Help talk:Mod Profiles

Valve Approves

Valves admin Jeff Lane has now approved this article. Quote from Admins noticeboard:

"Seems reasonable. ModDB already does an excellent job at this function, and a mod and game database is not really part of the scope of the VDC currently. Documentation specific to a particular mod (how to use its entities, for example) seems more suited to the site. --JeffLane 22:23, 10 February 2011 (UTC)"

It does seem like he might want to have us remove even more (all?) third party mod entries, but we can start by flagging the ones without proof of concept, as that's currently about 60% of all mod articles on the VDC. --MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 16:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Changes

As you can see, I changed the page quite a bit, but I kept most of what you wrote, just pruned some wording slightly. What do you think? Thelonesoldier 18:07, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

It's hard to spot if you've actually changed any policies, but at a glance it looks alright and agreeable. --MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 18:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Not any policy, really, just wording and more information. Thelonesoldier 19:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Inofficial positive rant

Instead of mumbling something about "You noobs get off my lawn!", let me put it to you modders this way:

When was the last time that waiting for a release was a good thing?

Let's take an extreme example: Wouldn't it have been a whole lot better if 3D Realms didn't announce that they were making Duke Nukem Forever back when dinosaurs walked the earth? Wouldn't it have spared us a whole lot of agonizing waiting? It turned a great release into a single question: "Was it worth the wait?"

The more you let people wait for a release, the more they'll start having expectations (especially if you claim that it's "awesome" and "amazing"), so that even if you do release the game, it won't be met with any cheers. This is why I don't understand why ANYONE (Yes, even Valve.) would announce anything that's still in its Alpha phase.

Personally, I wouldn't announce anything I was working on, until it's absolutely done. If I would want to drum up expectations (which I think is pretty cruel), I'd let people wait for about a week. In that way I don't feel that I have to hurry myself either, and thus don't have to give up the rest of my life for something that I would soon enough look upon as a chore.

--MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 12:09, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Commercially it's a good strategy. Look at how long they hyped Black Ops and how well it sold. Nobody waited to find out if it was actually good. I wouldn't be surprised if Nukem does well but it won't do that well.

As for mods, I mean Black Mesa is a joke, but I'll still play it when it is released. But you can't build a team if you don't announce your game, unless you're friends with enough modders. Thelonesoldier 20:04, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I think half of the matter we're not including here is how most modders tend to trail off onto other projects, or that their real life ends up getting in the way. However I feel there needs to be some form of hype, even if that lingers over a years time. Black Mesa isn't much of an example, considering it's a remake anyways. However the problem is is that most modders at first don't realize how much work they are actually taking upon themselves. Most end up following through, but it turns into a matter of years before that work is finished. It then also depends on the number of people in that mod team, and how well they work with each other, and how well they are able to stay motivated to spend more than 4 hours a day modding.

I think it's the process most modders are probably going to deal with, until the end of time, no matter how much easier it becomes to use tools to make games. Each modder has to go through that process of learning what they can't and can do with an engine, and thats usually only something that happens after you go out and fool around, and announce things, and then learn from that experience.

Valve has stated in their hiring practices that they only care that you managed to release a project, and more importantly that you learned from that experience, and that you'll take that gained knowledge with you. But thats away from the point a bit. However more or less my point is, is we have to encourage modders to kinda fail at what they want to do. The real modders are going to stick around, and persevere, while the others that really aren't built for game design are going to fall away. It's like we're physically putting the game design community through a strainer.--MrFourVideoCards 02:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Deleting

So far we've been marking for deletion the articles which have lacked proof of concept and updates for a year or more, but should we also be marking newly created articles with no proof of concept for deletion? I have in mind Evangelion at the moment. Thelonesoldier 01:22, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I guess that heavily depends on the content. Based on that article, I'd say it's a fine idea to do so, but I guess if mods happen to have a more reasonable design draft, even at an early stage, the best any of us could do is monitor that mod, and see how well it does.--MrFourVideoCards 03:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I was away dog-sitting during the weekend, but would I have seen somebody announce his mod here, I would have sent him a message telling him about how much better ModDB is for this purpose, pictures or not. --MossyBucket (formerly Andreasen) 07:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think we need to make moddb being better for these situations all around more noticeable. I can't really find any specific areas just for listing where better places for advertising mods would be.--MrFourVideoCards 11:23, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

This came up again with Transferal. Welsh Mullet applied the deletion tag, and Mattshu removed it as that didn't follow the precedent we'd been setting. Here's my thoughts again: The way the Help:Mod Profiles reads as we wrote it, it's clear you aren't supposed to add articles with no proof of concept in the first place. I think we were using the "hasn't been updated in over a year" standard for articles that were created before we wrote the policy. I think there's a term for that in law but I can't recall it at the moment. Anyway for already existing articles I think it was important to give them some leeway since they were made before the policy is in place; however I feel we should be much stricter on new articles.

As Mr. Four Video Cards stated, it might be desirable to approach this on an individual basis using article content as a standard, but that could get subjective and might require voting. For something like Transferal I don't think the content is promising and I would lean towards deletion, but someone else might want to keep it due to the largish team they have listed?

So at the least I propose we decide and explicitely state whether new articles that do not meed the mod profile standards can be marked for deletion immediately; we would probably then need to clarify the deletemod template a little. Personally I'd rather mark new articles with no proof of concept right away rather than waiting a year. Thoughts on the matter? Thelonesoldier 10:50, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry i caused this now XD. I didn't know you guys had been waiting a year before deleting. Maybe a template for the talk page, some kind of 1 month warning? So it can be applied to new mods and allow the mod creator to fix it or discus? --Welsh Mullet 15:15, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't fully agree with the immediate tagging for deletion upon pages that are freshly created for the platform of their Mod page, although it's stated that it should provide proof of concept. Think of yourself as someone who does have a mod planned out with modest proof of concept, however didn't have knowledge of the guidelines. They aren't really right in front of you when creating a new page. You're more too worried about what people are going to think about your mod than how you structure your new VDC mod page. Actually, that's an idea that shouldn't be too difficult to implement. Upon editing the clean slate of new pages, why not add a few quick editing guidelines the editor will see before creating a new page, including links to the mod profile page, etc.? This sort of contradicts my two cents I added, but it could prove useful. But I still think we should at least give the editor up to a week to add proof of concept before tagging a page for deletion. This relates to the deletion tag added by Welsh Mullet to Transferal. I'm not singling you out, Welsh Mullet, your intentions were good, but four hours after the page was created just seems pretty hasty in my perspective, even though the page really had no POC to begin with, a few days after tagging, the original author began adding material to support POC.—Mattshu ^(Talk) 05:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

People who rush into creating a profile page as soon as they have a mod idea are the kind of people who aren't going to be finishing their mods. Half of them won't even start their mods. But I guess we can give them a week to show PoC before marking for deletion. I very much agree that for new users there should be a list of guidelines presented before they can make a new page. Maybe we should present that idea on the noticeboard. Thelonesoldier 05:30, 30 March 2011 (UTC)