Jump to content

Research on the relationship between modders and corporate actors


Recommended Posts

Hi everyone!

First of all, I apologize if I'm crossing any written or unwritten forum rules by posting this.

My name is Daniel and I'm a master's student in Media and Communication at Malmö University, Sweden. I'm a gamer myself, with an interest in the economic marked of the digital game industry. - Mostly how it is perceived and experienced by different types of players/users. I'm currently writing my master thesis on the relationship between modders and the digital game industry, with a focus on "recent" corporate strategies such as Bethesda Creation Club, Steam Workshop etc. Therefore, I would like to ask if anyone would be willing to help me out, by giving me some insights into your universe in an interview?

If you have any questions about my research, the details of the interview or anything else, feel free to write here or send me a private message.

Link to comment
2 hours ago, DanielFranks said:

I'm currently writing my master thesis on the relationship between modders and the digital game industry, with a focus on "recent" corporate strategies such as Bethesda Creation Club, Steam Workshop etc. Therefore, I would like to ask if anyone would be willing to help me out, by giving me some insights into your universe in an interview?

Ouh, a lofty goal you got there.

And nope, that interview won't likely be happening anytime soon. Unless one of our admins(gibberlings) take a shot at it.

See, you seem to forget that the game moded here, is a little different based than say Fallout games, or other Steam related products. See, there is these two:

First, the corporate structure that supports the current games (Enhanced Edition), is not at all the same it was back then. Today, it's the so called Atari... which is a far call from the Atari of the old days. The owners have nothing to do with the old ones, except the name, and there was a lawsuit on the particulars of the ownership, and what you have.

Second, the tools we have today weren't to do anything with "game industry" as it were... yes, the original game is actually 20 years old already and it's follow ups are 16 at least. The corporate structure change ... and common intrest set the toon for the tools. Before the EE games came out, we reputably definitely had, better tools to work with than the original source coders ... cause there was definitely enough time to fix things and well, just look at the (G3)BG2Fixpack .. that's officially now intergrated into the BG2EE. Well, to tell you the truth, it's also the work of all the other community, as this one is definitely not just G3's work alone. As it's predecessors were many, started when the G3 wasn't up yet.

So rather than the industry doing things, we (me excuded from that 😛), were the ones that showed the industry how to go on, from the end point. But it's to be admited too, that the todays EE games are also products of the old makers, as there are at least two old time programmers from the old games, that are today employed with the New Atari. As well as a few of the netsites staff, as a consultants, or other stuff.

Yes, the todays moding network -workings have changes completely from the past, the games have become more complicated too, so it might require a bit more upkeep to start from scratch. But there is nothing that the Cheat Engine can't defeat... if you just put your mind to it.

And it should merrit for you to ask the questions pre-interview. Cause you get more preselection from that. As multiple of us can claim to be modders, but hardly any of us have been approached by the industry.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola
Link to comment

Hi Jarno,

Thanks for your reply.
I admit that my knowledge about G3 as a modding community is scarce.
From your reply I sense my initial post having failed in communicating my intent (I wanted to keep it concise, not to bore the reader into moving along 😛). For the interview(s) I have no set requirements but that a person considers themselves a modder of digital games in one way or another. So, which corporate structure that supports current projects or whether you have been approached by the industry is not relevant for this study. 

I most likely have preconceived ideas on this one, but I assume that a modder has not dedicated one's life to one project/engine/corporate structure only, but instead have taken part in multiple, and in turn multiple communities, and as such have a pretty good idea about the bigger modding community and in turn, studios/publishers attempt to establish a relationship (please tell me if I got this completely wrong). Whether or not one has experienced these attempt from corporate actors, I think is not a necessity for the person to formulate an opinion about it. It is this opinion that I am interested in.

Edited by DanielFranks
Link to comment

 

14 hours ago, DanielFranks said:

I most likely have preconceived ideas on this one, but I assume that a modder has not dedicated one's life to one project/engine/corporate structure only, but instead have taken part in multiple, and in turn multiple communities, and as such have a pretty good idea about the bigger modding community and in turn, studios/publishers attempt to establish a relationship (please tell me if I got this completely wrong). Whether or not one has experienced these attempt from corporate actors, I think is not a necessity for the person to formulate an opinion about it. It is this opinion that I am interested in.

3

Good point to ask, s to speak, as no actual question was asked. See, thing is, this assumption is wrong today. One must specialize, to really have a measurable impact on the moding screen. Yes, there are multiple people that have average contact with multiple moding groups, but that's generally not enough. But to really, to make an impact to a greater scale, the specialization is necessary into one, to a game... or a group of them, like with the Infinity Engine games in this case. As one generally does these things for fun, which means there's a limit of how much of that one person can have, unless you have a support team that can handle a lot of other stuff, while you toil away.

And sometimes that's not enough either, especially on the larger projects ... so much so that the hobby that you did for fun turns into code-filled-trap that is no longer fun, and at that point, one needs to walk away from it... completely. And there has been a few of these ... and that is not good.

This is not to single out the G3, but as it has worked with the SpellHold Studios forum, the Pocket Plane Group, and a whole list of other sites, that today total into this community, besides just the Beamdog.

Or at least this is my arrogant opinion that anyone is free to try to concede as false.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola
Link to comment
On 3/11/2019 at 3:07 AM, DanielFranks said:

Hi everyone!

First of all, I apologize if I'm crossing any written or unwritten forum rules by posting this.

My name is Daniel and I'm a master's student in Media and Communication at Malmö University, Sweden. I'm a gamer myself, with an interest in the economic marked of the digital game industry. - Mostly how it is perceived and experienced by different types of players/users. I'm currently writing my master thesis on the relationship between modders and the digital game industry, with a focus on "recent" corporate strategies such as Bethesda Creation Club, Steam Workshop etc. Therefore, I would like to ask if anyone would be willing to help me out, by giving me some insights into your universe in an interview?

If you have any questions about my research, the details of the interview or anything else, feel free to write here or send me a private message.

You'll likely get more of a response if you post a concise list of questions publicly. That way people who may be interested in giving their responses know what may be expected of them.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...