Bethesda's Creation Club

Thane-

I was wondering now that some details have come out for Creation Club, what you guys about it and also what you think about participating in creating stuff for it.

I searched, but i didn't find an existing thread for this, just delete this one if one already exists.

MrHobo

People were vocal about about Horse Armor 11 years ago (Yeah its been that long) just like people are vocal about this. History is literally repeating itself here. Start off with very small piecemeal work then drop bigger and better pieces of content at a later time. In terms of DLC market adjusted both in price and content (Remember on the disc DLC?) and now DLC is a standard part of any modern game release, some good, some bad, just like everything else.
10 years from now there will be another shake-up and people will look back and see that this wasn't the end of the world.

Thane-

In the case of Creation Club, i think the prices are too high and they either don't understand the value of mods to the average consumer, or are trying to initially capture the money from those who have a lot of it, then will reduce the price later. I think this isn't the time to try and do that. I mean, the market they are in, a lot of their customer don't have ANY money for mods, kids, teens, students, poor people. The ultimate value of of their stuff isn't the same for these people, yet i still think they should see it to them, for many reasons i won't get into, so i think the price should fluctuate quickly, but will it. I think they should do something like Steam and have lots of sales, but will they.

With DLC, I don't know. DLC completely fucked SW Battlefront over IMO. I bought the $5 version a few weeks ago that came with all of the produced DLC content and and "season pass" stuff and it seems like, as AngryJoe said, "a shell of a game", even with all the DLC! The simplified nature of the gameplay was a big part of me getting bored with it so quickly (despite the amazing ARTISTIC work!!! and sound design). But i think the DLC fucked that base game over, with them planning from the outset to save money ("get money", lets be honest) building a smaller game, but charge a full game price and then make much more money with the DLC. So yeah i agree, the market overall will "adjust", there will be a lot of damage in that reverberating wake.

I think all of these little over-sights and miscalculations the industry does in the name of getting more money from the consumer without regard to GIVING proper equal value in exchange have a much greater negative effect than they realize, with aging gamers, who are getting on the side of being a tad bit tired of gaming in general due to their long history of gaming; this and related activities like what Microsoft did with 10, are a much harder blow to the interest people have than i think many in the industry realize, keeping the average age of gamer a steady value, rather than rising. To a degree, i think. In general, all of these little efforts to save(get) money here and there, whether by not adding in server-side options to keep things simpler to devs, not offering dedicated servers, not adding in options to satisfy long standing niche interests, etc, are people who are already doing well financially, trying to trade your happiness for even more money. Pisses me off sometimes.

RyanB

Not enough details to know if it is worth participating.

Equanim

A lot of devs get their start by modding.  A little money for your effort means more time that you can logistically devote to that endevour.  Official support from the publisher also benefits modders educationally and players from a UX perspective.

The only way Bethesda could do this "wrong" is by making their games less accessible to modders who are happy doing what they do for free.

Zack Maxwell

Despite being a modder of Bethesda games in the past, I don't see myself touching it. Not only are they refusing to release any information on what sort of pay you can expect from it, as far as I'm aware. But Bethesda themselves are notoriously stingy toward content creators.

It was bad enough when they refused to let anyone sell mods, but then Patreon came along, and they took it a step further by saying that modders were not allowed to use that in order to support modding.

Then when the paid mods came about the first time, Bethesda took a cut of around 70%, while doing literally nothing to manage things.

ExcessiveZero

Grimwolf said:

Despite being a modder of Bethesda games in the past, I don't see myself touching it. Not only are they refusing to release any information on what sort of pay you can expect from it, as far as I'm aware. But Bethesda themselves are notoriously stingy toward content creators.

It was bad enough when they refused to let anyone sell mods, but then Patreon came along, and they took it a step further by saying that modders were not allowed to use that in order to support modding.

Then when the paid mods came about the first time, Bethesda took a cut of around 70%, while doing literally nothing to manage things.

wait they even went after the patreon of modders? that is not only completely disgusting, but legally murky as hell, how is that even enforceable if your patrons are supporting you to produce content nothing to do with Bethesda and then you choose to put it in a mod.

Equanim

Grimwolf said:

[....] but then Patreon came along, and they took it a step further by saying that modders were not allowed to use that in order to support modding.

Then when the paid mods came about the first time, Bethesda took a cut of around 70%, while doing literally nothing to manage things.

That's disappointing.  It's legal because the modder is effectively making money from Bethesda's IP.  This kind of thing is done all the time, especially with fan-art, but the reality is that most publishers choose not to sue because it's horrible PR.  It's a shame because I feel like patreon is the win/win for everyone here.

Since Bethesda hasn't said anything about pricing, I'm guessing this is exactly what they're thinking about.  I feel like the cheaper they make everything, the more successful this platform will be. 

Hypothetical:

• Mods are priced between $0.50 and $5.
• Bethesda takes 50% of gross mod sales per month.
• Modders who participate in the program have access to high level dev assets from the game, e.g. source PSD's, sculpts, scripts, etc. for modders to work from.  Bethesda can release these over time to encourage steady participation.
• Platform TOS dictates that only mods in the program may have access to the above assets.
• Bethesda works to secure the platform, ensuring that mods aren't piratable so that they, and the modders continue to profit.

For the user, mods have to be very very cheap.  Like a good weapon mod would be $0.50, and a new dungeon with quests etc. would be $5.00.

Thoughts?

ZacD

The biggest issue is that the best mods for Bethesda games are most often the free ones, and the stuff that ends up on Creation Club is lower quality or cash grabs. The next biggest problem is official mods can never be full conversions or IP infringing, or "fix" parts of the game that are intended, and they can't have mods that are basically sandbox cheat codes, overpowered weapons, god mode powers, stats that begin to break the game.