Modding is "a declining trend", says Battlefield producer

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Matt-aka-FAST

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Yeah don't expect any modding. BS on the getting harder to mod part. Its all about the $ka ching$


BY Gameplanet Staff
DICE believes the once-popular practice of "modding" games – whereby amateur hobbyists take a published game and use tools provided by the developer to modify it into a new experience for players – is on the way out.

"Modding is a declining trend actually," said Patrick Bach, the executive producer on Battlefield 3, in an interview with Gameplanet. "It’s sad to say. We’ve seen some cool mods but since games are getting more complicated to build, it’s also getting more complicated to mod them, so it’s a declining trend as we see it. Sad but true."

Bach would not be drawn on whether Battlefield 3 will include any tools for modding: "We don’t have any information on that right now, at all."

Various mods have been released for previous games in DICE's Battlefield series, such as the Desert Combat modern warfare mod for Battlefield 1942.

Modding grew to prominence in the age of id Software's Quake in the mid '90s. Quake was readily modifiable and spawned many popular mods including Team Fortress and Rocket Arena. The popularity of mods peaked with the Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life, which was later acquired by Valve.

Once lauded as an avenue of growth, creativity and innovation in the games industry, modding's star has waned as more of the business has drifted away from PCs and onto console platforms, which have no modding capability.
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As I posted on FPS, it's in decline because DICE/EA doesn't offer them.

Seriously, do these guys have a brain? Simple logic tells us that if you strip away a feature, it goes in decline.

Fucking morons man.
 
...and other companies offer access to the whole engine to make new games(i.e. Unreal) - better way to go, imo

but of course EA doesn't do this either
 
Soulzz said:
As I posted on FPSAdmin, it's in decline because DICE/EA doesn't offer them.

Seriously, do these guys have a brain? Simple logic tells us that if you strip away a feature, it goes in decline.

Fucking morons man.
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Right! A BFBC2 tool would be great. So I can make a new 2142 and be happy.
 
Greed kills innovation.

And yes, SID, that would be great. Unfortunately, DICE doesn't seem to care.
 
If I were them, i'd introduce MOD capability. To keep a game alive longer you need modding. CS and Source games are the reason why they still dominate the PC scene, even BF2 to some extent.
 
x=FAST=x said:
If I were them, i'd introduce MOD capability. To keep a game alive longer you need modding. CS and Source games are the reason why they still dominate the PC scene, even BF2 to some extent.
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Agreed, but the reason Valve is able to support their games so long is due to the fact that they are private; no shareholders.

EA is a marketing giant, and, like Activision, they have shareholders to please. They could careless about their customers, the gamers. All they want is money. Everything they say about, "BF3 is a true PC game", it's all marketing. The game may very well be good, but it's certainly not getting my pre-order. I may buy it, but not after trusted reviews.
 
Soulzz said:
Agreed, but the reason Valve is able to support their games so long is due to the fact that they are private; no shareholders.

EA is a marketing giant, and, like Activision, they have shareholders to please. They could careless about their customers, the gamers. All they want is money. Everything they say about, "BF3 is a true PC game", it's all marketing. The game may very well be good, but it's certainly not getting my pre-order. I may buy it, but not after trusted reviews.
Click to expand...

Valve has shareholders - and the need to impress those shareholders is way more important than in the case of EA - because of the private nature of Valve, and that they are still in the venture stage and trying to raise new money.
 
If someone is playing a game for years it's no benefit for the company; they want you to buy new games. As a gamer playing a game that you like and modding it only makes it that much more enjoyable. EA cannot support the platforms they have now, how are they going to develop Mod tools along with that, it would be worse than the 2142 patches they rolled out.
 
The other thing that killed modding for the BF series is the ranking system meaning any modded games would not be ranked.
 
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