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Bad news – another, promising-looking single-player Half-Life 2 mod has died. NightFall, which looked positively arty in places. They tried switching to an episodic development model, but perhaps a bit too late…

Shame.

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Game developers like Valve quite rightly bang on about how mod teams have an advantage in terms of a lack of constraints (at least in terms of what the money men in the games industry will give the thumbs-up to). However, there is a flip-side. Games are an investment of sorts; mods are utterly disposable. If someone pays £25 for a game and they don’t ‘get’ it on first play, then they will usually keep playing it. If the learning curve is a little steep or the hook doesn’t arrive for a while, that’s fine because the player will usually muddle through to get their money’s worth. Then, if the game is good, they’ll have an epiphany of sorts. Then they’re hooked. However, if it’s a mod, then it’s more than likely that it won’t get repeated plays unless the player immediately finds it fun and easy to get into. It’ll mentally be labelled “shit/hard/confusing” and then the player will uninstall/delete it and tell of his/her friends who are thinking about installing it to not bother. I.e. mods have to fight harder to grab and maintain the player’s attention.

To give an analogy:
I’m sure everyone has an album they own that they initially were indifferent towards or hated, but it grew on them on repeated listens. I bet if you paid the princely sum of zero pounds/dollars for it, you’d be less likely to give it the time it needs to grow on you. I’ve noticed the same thing happens to me when I download music from the Internet these days. I have made no investment in it (other than putting in the very slight effort of tracking it down) so I tend to give something a few listens at most and regardless of the hype, if I’m not liking it, I move on. It’s obviously different if I’m a fan of the group, but for new music it tends to be in one ear and out the other. Back when I bought a lot of CDs (before industry morons started putting anti-CD-ROM spinup shit and root kits on CDs), I made a much bigger effort to actually like the music I’d bought because it was a waste of money otherwise. I’m sure there’s quite a few albums in my collection that I would never have listened to if I had paid nothing for them. There’s also the reverse where I own and listen to music that I never would’ve spent money on in the first place. I just gave it a try (mainly because it was free) and happened to like it.

Do you see? Stevie Wonder bloody doesn’t. He can play the drums, though. Oh, he can play the drums.

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The worst part about modding in large(ish) teams is simply the fact that your interactions with people take place via the Internet. There’s no guaranteed way to know whether someone is the real deal or a lazy git. You can have someone ask to join your mod and scrutinise them. After evaluating the person, you decide that the email is well written and the person seems to be humble, talented, enthusiastic and realistic. The perfect fit!

The person then joins the mod and it turns out that they’re a lazy, egotistical moron who leads you a merry dance. They spend three months telling you that they are making good progress and will show you something soon (when in reality they have spent three months playing the bongos). It always bemuses me when people take this tact with me; I’ve seen it all before — I know when people are working or bullshitting. I have no problem with people being busy in life and telling me the truth. What I hate is when people bullshit me and it makes it hard to keep track of the real state of the mod. I’ve also had people join who get acquainted with all of our systems (forums, source control, design documentation etc.) and then we have a chat on our voice server / the forums about all the great ideas they’ve got and the BOUNDLESS ENTHUSIASM they have for the project. Then that’s the last I ever see of them. It really is astonishing. If they don’t like what they see or they have a change of circumstance and no longer want to work on the mod, you’d think they could at least tell the mod leader(s).

Or, even worse, the person is sort of useful and hangs around, but causes ructions with other (infinitely more useful and reasonable) people. It always amazes me that some people can be utter cretins when it suits them; I’ve known certain people on mods for years and think I have a pretty good measure of their character. I know the person isn’t exactly a key part of the team and that they, while having their good points, can be petty. However, they go and do something so spiteful and counter-productive that it is flabbergasting.

Anyway the point of this post is that you cannot take anybody at face value over the Internet. I’ve had people of all skills and personalities working on the mod and I still find it very difficult to predict whether someone will be a great asset or an unmitigated (and unfriendly) failure. That’s the main problem, really. In the early days, the mod was comprised of a core group of maybe 8 or so people. All of these people were dedicated, friendly, reasonable and reliable. Later on, the team ballooned to scores of people. It became an effort to just to keep track of who was around and who was awol, manage accounts & stuff like that.

Years later all I can say is that I largely agree with what this interview is saying. The trouble with this is that you need a lot of time and skill to do everything yourself. Modding is getting ever more complicated. IMO if you are to make a mod and you need more people to make it happen:

* Go with people you know if at all possible. This could mean university friends, regular friends who also mod stuff and so forth. If you have to try and recruit from the Internet, then good luck. The best you can do in this situation is post content of your own to prove you’re serious and also look for people who have finished stuff in the past. If someone you recruit is hard to get along with and makes for an uncomfortable atmosphere, JETTISON THEM IMMEDIATELY. I can’t stress this enough. Is one asshole who occasionally contributes worth keeping around if he makes everyone else uncomfortable and potentially turns away people who are more talented & reasonable? No. I’ve had one particular person send a legal notice to others to say they couldn’t use any of their ideas/stuff after the person had a huge childish strop over the fact that he had no technical knowledge and his design had to be changed as a result. The more people you recruit, the more chance there is of running into a total fuckwit. Bin them immediately.

* Rein in the design. Think small building blocks. Do you have the personnel to do a given feature? Do you have the time, resources and cooperation required to make it happen? The general rule of thumb in programming is “take your first guess then double it”. Then when you have to rely on others via Internet, it’s more like “take your first guess and then multiply it by a random number”. The random number will have a smaller range if you have talented & dedicated people, but you can’t guarantee anything, really. You’re a modding team, not a professional dev studio. We’ve had countless ideas that have been put down as viable, but even fairly simple-looking things have hidden depths. Game dev ideas are like icebergs…

* Build often so people can see progress. Progress is the key to more progress. If the mod looks to be static, then other people won’t contribute. Why would I spent 3 hours a night programming if the level designer couldn’t even be bothered to upload an orange layout map? In a small team particularly, people generally put in an amount of effort that matches the other contributors. They don’t want to let down the team.

* Keep the team very small. Work on a proof of concept or small features to start with. Get confidence going. If you can complete several smaller goals in a month compared to a fraction of one big goal, it is more gratifying (see above).

* Once you star to get momentum going and more people show an interest in your mod, resist the temptation to just add people willy-nilly. Recruit when you have to, not ‘just because’. If you have 10 people and three of them are active and the rest are semi-active or inactive, I bet you get less done than a team with three out of three active as the three will be pushing each other on and more sure of who is around & dependable etc.

I’m sure you get the point. Our mod shipped, but it took something like three+ years. If I had to do it all again, those are the main things I’d do. Mod-making is a tremendous experience, but I’m kinda bitter and sick of it now and most of that is to do with trying to manage big complexities via the Internet. People beware!

Keep going, Mr. Foster. It’s great to see what one person can achieve.

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Big monolithic mod projects = evil.
Relying on a mod team spread across 10 timezones = not fun.
Managing them = even more not funner.

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