They are busy making retail game Iron Grip: Warlord, actually.

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I too have only tried the first release of INS so maybe 2.0 is a lot better, but frankly I don’t think it’s for me. I’m sick of “realistic” games that try to be “real” by convincing you that, yes, war is hell and so’s playing this game. I think “authentic” games have a definite place though, games that capture the feel, the theme, the atmosphere and just let you loose to have fun.

But I guess INS just has more of a hook that keeps people playing and voting for it. Or maybe the dev team is just more involved with the community and gives them something to look forward to, thus keeping them involved. It could also just be that the huge CS fanbase finally found a proper heir to the throne and made it a success by default.

I can think of a mod that did the opposite and crashed and burned. Iron Grip: The Oppression, very similar to Zombie Master in that you had one team of FPS players and the other team controlled by a single RTS player. The devs were too busy sticking their own pseudo-Steam down their fanbase’s throats to polish up their mod and give folks something to look forward to. Thusly a nagging exploit there, a tired game mechanic there, sees the server list now shrink down to five, empty servers. I remembered multiple occasions where some bratty 14-year-old would keep a whole server hostage by burying his commander (the thing the FPS players needed to kill) under the map, which would be a minor polish issue if the devs weren’t too busy with silly things.

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Compare with Red Orchestra, which I found engaging and entertaining from the moment I first launched it! I can’t think why the two games should be so different when, really, with the exception of vehicles, they’re covering pretty similar ground.

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Side note: you really need a dedicated guy to compile things?

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I’m not entirely sure what the worst offenders were in terms of spoiling the realism angle in INS’ 2.0 release, since I stopped playing around 1.1, but it looks to be something to do with making the guns less realistic in terms of accuracy and damage. I am surprised they did this, since the ‘realism’ aspect is INS’ USP (unique selling point). Without the realism aspect, INS isn’t radically different to DoD or CS.

I think there were some essential fixes that had to be made (and were), like the spawn protection issues, FPS issues and the fact there was no UI map and no visual indicators in the world to tell you how to get to the invisible control zones

I’m pleased to see how INS is growing. They’re not the only mod team to be putting out regular releases, but they’ve probably gone the furthest in implementing fixes and even big additions in the time since they’ve been out. That, plus their topical setting coupled with their ‘realistic’ game mechanic (that is to say: a lot of American men would have liked to have gone to Iraq to ‘defend their country’, and a lot of males in general get a thrill out of the heat of battle) give an indication of why, despite not having a massive PR drive, INS did so well at the player-voted MOTY awards.

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The truth is, i am a man of extremes. If a game doesn’t try really to be realistic, like Quake, or CS or HL2, ok. I like both arcades and realistic shooters, but nothing in the middle. So if a game try to enter in “realistic shooter” sub-genre, i don’t like half-assed attemps. I want fully realistic weapons, squads, game modes, movement, recoil, weapon ballistics, hud, etc etc

One of my favorites games is Infiltration 2.9 (the old mod for UT) + DTAS + some other mutators. Pure Gaming Goodness.

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As for the “mod scene” getting smaller, I suspect it’s the same problem the industry is seeing itself. Way the heck back when, any amateur with motivation could put out a professional game for the time. Then, one needed motivation and talent. Then motivation, talent and a team. And it stayed like that from about 1985 to 1995. Then computer games got sophisticated enough that there weren’t very many games of “pickup” out there. But increasingly sophisticated games allowed for mods to be made, and the internet allowed modmakers to form teams of talented people.

Ten years after that, the problem is the assets needed to be modded (primarily artwork) have gotten complex enough that fewer mods get made. (You see this in the game world too. Think of Rainbow Six and Deus Ex: both had the same series of cliched locations, with slight variations. Both had a 747 in there somewhere, and half the other places were standard reference points. Now look at releases in the past year or two, and they have to recycle the same artwork).

Anyway, so it takes more of an investment, and the payoff is less (see dropoff in PC gaming)

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I suspect over the next year the HL2 mod scene will bloom somewhat, with all the 10 year projects suddenly coming to fruition. I also think however that mods not out in the next 12 / 18 months will have to be truly, truly spectacular to make an impact on the available audience.

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