Why do game developers intentionally make modding hard - Games

[URL="http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=965699"](déjà vu?)[/URL] I know many game developers are really good about mods (such as our favorite, Valve) but some actually go out of their way to [I]prevent[/I] it. Ever installed a mod for GTA 4? You need to download a bunch of patched DLL files in order to get it to work. One of these is xlive.dll, which in addition to providing access to Games for Windows Live (which sucks) and likely providing copy protection, also prevents mods from working. I also think I remember trying to run The Sims 2 with a debugger, and having it detected and the game refusing to run. And how about Mirror's Edge? It uses the Unreal Engine, which has a developer console. EA DICE, the developers, actually [I]removed[/I] access to the console. Sure, there's ways around it, such as editing the key bindings in the configuration file, but that's inconvenient, and even then most of the cheat commands are disabled. They also intentionally make it hard to make levels. Why is this?

not all of them do.. take valve or bethesda for instance

Because they do not want people to modify their game and hack and stuff like that

I think it might also have to do with piracy and copy prevention, but I'm not familiar with the measures involved in that. Only reason I can think of anyway. [QUOTE=VG-Cats;23163737]not all of them do.. take valve or bethesda for instance[/QUOTE] Hey, take a book. [QUOTE=w0lfeh;23163757]Because they do not want people to modify their game and hack and stuff like that[/QUOTE] God help us all if they boost the replay value :downs: That answer doesn't make any sense, now does it.

Some do, more don't.

Money. If people mod their games, there's little reason to buy a half-assed sequel.

[QUOTE=kukiric;23163831]Money. If people mod their games, there's little reason to buy a half-assed sequel.[/QUOTE] This - and noone would buy a bunch of $10 map packs and shitty downloadable contents when they could just download maps and mods for their games and install them easy as that. It's sort of like DRM - It usually gets cracked anyway.

Because if someone makes a great mod, who'll want to buy the sequel? Relic did this with the Dawn of War games, the originals had full mod support, but DoW 2 didn't, less people bought it so Relic released it.

It's much cheaper and faster to make a closed-engine game (both in performance and development time wise) than to make a game that has moddable variables such as lua scripting and etc. With modding to work, you have to properly comment and document your moddable code base in relation to your hard-coded stuff (vs just hard coding everything). You also have to use more checks and balances to prevent instability and performance degradation as well IIRC. Development is much less linear and more open-spaced, which means it takes longer to get the same project done than it would if it was closed. When it's all behind closed doors, you can save dev time by just having your coding pipeline streamlined to work with how your company works and not having any modding regards. It's also a case of 3rd party tools and middleware used. Many developers liscense middleware in order to develop their games, that is very effective at doing their specific purpose. For example in Supreme Commander 2, all the maps were made using 3DS max and several special professional plug-ins that they liscensed to use. Because of this, their map making pipeline was vastly streamlined cost wise, performance wise and development time wise... but user made maps were now impossible to do (because of the need for 3DS max and the professional middleware that the developers liscensed to make the maps with). If the devs made their own development tools then this would be legally feasable to overcome, but developing your own tools and plugins when there already are some that exist on the professional market is really cost-prohibiting and costs A LOT more development time.

KorJax, thats amazing. :allears: I expected the sole reason being that companies want to make money off of DLC...(Forcing people to buy map packs and disallowing the creation of maps)

[QUOTE=KorJax;23164723]It's much cheaper and faster to make a closed-engine game (both in performance and development time wise) than to make a game that has moddable variables such as lua scripting and etc. With modding to work, you have to properly comment and document your moddable code base in relation to your hard-coded stuff (vs just hard coding everything). You also have to use more checks and balances to prevent instability and performance degradation as well IIRC. Development is much less linear and more open-spaced, which means it takes longer to get the same project done than it would if it was closed. When it's all behind closed doors, you can save dev time by just having your coding pipeline streamlined to work with how your company works and not having any modding regards. It's also a case of 3rd party tools and middleware used. Many developers liscense middleware in order to develop their games, that is very effective at doing their specific purpose. For example in Supreme Commander 2, all the maps were made using 3DS max and several special professional plug-ins that they liscensed to use. Because of this, their map making pipeline was vastly streamlined cost wise, performance wise and development time wise... but user made maps were now impossible to do (because of the need for 3DS max and the professional middleware that the developers liscensed to make the maps with). If the devs made their own development tools then this would be legally feasable to overcome, but developing your own tools and plugins when there already are some that exist on the professional market is really cost-prohibiting and costs A LOT more development time.[/QUOTE] Making a moddable game makes it stand out more to some part of the market tho, and thus making it more popular and thus it giving more cash. Atleast that's what I think, but I'm probably wrong.

because nigger

[QUOTE=spanaren;23168181]Making a moddable game makes it stand out more to some part of the market tho, and thus making it more popular and thus it giving more cash. Atleast that's what I think, but I'm probably wrong.[/QUOTE] Only sometimes though. There's a few games out there that have pretty cool editors and stuff, and I bet the devs spent a lot of time on them, but for what? So there could be 2 mods worth having out of hundreds that never actually get made and are just ideas.

[QUOTE=Pj The Dj;23168457]Only sometimes though. There's a few games out there that have pretty cool editors and stuff, and I bet the devs spent a lot of time on them, but for what? So there could be 2 mods worth having out of hundreds that never actually get made and are just ideas.[/QUOTE] I guess. But still, atleast let peoples make custom maps.

[QUOTE=KorJax;23164723]It's much cheaper and faster to make a closed-engine game (both in performance and development time wise) than to make a game that has moddable variables such as lua scripting and etc. With modding to work, you have to properly comment and document your moddable code base in relation to your hard-coded stuff (vs just hard coding everything). You also have to use more checks and balances to prevent instability and performance degradation as well IIRC. Development is much less linear and more open-spaced, which means it takes longer to get the same project done than it would if it was closed. When it's all behind closed doors, you can save dev time by just having your coding pipeline streamlined to work with how your company works and not having any modding regards. It's also a case of 3rd party tools and middleware used. Many developers liscense middleware in order to develop their games, that is very effective at doing their specific purpose. For example in Supreme Commander 2, all the maps were made using 3DS max and several special professional plug-ins that they liscensed to use. Because of this, their map making pipeline was vastly streamlined cost wise, performance wise and development time wise... but user made maps were now impossible to do (because of the need for 3DS max and the professional middleware that the developers liscensed to make the maps with). If the devs made their own development tools then this would be legally feasable to overcome, but developing your own tools and plugins when there already are some that exist on the professional market is really cost-prohibiting and costs A LOT more development time.[/QUOTE] Nice response. But it still doesn't explain why game developers would actively [I]prevent[/I] people from modding, even if they had the tools needed, and could figure out how without documentation.

let people mod freely = millions of users in community. almost no sequels (no $) only if the engine gets better let people mod limited = good community at start, as the time passes it gets decreased. possible sequels dont let people mod = good community only if the game has success. very possible sequels dont let people mod (bad) = bad game, almost no community. game get forgotten

[QUOTE=flarn2006;23169034]Nice response. But it still doesn't explain why game developers would actively [I]prevent[/I] people from modding, even if they had the tools needed, and could figure out how without documentation.[/QUOTE] That's more of a design decision. One that's not a very good one IMO mind you, but is one. Such as, they probably removed developer console in Mirrors Edge because it would detract from the "intended experience" that the designer wanted you to feel. A lot of super-linear game designers have that kind of mode of thinking, where they create an experience and they want the player to experience their "story" and their game exactly as they intended. I think that design philosophy takes away from what makes interactivity as a medium so great though. Also a lot of what I said isn't true across the board for every developer, it's just stuff I've picked up on when reading about things like that. I know from reading the Wolfire blog for example, that LUA is actually much much slower to run and process than just making the whole game in C++. But if you have the whole game in C++, it will be unmoddable unless you make the game completely open source... which obviously wouldn't happen for a big commercial game. So it's just easier and more time efficent for the devleopers to go "Oh, let's just make the whole game in C++ then", because then you don't have to worry about balancing what is controlled by lua and what is not so you don't run into stability and performance issues. It's a more predictable development experience, and because of that more "comfortable" to work in.