Why open collaboration in modding seems to be impossible?

Information, How-to's, and discussion about mod'ing Master of Orion II.
Buddenbrook
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Why open collaboration in modding seems to be impossible?

Postby Buddenbrook » Mon Aug 13, 2007 4:07 am

I will open a thread for this topic, if someone - now or on a later date - wants to discuss this topic.

Out of re-addressed respect and concern towards other people, I will refrain from posting my own views.

If someone else has something to say...

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Green_Knight
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Postby Green_Knight » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:36 am

Completely new here...so what you are saying is that there are a lot of people out there that has bits and pieces of info that could be of use to other modders, but they don't want to share it?

So far I've found lots of info in this forum, so I had the impression people were rather open about the whole affair...but maybe I'm mistaken?

But why would anyone NOT want to share info about a 10-year old game? Sounds a bit silly to me...

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Matthew
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Postby Matthew » Thu Aug 16, 2007 2:23 pm

Everyone that got involved with modding MOO2 did so on a volunteer basis with no set rules or guidelines. What they share is up to them. MOO2 wasn't really designed with modding in mind. It would be nice if the license holders made the source code available but I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

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TheDS
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Postby TheDS » Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:09 am

I believe the problem is that people are lazy and their priorities change. If you had some sort of enforceable rules that required signees to do what they say they'll do, that would cut down on the number of people vanishing into thin air. OTOH, since the community is so small, your pool of potential volunteers goes to pretty much nothing, and the only way to increase it is to offer tangible rewards, like payment for work. If you're going to go that far, you may as well put an ad in the classifieds for programmers.

So when you ask for volunteers, just remember that you get what you pay for. You may get lucky and find a real go-getter with talent and plenty of time on his hands, but you'll also get a ton of people who want nothing more than to express an opinion or two, or contribute a picture, and then they disappear.

One thing I've seen recently is modding contests that have tangible prizes (often cash). The company sponsoring the contest wins with lots of ads and lots of mods that cost almost nothing for them, and they locate a handful of people with talent and work ethic that they can offer a job to.

The MOO2 community could take a similar approach. If you have a particular mod in mind, put out a contest, and whoever does the best job of fulfilling the requirements gets a cash prize. Naturally, in a community this small, the cash prize would also be small, and so the work requested would have to be small. It might not be a bad idea to award "runners-up" prizes to anyone who did a good enough job that they would've won had not the winner won. Poof, you now have a pool of people to draw from, even if you have to offer them a little cash; the beneficiaries at large would probably be happy to contribute to funding these contests if they produce results.
Why do they get to attack me without war being declared, but I can't do the same?

c'g~
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Postby c'g~ » Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:45 am

The MOO2 community could take a similar approach. If you have a particular mod in mind, put out a contest, and whoever does the best job of fulfilling the requirements gets a cash prize. Naturally, in a community this small, the cash prize would also be small, and so the work requested would have to be small. It might not be a bad idea to award "runners-up" prizes to anyone who did a good enough job that they would've won had not the winner won. Poof, you now have a pool of people to draw from, even if you have to offer them a little cash; the beneficiaries at large would probably be happy to contribute to funding these contests if they produce results.
What U are proposing isn’t collaboration – U said it yourself, that it’s a contest. And about money: What prove would have the contest holders about payment to contestants, when those would revile their PRESIOUS ideas. Ideas are COSTLESS, so U can give them only for free.

Just like Me, I give all of U my EXPa Mod for free – ENJOY it!
(U can find it here: viewtopic.php?t=559)

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TheDS
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Postby TheDS » Mon Jul 21, 2008 8:15 pm

What U are proposing isn’t collaboration – U said it yourself, that it’s a contest. And about money: What prove would have the contest holders about payment to contestants, when those would revile their PRESIOUS ideas. Ideas are COSTLESS, so U can give them only for free.

Just like Me, I give all of U my EXPa Mod for free – ENJOY it!
Please tell me if this is an accurate translation of what you're saying (no slight intended):
What you are proposing isn’t collaboration – it’s a contest. And about money: <untranslatable gibberish deleted, but seemed irrelevant> Ideas are COSTLESS, so you can't sell them.

Just like I give all of you my EXPa Mod for free – ENJOY it!
I bolded the part I actually wanted to talk about.

Even if your assertion that ideas have no cost was true, quite a few people sell their ideas, because they still have value. If country A makes tools in a blacksmith shop and country B gets the idea to make all their tools in a factory, which country is going to be taking over the other one pretty soon? I'd say the idea to make tools in an assembly-line fashion was worth a lot.

But stuff is also worth what someone will pay for it. It's very good of you to give away your work, which was more than just an idea, but you know there isn't a lot of demand for MOO2 mods, and probably none for mods that cost money when so many are free. You give your mod away because no one would pay for it, not out of altruism or because the idea didn't cost you anything.

Putting aside that you put in a lot of work, as did whoever made the tools that made your work possible, getting your idea wasn't exactly free either. You had to have schooling when you were younger to be able to understand the game and figure out how to make it better. You also had to have schooling to figure out how to properly express your idea, both to yourself and to us. Schooling isn't free. You and your teachers had to eat and your parents had to clean up your mess the first few years of your life.

Let's not even get deep into what productive things you could've been doing instead of coming up with, writing down, and building your ideas. How many hours did you spend on it for "free" that you could have spent working at a paying job earning a living wage? Earning a really good wage?

But I'm getting into "reaching" territory here, so I'll stop.

The point is that people can and do sell their ideas all the time. There is nothing inherently evil about this, and it doesn't make you a sell-out, and if this is the only way to get reliable people to accomplish a task that they otherwise wouldn't care about, then who really cares, so long as it gets accomplished?

If people really want to see such-and-such done, then they need to be willing to pay for it, because even if the results are just an idea implemented, this still took time and effort and took away from people's work time or relaxation time, and if they aren't being compensated in some way, why would they do it? Personal satisfaction only goes so far.

(For the record, I have also created and given away things, and I intermittantly work on a number of things that I want to give away, but like you, I don't have a huge market for what I give, so I'm not rich or famous from it. It's a labor of love, but it takes a back seat to earning money and relaxing.)
Why do they get to attack me without war being declared, but I can't do the same?


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