The Mod scene has been rather depressing of late: mods shutting
down left and right, teams dropping out due to Real Life and other
issues, little or no progress on most of the remaining mods...what
gives? Your friendly neighborhood Despot thinks he knows, and here's
what he has to say.
The Problem
Statement of difficulty: game communities depend on user creations,
primarily Modifications, to remain alive and active. The initial release
of a game and the attendant flurry of discovery, patches, and so on
sustains for a time, but after that, the Mods are what generate interest
in a game.
Deus Ex's community lacks much in this regard. Out of the multitude
of mod projects that have been launched in the year and 4 months that
have passed since Deus Ex was shipped, only ANT-Agenda
Part 1, Blood
Like Venom, and the Counterfeit
demo have actually become available to the public in playable
condition.
Why?
What It Isn't
(let's look on the bright side for a bit)
There are those who will contend that the absence of Mods is due to
the fact that the tools utilized for Deus Ex Editing are difficult
to master and use effectively. This position has some validity to
it: Deus Ex is not an easy game to modify, to be sure, and the Tools
are also a contributing factor to the present difficulties. However,
we cannot say that accessibility is not The Reason for lack of Mods.
Remember, these are the tools that ION Storm Austin used to create
the original Deus Ex, and numerous other games that use the Unreal
engine have been developed with the same editor as well. The tools
are not easy to use, but they are not unusable in any sense
of the word.
Also, lack of talent is not an issue. One need only to peruse Edge
of Dark's Media
Page, drool over RedSun 2020's screenshots,
or browse through Auriga's
Art to recognize the artistic ingenuity present in the Deus Ex
modding community. The ability (which is quite often actual professional
ability) is there, to be sure. Implementing ideas is certainly not
the cause.
But do the ideas that require coding, modeling, and mapping exist?
Can we attribute the problem at hand to absence of the creativity
necessary to produce compelling gameplay or immersive story fiction?
To some extent, yes: a certain amount of carbon copying of previous
successes will always be present in a given Mod community: a classic
example is the ubiquitous Counter-Strike clone. However, if one stops
by DXMP_PartyZone
or reads news updates from the Narcissus
Entity, it becomes obvious that for the most part originality
and innovation are alive and well.
Cause #1: The Missing Tenacity
(you knew the positive comments couldn't last)
We see it over and over again. A person or persons have an Idea, which
is not in and of itself a bad thing. Excitement is intense! We have
purpose and intention! Let us go forth and enlighten our benighted
fellow Deus Ex fans with this wondrous new thing!
But the excitement is only a passing thing. That intangible Idea must
be actualized and made palpable: levels, weapons, fiction, et cetera
all must be conceptualized and implemented. Dear me, this is more
than we had bargained for! Progress slows down as the team loses motivation,
which leads to discouragement, and even less progress, more discouragement,
and less motivation. Eventually, progress is at a standstill, and
there is an indefinite period of stagnation, until someone is merciful
enough to quietly kill the project.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
As I have just rather melodramatically demonstrated, it seems (here
comes the hammer) that the Deus Ex Mod community's main difficulty
is an over-abundance of enthusiasm, and a sore lack of commitment
and determination. The apparent misconception is that making a
mod is rather like performing some magic incantation: throw together
a bit of story, draw some artwork, get other people to jump on your
bandwagon, click your heels together, spin around twice, spit on a
rock, and SUDDENLY cool stuff will spring into existence. It's simple,
easy, and doesn't take much effort.
But it's also completely wrong! Modding isn't some sort of quick path
to fame and fortune, but rather a creative process that requires Time
and Effort. Knowing what you want to create and having the will to
accomplish it are essential parts of success, but it must be balanced
by an ability to work, work, and then work some more.
Cause #2: No Minions
The second problem that occurs is a shortage of manpower. There
are only a finite number of coders, mappers, and modellers, which
are, for the most part, already trying to do more than they can. It's
a simple supply and demand situation: the demand much exceeds the
supply.
This difficulty is primarily a function of the previous problem: what
little resources are available are tied up in projects that are, as
a rule, not progressing due to the reasons previously stated.
Conclusions
An exposition of the cause would be meaningless if a solution is not
presented as well, so now that we've established what the difficulty
is, what can be done to alleviate the problem? Three things:
- Don't start something you aren't prepared to finish. Before you
even think of starting production, take a good long look at what you're
planning to do, and then ask yourself, "Can I do this?"
Lofty goals are good to have, but they must be tempered by Reality:
limitations exist, no matter how much we try to ignore them.
Be prepared to set aside your other entertainment, too: don't think
for an instant that you can work on a Mod, and also keep up on your
gaming, chatting, maintaining webpages, television, you name it. They
will all have to take a secondary role, if not suspended entirely.
Such is the nature of commitment.
- Be prepared to assist other efforts before you "do your own
thing(tm)." Look around, see what mods are currently in progress,
and find out what they're about, post on the Help
Available forum...perhaps you can contribute to another project
and help it succeed--it'd be a lot better than starting your own and
having it disintegrate almost immediately. Remember, supply must be
greater than or equal to the demand, and if you intentionally make
yourself part of the demand, you're only making the problem worse,
and doing the entire community a grave disservice to boot.
Which begs the question: is creating more demand justifiable, if the
Idea is Really Cool? At the moment, no: with the resources as limited
as they are, it is of greater importance that what is already in progress
be finished. Help out with another project and improve and fine-tune
your Idea in the meantime. Then, when we start seeing some actual
finished work and there is more people available (or there is a sudden
influx of unengaged talent, which is not likely), start your own project.
- If you're currently working on a Mod that has ground to a halt,
perhaps it is time to re-think your goals. You may need to scale
back the artillery a bit, and work on a less ambitious design. Or
perhaps you merely need to get off your rear and get to work. And,
as a last resort, you may need to shut down the project, but this
option is only necessary in extreme circumstances. As a rule, all
that is required is determination and a clear, obtainable goal;
quitting means that one of these required components is missing.
Don't put off completing the project or put it to sleep for
awhile. Not only does it create false hope that it will be completed
(which is unlikely), it will have a tendancy to haunt you when you
try to work on another project. And don't put off the work until
the indefinite time when Deus Ex 2 is released. If Mods for Deus
Ex 1 never come out, don't you think ISA will be more reluctant
to release editing tools for DX2? Why put the effort into creating
an SDK that is usable by the fans when the fans don't appear to
have the ability to actually create something with them?
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