[p2p-research] Game Modding - Indoctrinating the Next Generation of Content Creators?

[Edward Miller]

Thought this would be a nice change of pace from my usual ramblings on
abstract philosophy.

The only closed-source software that I have a guilty pleasure for is the
Elder Scrolls video game series. Before I was aware of Open Source
philosophy I just loved to tinker with computers, and had even installed
Mandrake Linux as a 12 year old just because I could. A bit later I came
across the game Morrowind. While the game itself is phenomenal, what really
set it apart and has held my interest for years is the modding community
around it. Bethesda Softworks did something very interesting with that game,
and released the Elder Scrolls Construction Kit. This kit gives users the
same awesome graphical development tool that the game itself was made on,
and provides the users with the ability to modify all of the game's content
as well as the ability to create new content.

Predictably, this created a tidal wave of mods. The modding community needed
to develop a set of common practices and utilities to manage this vast
quantity of mods, some of which overwrite the same parts of the game and
need to be cleaned, merged, or loaded in a certain order. Then other
utilities went a step further and decided to modify the game engine itself.

For a quick glimpse of what has happened with all of this you can compare
the original Morrowind<http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/art/mwgoty/goty_web09B.jpg>
with
a fully modded<http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3248990>version.

The sequel to Morrowind, called Oblivion, is far more graphically advanced.
It has followed this same philosophy and the mod community operates in the
exact same fashion. As does the game from the same company, Fallout 3. Some
of the modding utilities overlap quite a bit.

A list of Open Source elder scrolls utilities (in fact I can't think of any
good closed source ones that anyone actually uses):

*Morrowind*

Morrowind Graphics Extender  <http://sourceforge.net/projects/morrgraphext/>
Morrowind Script Extender <http://sourceforge.net/projects/mwse/>
Exe Optimizer <http://timeslip.users.sourceforge.net/exeopt.html>
Wyre Mash <http://wryemusings.com/#WryeMash>
*
*
*Oblivion*

Oblivion Mod Manager <http://obmm.sourceforge.net/>
Oblivion Graphics
Extender<http://github.com/scanti/Oblivion-Graphics-Extender-v2>
Oblivion Script Extender <http://obse.silverlock.org/>
Oldblivion <http://www.oldblivion.com/index.php?page=about>
BOSS <http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20516>
Wyre Bash <http://wryemusings.com/#WryeBash>

*Both*

PyFFI <http://pyffi.sourceforge.net/>


Also, most of the mods use the open source 7zip
<http://www.7-zip.org/>compression utility, since it is the best one
in the world. Then there is a
project called OpenMW <http://openmw.sourceforge.net/> to actually
reimplement the game content of Morrowind (for users with a purchased copy)
onto an open source game engine called OGRE, so it can be cross-platform,
further graphically enhanced, and so modders can have complete access to the
game engine. This is the project I am so excited about that I can hardly
contain myself, but it will take awhile to complete.

So on one hand you have the Utilities and on the other hand you have the
Mods, which may also include huge amounts of meticulously created art, 3d
models, music, storylines, and so forth. What I have noticed is that nearly
all of the Utilities are GPL licensed, but the modding community have an
entrenched peer-based IP enforcement system that is also supported by the
major mod websites such as TES Nexus and PlanetElderScrolls. They remove
lots of mods that are suspected of being "pirated" and such.

I would be surprised if any of the modders made a single dollar on any of
their mods. Nearly all of them are given away for free, and the vast
majority of users download them from these major websites as opposed to the
modder's websites. Thus, I doubt any even make money from ad revenue. So it
seems like attribution is the main issue here. Why then is there such a
frantic enforcement of IP? Surely a Creative Commons license or GPL would be
sufficient?

Because of this, I have noticed tons of hardships in the development of new
mods, and derivative works. Many of the old modders are unreachable, and so
their mods just sit around for years in an unfinished or buggy state, while
other modders salivate at the thought of incorporating it into new work.
Lots of wheels are reinvented, and lots of work is abandoned or made more
difficult than it needs to be.

Is this because of the nature of the communities? Programming makes so much
sense to be done as open source through sourceforge or github, but artists
are more tyrannical about their work because it is more subjective.

It would be nice for IP not to be routinized into these people, many of whom
are young. I was thinking of doing a sort of Open Letter to the Modding
Community.... only not because I want to stamp them out like Bill Gates, but
because I want them to embrace the GPL and Creative Commons. After this
thread I intend to.
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