Hello!

We are two students from the University of Umeå in Sweden, performing a study regarding motivations behind modding and content creation for video games.

What made you decide to create and share content for video games? We want to know why, and the results of this study will hopefully improve the way content creators are looked upon as a part of the video game industry.

The questions should take 5-10 minutes to answer and all respondents will be completely anonymous.

Click here for the Survey



Thank you all,
Sincerely!

Joakim and Eric

If the link doesn’t work please copy this url into your browser.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fforms%2Fd%2F1MW7L2S-LGkQ3nylyxJYLB2BCTxTzfP252B_IfvOy9hI%2Fviewform%3Fusp%3Dsend_form

Thank you all who comple the survey!

We will link the finished paper on this thread at the end of the semester, so that everyone who participated can see our workings and conclusions. Until then the survey will be open and gather your answers for the study.

Kind regards
Eric

Monetary compensation for mods seems to be a controversial topic, so I would like to ask this question:

Which developers, if any, provide adequate compensation for modding?

It seems that few has the potential to live up to this task

Valve and Epic Games.

Look at Steam Dev Days and some GDC talks, Valve are sort of open but not entirely transparent about figures, but they said some modders bring in six figures just by making hats.

Although if you look at the top "modders" who bring in the most cash, they are usually ex AAA developers.

SparkyMcSparks writes...
I did not know that Epic Games worked with modders, for the Unreal Tour. series im assuming.

In which ways do Epic compensate content contribution?

Valve do share some figures, but nothing that can be collected for any real analyses. Since Valve are kind hush-hush about money it is really hard to assess whether it seems good or bad, effective or inneffective.

edited on Apr. 21, 2015 07:30 am by ersa

No pressure!

...But this week is the last chance to fill the survey.
We appreciate your help to ensure that nothing has to happen to this puppy!



Best
/Some Nice Guy

You might want to think twice about threatening that puupy, his brother has a message to give you

ersa writes...

Not only with mods for new their Unreal Tournament title but with their whole Unreal Engine 4 development tools they have. You can make standalone assets and submit it for approval, and then get it put on the marketplace store for other content creators to buy. Similar to Unity.

For the Valve numbers you just need to search out the actual people who made money, here are some numbers from this person who made $10,000 making hats: http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/kmzuq/ive_made_10000_usd_selling_hats_ama/

Then there are these mappers who got their CS:GO maps released: http://www.mapcore.org/page/features/_/articles/operation-payback-first-hand-r27

$180,000 for a couple months of great work on level(s). That's roughly what I made working on Black ops 1 and 2 (and even a bit of 3 combined).

But check out this video from Valve on how they rewards their users, has some figures too but more about their framework and the valuation of mods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRyUpR4qOxU

**All data is now being collected and analyzed!**

We thank you for participating in this survey, and will keep this thread updated.
Please feel welcome to write on this thread while the paper is being finished!

I don't know if there is another thread for this topic, probably should be for a website like this, but Valve and Bethesda have pulled their monetary reward system for non-Valve game mods.

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

I think the system was far from perfect honestly, but it was a step in the right direction seeing as how this was being done for TF2, CSGO, and DOTA2 for years now and there's been no furor, in fact, exactly the opposite, there's been cheering for Valve selling mods and getting a big cut of the profit.


It has me pretty disappointed. People were going to make money off their mods and hard work for non-Valve titles. Yes 25% is low and no one is forcing modders to sell or players to buy, but it's perfect for college kids who want to get into the field while making ends meet a little better off derivative works. But now, nope. Nobody who mods makes money.

Good job everybody out there, you did it, you made sure the little guy get nothing for their efforts. Pat yourselves on the backs.