It’s November and that can only mean one thing.
‘Time for yet another Call of Duty game to be released,’ right?
Partially. Actually, it’s time for all the mapper and modders out there to start complaining about how Activision doesn’t support their time-honored craft. Yes, it’s an annual ritual that fills Twitter, Facebook and many a blog and forum out there with acrimonious posts that would sound even better set to a Chicago 12-bar blues number. Well, I am officially tired of hearing CoD coders fulminating over the real and perceived sleights that CoD’s devs and publishers are inflicting on them. Let’s get over it guys…the owners of CoD don’t really want you touching their game, so move on.
‘To where?’ you ask.
What about taking it up a notch? How about you go and create your own game from scratch?
Oh sure, you are talented (at least you keep telling me you are, so you must be) and creating a game from a blank sheet is what you have really been dying to do, but what you really need is a few other like-minded individuals to help do some of the scripting. Of course, you’ll need some money to spend on a game engine…with some left over to spend on marketing. Still interested?
More and more amateur coders who have cut their teeth on modding the games of others are now finding that software technology and social-media have converged in a unique way that allows anyone with a really good idea and a really good business plan, the opportunity to create something entertaining and lucrative.
The Engine of Technology
For FPS modders, the key ingredient in making games is an affordable game engine. Most modders don’t want to create the engine itself, they just want to write script that uses the engine to power the world they create. Nowadays, you don’t have to wait for the likes of Activision devs to provide you with SDK (um…thanks pcdev for the limited modtools, six months after the CoD:BO’s release)…you can just download the damned thing:
UDK
Nowadays, turnkey solutions like Epic Games Inc.’s Unreal Development Kit (UDK), which uses the Unreal Engine 3, can make amateur modders into professional developers overnight. UT3′s editor is used globally for learning Unreal Engine’s tech, but with UDK, all of UT3’s game creation tools are provided, including high-level engine features developed since the game’s release.
Last month, Epic Games released the October 2011 UDK Beta, the latest version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). Take a gander at their promo video:
If you want to showcase your UDK game, there’s a huge community. Check out this portal: IndieDB
On the cost side of the ledger, UDK is offered free to all the tinkerers out there who just want to create games either as an educational experience or to simply hand out for free to the community. The UDK is a free download for those folks. If you are a company and want to use UDK to make money, then every UDK seat costs $99 and you pay nothing to Epic until you’ve made your first $50K. After that? You have to fork out 25%. Read more about the licensing of UDK here.
CRYENGINE ®3
Crytek’s CRYENGINE® 3 is also available for both students of 3D Arts, non-commercial modders and serious developers. The terms of CRYENGINE®3′s licensing is similar to UDK’s. you can read more here. Crytek is claiming that the free version of CryENGINE®3 hit over one hundred thousand downloads the first week after its release on August 17th.
Of course, there are plenty of other game engines around:
Get a complete list of both free/shareware and licensed game engines from Wikipedia.
Social Media goes to Wall Street
Aside from making flash-mobs possible, or helping to depose Middle Eastern tyrants, social media can now provide crucial funding for all you Jason West-wannabes. Crowd-sourced funding, as it’s called, is a 21st-century version of asking your friends and family for seed money for your multi-million dollar idea. The idea is quite simple. You go online and ask for donations towards your project.
Kickstarter
Two sites that have really caught on with people and are becoming more and more vital for the budding modder with an idea are Kickstarter.com and the new 8-bit funding.com. Neither of these two sites technically let you launch a business. For legal reasons, they state that they their sites are not there to let you form a “startup”, rather they will help you start a “project”. Here’s how Kickstarter works (though both have nearly identical models). You post the details of what you are planning to do and how much you need. Donors come along and read what you have to say and they may, or may not, decide to give you some of that money you are asking for.
What do you get for your donation?
In return, donors get a sense of satisfaction from doing a good thing. They also get promised to be rewarded by the project team. But the rewards are not necessarily the traditional compensation you would see for taking a financial risk. For example, let’s say you are looking to score some dough for that new CoD-clone built using the UT3 engine. In return for a $100 donation, you’ll be glad to sign the DVD for the generous donor. For a $500 donation, you’ll put their name in the credits. For $1000, you’ll give them part of the litter your cat just had. That’s the sort of reward I’m talking about here…there’s no talk of return on the dollar or tax-write-offs. The wording being used on these sites and the ethos on display seems to lean more towards enlightened socialism than it does hardcore Wall-Street wheeling and dealing. The net effect is that, the project owner’s fear of failure and the donor’s expectations for success are lessened.
I recently asked Justin K. from Kickstarter’s communication team how his company came up with the idea.
BS: Justin, how did Perry Chen, Kickstarter’s co-founder and CEO come up with the idea for crowd-sourcing?
Justin: In 2002 Perry was living in New Orleans and wanted to throw a late-night concert to coincide with Jazz Fest. He thought the show would do well, but ultimately decided that it was too great of a financial risk. Once the dust settled, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a better way to get the audience involved in helping bring projects to life. That was the impetus for Kickstarter.
BS: Your group is doing great things for the indie game community. Do you have any good examples of games that have received funding?
Justin: With regard to gaming projects, there have been many great ones. Check out: games most funded
8-bitfunding
8-bitfunding.com has come out recently as a result of the success of Kickstarter.com. The real difference between 8-bitfunding and Kickstarter? Not much really, other than 8-bitfunding claims to focus on gaming; however, it’s the new kid on the block and therefore, there will be less donors scouring its pages.
8-bitfunding also avoids the use of the words “start-up” and instead likes to use the term “project”. The economic model is similar to Kickstarter and again, donors are supposed to receive “rewards” for the donation. As a middle-man, 8-bitfunding reaps a fee for its service. They get 5% of all transactions, as does PayPal which dips its hands into everyone’s pockets. You can read more about 8-bitfunding economics right here.
Go Mod yourself
So there you go! Stop complaining about how AAA-games have wronged the PC community and understand that there is a new untapped reality out there. I for one can’t wait to see what all those ex-CoD and BF modders come up with.
It is not that all gaming mappers and modders want to make a new game (or they would call themselves game developers) it is that they enjoy the games that they map and mod, they are providing a creative outlet with minimal work. COD2 has had more maps, and mods created by the community than MW2,MW3 and Black Ops will ever have combined, and they will never be able to.
They do the maps and mods for the community and for some bragging rights. The game developers are missing out on so much revenue by not releasing mapping and modding tools (I think about how many times I have purchased COD 2, 4 and 5), There is a reason why there are still players, still playing, still creating maps for and still buying those old COD games.
Try saying that there will still be players around enjoying MW2 in 5-10 years with a straight face.
Good advice for a happier, less dissapointing life! But no mention of the recently Open Source ID Tech4? You could even have gotten a plug in for the great ‘Quake 4 Mods for Dummies’!
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Quake_4_Mods_for_Dummies.html?id=RhMkwxLQaVMC&redir_esc=y
I am a Game artist student, and we are all required at my school to produce a senior project. My team is developing an FPS(only one or 2 MP levels to start as proof of concept) from the ground up to be a competitive shooter with new spectating tools for the commentators. We will definitely be posting our alpha here on the bash boards, and will be looking for all of your input as we come along.
Nice article. I also can’t hear the cry anymore. Remember last years “TA was always better to PC comm bla bla bla”. But a modification of your fav game and developing something new is something completely different althought the work itself might be the same. I think thats why so many still want to mod for eg. COD or BF. They are still fans.