicated people is hard and lastly even if you find dedicated people there is always the chance they will flake out and just stop producing stuff.

All really because ideas go really bad and then everyone looses intrest and just quits then theres no way to make it. Then realife aswell with school colladge ect.

Developing a game is more difficult than it looks, making a mod is requires a lot of dedication and patience. In the end however, I think it is worth it.

If you want to know why so many mods fail you only need to look at the majority of profiles. Most are just ideas with some non user creative media (i.e. a background with the mod name on it) and 1 or 2 members who are desperately looking for "skill guys". I'm not getting at these mods at all everyone has to start somewhere but it seems a lot of mods are just ideas and there aren't enough modders to go round unfortunately to make them al.

The whole thing is much more difficult than it looks.

It really requires 90% dedication to even start being better at what you're doing and the good results don't even show up in the first years, so a good modder is a modder with YEARS of experience which makes him stand out of the mob and be a professional.
This actually leads to successful mods.

But, if you're not dedicated, ... you fail.

Actually, modders are potential future professionals, but, if a modder doesn't take it seriously, he ends up being taken non-seriously.

real life just kicked in for me. but i still try to find time for it.

It's a mixture of reallife and the reallife of a developer to do the higher quality work required for newer games.

Aeneas, I completely agree with your statement. I think its a mix of reallife and the fact that developing is hard. It's hard, and eventually you realize that it's never gonna get done. You wouldn't believe how depressed I made myself by browsing through all the Half-Life 2 mods. great concepts for mods are present here were so many that were little more than concept art and a storyline. I know a mod that won't finish when I see one, and it breaks my heart. Then again, if modmaking was so easy, we'd have an overpopulation of mediocre mods, and the good ones would be harder to pick out.

Hey, I got an idea. What if there was a site dedicated just to giving mod proposals publicity? If you have little or no modding experience, you could just put up some concept art and the story outline. Then anyone who was interested could try to help the proposal either by working on it or advertising it. At the very least, it would remove a lot of the "Junk Mods" from this site to a place where they could get the attention every mod deserves and maybe, just maybe be completed.

I think it is mainly because the idea behind the mod in the first place is over ambitious.

In 2005 I started a small mod, that was just for my own benefit to enhance my knowledge of Half Life 2. At the time I was at college, but then when I got a full time job I lost my motivation. I had less time, and I was at work on a computer programming, so when i cam home I did not have the energy to do any more for my little mod.

CANT FIND CODER! MOD IS DEAD

Real Life kicks in and fu**s everything up :D (bloody exams)

I'm not saying anything bad about u here lnenad but i managed to keep working on my mods through univeristy finals and further education after that. I admit after working a 10 hour day now i find it hard to work on modding in the evenings, Is gunna be even harder when the gf moves in :S...so yeah real life is an issue but unlike the other things real life is only an issue if you allow it to be (short of absolute tradgedy or total computer fabtacular sploding melt down)

I think that all of the answers are true. My mod(game) I used to work on day in and day out, but due to lack of motivation, gamers' need for better graphics and audio, and Reallife™ all contribute to how and if a mod gets finished (rather released).

Mods, in my expirience, don't get finished because team members aren't dedicated enough, or there simply aren't enough of them. These days, modelers (just an example) or good ones, at least, are far between, and if you do find one, chances are they're too busy for anything.

this is also a common problem.

What makes modding realy hard, especially if you doing a Total Conversion Mod, which is as good as making a completely new game yourself, is that you have to remember that the most of the original games were worked on by large groups of people, working for giant games companies.

But mods are produced by very small teams of people, & sometimes only 1 person, so that's why mods take so long to release as aposed to a retail releases from a major games makers, i.e you've we've all seen games released before their related movies.

That's why it's so hard for modders to keep going wth their work as 3 or 4 years is a long time in out of anyone's life.

argh on this topic had 5 or 6 people complain about my mods lack of release today via email (no one from this site)....we celebrated our 1st birthday last week! i mean geeze its a 4 man team how quick do they want us to work?

yeh very true indeed

Missing an important factor.

A lot of people get into it with no clue what the hell they're doing.
They think "oh I can make a mod, even though I have absolutely no experience whatsoever" So they jump in with some elaborate game design, and then wonder why 3 years later it fails.

You have to walk before you can run.
The same thing applies to mods.

I think for me it's a mixture of both real life kicking in and the fact that making games is time consuming and hard. But I think the good outweigh the bad most of the time, it's a really fun thing to do and once it's done it's really rewarding!