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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 20</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
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<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Beaker's 
          Bent</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          Expansions Part II: Will it Kill the Mod Scene?</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Rich &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:rich@loonygames.com">Beaker</a>&quot; 
          Wyckoff</font></b></font></p>
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        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">W</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">ith 
          better tools and game integration for add-ons, it would also become 
          easier to sponsor homebrew contests on-line. It won’t be too many more 
          years before most games, even single-player games, will have an Internet 
          server. These servers will likely replace the homepages which nearly 
          all games have right now, and will continue to provide the patches, 

          bulletin boards, and news items which these home pages provide, but 
          these servers will be directly tied in to the game itself. Every player 
          will have an account, allowing them to store their characters on-line, 
          register their high-scores, and pay for and download the professional 
          mods. They will also be able to freely download and use expansions created 
          by other players, and submit their own. Such a system makes it easy 
          to implement systems allowing players to vote for their favorite add-ons 
          each month, with prizes going to the authors of the winning mods. This 
          lets homebrew authors get the maximum exposure for their work, lets 
          publishers scout potential new employees even more easily, and provides 
          a single central location for players to go for just about anything 
          having to do with their favorite game.</font>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Professional mod development 
          seems like it would cause the mod scene to flourish and grow, and give 
          amateur mod developers more respect and recognition, but what about 
          its impact on professional developers? I pointed out in my last column 
          that the fact that professional mods can be put together by individuals 
          or tiny teams would benefit game company management by allowing tighter, 
          shorter schedules and more use of contractors. This was one of the particularly 
          worrying points to some readers, and anyone who has worked in the industry 
          is aware of the fact that upper management rarely works in the best 
          interests of &quot;low-ranked&quot; employees, despite the fact that 
          in a creative field like computer games the real value of the company 
          is the people who actually make the games, and not the game properties 
          themselves. An industry move towards professional mods which promotes 
          a large amount of development by small teams could very well lead to 
          a worsening of the problem of resource shuffling.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There are no sure things 
          when it comes to making computer games, but the theory that I have been 
          developing in my time in the industry is that a great team will always 
          make a great game. The difficulties are in defining what exactly a great 
          team is, and that’s a subject for another column. All that is essential 
          to know is that any good team will have a core group of perhaps two 
          to five people, at least some of whom are team managers and can essentially 
          lead the rest of the team. The rest of the team can come and go without 
          dramatically affecting the team’s ability to make great games, as long 
          as the core stays intact, and it is these small team cores you often 
          read about leaving companies to form start-ups somewhere. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unfortunately, standard practice 
          in the industry is to shuffle people around at the drop of a hat while 
          referring to them with the dehumanizing term &quot;resources&quot; like 
          software development is some RTS game, even splitting team cores at 
          times (this can happen if a team hasn’t worked together for more than 
          a project, as it is possible they haven’t even figured out the dynamics 
          of their own group). This temptation to treat the most important people 
          to the success of a game as abstract units to be placed in slots would 
          grow even larger if professional mod developing created a need for a 
          bunch of single-person projects.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some Hollywood-emulating 
          computer game companies already hire employees on per-project contracts, 
          and it has even become depressingly common for permanent employees to 
          be laid off after their projects are finished if their company is having 
          a hard time. It can be hard even for extremely talented people to hold 
          jobs at companies between projects if they have been hired relatively 
          recently. Add to this the fact that much of the industry’s upper management 
          don’t actually personally know most of the people they are shuffling 
          around as resources, have never made personally made games, and can’t 
          understand the concept of team cores, and you get a situation which 
          really couldn’t get a lot worse.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In a way, adding a lot of 
          projects with single-resource allocations could help - it might give 
          more options for people who suddenly find themselves on the top of the 
          lay-off list due to their last project’s poor sales. As I mentioned 
          last time this would also make it easier for people to get a start in 
          the industry, especially as designers. Given the hope pinned on nearly 
          every project to make the year’s biggest hit on the year’s smallest 
          budget, most developers are extremely reluctant to hire on unproven 
          talent even in a junior design role, since they really want every person 
          to be able to do the work of two, and a newbie who might not even be 
          able to match one resource’s work is just not desirable.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&#9;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Even after further analysis, 
          I believe that a shift towards enhancements which require professional 
          homebrews would be a positive one for our industry. Unless the more 
          raving capitalists out there decide to shut down homebrew development 
          altogether in the name of profits, the mod scene should actually benefit 
          from being a counterpoint to and training ground for professional mod 
          development. The effects on the hiring and internal management practices 
          of the industry could be negative, but given how largely screwed up 
          this is at so many companies, it’s going to take major efforts to fix 
          anyway. Most of all, of course, internet-published professional mods 
          would be good for gameplayers and this is why I developed the idea originally, 
          since what I really want is to get more fun out of the games that I 
          like.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; 
        <p align="RIGHT"><i><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">- 
          Rich "Beaker" Wyckoff is a game designer on the game <b>Trespasser</b> 
          for <a href="http://www.dreamworksgames.com">DreamWorks Interactive</a>.</font></i></p>
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Beaker's Bent logo illustrated by and is &copy; 1998 Dan Zalkus. Beaker's 
      Bent is &copy; 1998 Rich Wyckoff. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't 
      do it. We have ways of making you talk.</font></i></td>
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