All posts tagged mods

Valve Puts Mods on Steam

Well, Valve finally did it. They started putting mods on their Steam platform. In a way, I’m somewhat jealous. Yes, I’ll admit it, I’m jealous. And here goes my jealous rant:

Back when I worked on Firearms (for Half-Life 1), I remember having a short email conversation with someone at Valve. I don’t remember who it was though. I want to say it was Robin Walker, but I might be wrong. At that time, the news about Steam was that “No mods will be put on Steam.” I was trying to get Firearms up on Steam so it would get some more exposure. At the time, it was still a fairly popular mod so I didn’t figure it would be too big of a deal.

So I’m jealous now that other mods, like Age of Chivalry and Insurgency get to be placed on Steam and exposed to millions of people world-wide with very little effort on the mod-team’s part. Its great because it gives the games more exposure yes, but this could be a double edged sword here. I mean now it brings more of a “glam” incentive to creating mods when the whole purpose to write them was to build a portfolio, gain experience, and then ultimately apply for a job. Game development studios could face a lot more “riff-raff” than before because now there’s just a serious “glam” factor with making games and mods.

This might sound brash, but I have little respect for game developers who develop only for the glam of making games. I mean yes, glam does come with the territory, but it should NEVER be the sole motivation factor for amateur game developers trying to make it to the big-time. Me personally, I like writing games because it is challenging, complex, fun, exciting, educational, and it lets the creativity juices run wild; it has little to do with the “glam of writing games.” When a game programmer/developer is motivated by grandeur, he/she starts to think less of the game and their role in the grand scheme of things and more about themselves and how they can just get rich and maintain their position on their “high horse.”

So my advice to any new mod team, indie game studio, or hobbyist game developer: Do it for the love of what you do. Even if you don’t make money or gain status because of it, you’ve learned something. You have the rest of your life to figure out how to capitalize on what you’ve learned. As the old adage says: “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.” With a little twist to reflect what I just said: “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again because you love what you do.”