It's an undeniable fact that a good modding community is essential for the longevity of a game. Neverwinter Nights, an 18 year old game, is still getting played by people to this day and it is because of the hard work of talented modders and dungeon masters. These people have spent countless hours of their free time working (for free) to improve the game they love. Some of the campaigns and persistent worlds made by these modders and dungeon masters are better then the campaigns made by the company itself (in fact I'd argue that the majority of them are better).
It occurred to me, why aren't these people getting paid for their hard work, how much more good content could we have if modders and dungeon masters could make their passion projects into a legitimate career, or at the very least, make enough money that they can take more time off from their normal jobs to work on what they love. Maybe even employ other professionals to improve their content (voice actors, level editors, 3d artists, writers, musicians).
My suggestion is that you create a platform where this can become a reality. Add a section to your website where content creators can sell their hard work as DLC to those of us who desperately crave it. Naturally your company can and should take a percentage of those profits in order to continue your future development of the game.
You have created a fantastic campaign world and game, with a sourcebook (that I really want to get my hands on), why not give content creators a platform to make a career out of adding content to this world. How many years will people be playing this game if this is a reality; 18, 25, 30 years? I don't know but I want to see it.
I don't think this would stop the normal trend of people doing free modding for the game, for those worried about that, but it would give us access to some potentially incredible professional level premium content that we might not otherwise have access to.
What are peoples thoughts on this, I'm definitely aware that my idea's are not always popular or practical, but hopefully this one is one the community can get behind.
It takes a *lot* of work to shift from *program* to *platform*. TA seems to be a small company with a relatively small budget, and while there are definitely signs they are laying foundations for something bigger (the character creator being able to level up characters for instance), I’d imagine they are needing to focus on getting the game out and having it be financially successful. But I totally agree with you that Solasta has the potential to be the heir apparent to NWN (and even better, more faithful to the underlying systems than NWN was), and I hope they can pull that off down the road.
yeah, this is one of those things that would likely have to happen well after release. Maybe even having another Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for building the platform.
I'd like to recommend this to other studios with similar game types (we all know who I'm talking about), but I have a feeling this is something that will have to be started by a smaller studio and then copied by other game studios.
Hehe, yeah. If somehow the detailed graphics and access to published source materials also could be combined with the faithful rules and encounter design and clean UI that would be crazy amazingly good. As it is, I’m happy they are both coming along now, and have been playing a ton of both.
yeah, this seems kind of like a renaissance of CRPG games. I can't say I really like Baldurs Gate 3, it frustrates the hell out of me, but I'm glad it's being made. Maybe I'll like it when it's finished and the difficulty is balanced (or difficulty modes are added).
I think TA is too small for this to be desirable. What are they gonna do, make a platform that competes with their own game and their own content? I strongly doubt anybody's making bank on Solasta, and they have bills to pay.
There's also the issue of massive massive legal liability. The public at large is bad at understanding copyright, and if TA winds up hosting infringing content because a modder didn't do their homework, the whole thing can get shut down.
There's a lot that changes when you move from developer to content server. Notice how Valve makes virtually 0 games now? The entire company exists to support Steam, that's it.
IMO, the better route will be to pursue the sourcebook and put campaign content on The DM's Guild. Let modders do their mods.
I think TA is too small for this to be desirable. What are they gonna do, make a platform that competes with their own game and their own content? I strongly doubt anybody's making bank on Solasta, and they have bills to pay.
There's also the issue of massive massive legal liability. The public at large is bad at understanding copyright, and if TA winds up hosting infringing content because a modder didn't do their homework, the whole thing can get shut down.
There's a lot that changes when you move from developer to content server. Notice how Valve makes virtually 0 games now? The entire company exists to support Steam, that's it.
IMO, the better route will be to pursue the sourcebook and put campaign content on The DM's Guild. Let modders do their mods.
Thats fair, the legal issue would be a big and risky hurdle to jump.
With what I'm suggesting though, it wouldn't be competing with their game, it would value added. TA would take a cut of every sale so they could continue development themselves.
Yeah, your right about steam, this idea is perhaps better as a platform built from the ground up specifically for this purpose. It's possible this idea is just bad too, it wouldn't be the first time I came up with a bad idea.