Creative Assembly and the Modding Community - An Eagle Standard Special

[Belisarius]

Check out the First Opinionated NTW Teaser and the Fantastic Eagle Standard Articles!

Napoleon and the Modding Community

In our first preview I set the stage for future previews which will be more focused on specific aspects of the game. Apparently, it’s good to be a little provocative in your first issue. That said the topic on most people’s mind at the moment is modding. Recently MarcusCorneliusMarcellus who is a well respected Modder and former staff member pointed me to his petition for Creative Assembly to care more for the Modding Community. If you have not read it, please do and voice your opinion, the thread can be found pinned in the NTW General Discussion forum. I read it and thought to myself; why not explore the problem of the modding community? So I missed my morning lecture pacing up and down my room in a bathrobe sipping earl grey tea and one word kept coming to mind, money.


The Man himself, will he let us edit his hat?

Now, let’s first play devil’s advocate. At face value the modding community is not something the business aspect of the company is going to take seriously, and though unfair and cruel the facts are the financial world cares little for things as precious as human life let alone the wishes of some gamers. Millions die yearly in third world countries because of the obscene price of something as basic as medicine. I am not saying that CA and its developers are money hungry cruel murderers, heaven forbid! By reading and watching their video interviews I can tell that they have a genuine passion for what they do and take pride in their games. So basically what I am saying is they are directed by the financial aspects of their company to make sure they stay at the top. Even if every member of this site protested against the new attitude to modding the fact is unless it had a significant financial effect it would not push the men upstairs into budging from what is an established business practice. When a business has a product which is selling well they do not share the blueprints to that product for their competitors to copy. This in itself would explain why Sega bought Creative Assembly. They did what any big business would, they could not match CA in the strategy market, but they were bigger and richer then Activision, so they simply bought Total War. I think I have possibly oversimplified it, but we can use Microsoft as another prime example of a trend setting business bully that has set the precedents of today’s technology based competition. In a sense the idea of sharing with the community and having community driven games sounds rather communist, while businesses like to listen to capitalist arguments, so, how are we going to sell the very idea of the modding community to Sega/CA?


Added for Emphasis, its a cruel profit driven world!

It is very possible I am over emphasizing the effect of Sega on CA. When discussing this with MCM he pointed out that if Japanese model of management was being applied, they would not be releasing bug patches for supposedly finished games. “Japanese companies in general have very strict quality control devices in place, and firm development guidelines to ensure that when a product is released, it has, as much as possible, a positive effect on their brand image and reputation.”(MCM) CA’s patches have improved the game and I stated my opinion in the previous teaser but we all know there are bugs.

Let us first look at Rome Total War, the shining beacon of the modding community that gave us Rome Total Realism, EB, SPQR, Forth Age Total War and so many others. (Rome was more open but by no means perfect) Let us look at it from a business perspective, how could these modifications potentially benefitted Creative Assembly financially? Well the worry is that modding tools will allow for three things to happen. The first is that competitors can use these tools to gain information on how to make a “total war” like strategy game. The second is that creating a game where others can morph it into whatever they like limits future progression of the title and the third is that dragging the playability of a game for over five years might mean people will stick to that game and not buy future products. Let’s face it; if the title is paying your wages you don’t want one fantastic achievement in the past, you want a continual evolution of your product. Creative Assembly have said it many times that their games are based on a “revolution/evolution” concept. This phrase recently appeared in GeD’s report where the progression was illustrated in the following way – Shogun was a revolution in terms of merging RTS and TBS while Medieval was an evolution of this. Rome was a revolutionary game in that it added 3D battles and graphical improvements as well as a new campaign map. Medieval II Total War was an evolution of this game engine adding little in terms of features and more in terms of refinement. Empire Total War was revolutionary in its addition of naval battles and Napoleon Total War is set to be an evolution and refinement of this. So, after stating the blatantly obvious, what is the significance of this? Every revolutionary game uses a new engine, essentially making the older one obsolete and thus the actual box game which the company releases will always have that new technology. Even if Creative Assembly were to give us modding tools they would still be one up on the competition because they will be the ones making the new technology. So it would be understood if they waited a few months before releasing the modding tools and it is true that by releasing them they could be helping the competition but at the same time they could be killing it via Modder competition. What is “Modder competition? I’ll explain later. Think of it as a race, you know like when you watched those long distance races during the Olympics (in-between female beach volleyball) there was always a pace maker. That person dictated the pace of the race to which others followed. This is exactly what CA does.


Again, let us take Rome Total War and its modifications as an example. Rome itself competes and beats any Roman themed strategy game of the time (2005). The Lord of the Rings based modifications (FAtw and TAtw) are in many respects better then the EA released Battle for Middle Earth so without lifting a finger CA, by means of Modders, is competing with EA and BFME. The best part is they are doing so free, because it’s the modding community doing it. The various Roman modifications such as RTR and EB add to the replayability of Rome meaning that people will be less likely to try other games once they are bored with vanilla Rome and try the mods. Now this could be seen as a double edged sword, because the Medieval Modification could have in fact stopped people buying Medieval II Total War. However this does not take into account the fact that Modders are always going to want to use the latest technology. So once CA release a game, the Modders will jump to the next level of the franchise and with them so will their fan base. This does not happen if CA doesn’t release modding tools and then Modders are stuck on older games, and so are their fans. Thus not giving tools could actually be detrimental to CA and the Total War series! How about that for a capitalist argument folks! *zing*


Third Age competes with and probably beats EA's Battle for Middle Earth!


SPQR added months to Romes re-playability.


RTR has been around as long as I have, nuff said!


EB, truly Epic!

When I state “Modder competition” note the difference between the competition with other games and the percieved competition with the actual TW game. I am proposing both sides of a potential argument that could be presented in some board room meeting. Let us not forget Modding projects are non profit, but you never know what arguments people defending the “Status Quo” business practices will use. Taking another perspective, and with the inclusion on our very own Jack Lusted into the ranks of Creative assembly as evidence, If CA “played the PR game” a little smarter, and interacted with the people who play and modify their games, they could have an endless supply of new staff. They will be creative, talented, have a CV full of Total War experience and know their fan base, who better to employ! CA have their very own training camp!


If only we could be present at some of those meetings!

While writing this I was pasting snippets in the in the Content Staff forum and Augustus Lucifer mentioned a very valid point which he had to explain to me since I am no Modder. I mean Modders want all the tools they can get such as an open-source engine, SDK, maybe Format Converters and unpackers, and maybe some editing based tools. (You like how I am pretending I know what all those are)In all probability we won’t see much of that in Napoleon, however, the “bare minimum” that CA could do to help the modding community in many people’s eyes is Documentation. Most Modders know what I am saying when I state that CA should at the very least release documentation on the moddable files to aid the modding community. But for us Modding noobs, what is documentation? Basically CA stated that everything you need to make a new campaign map and units is there in the game and accessible. Thank you, but that’s like telling me that the needles I need to knit a sweater have conveniently been placed in a large haystack. If CA don’t actually tell us what files are moddable and what they do, what codes have to be edited in relation to files and so on then all they are doing is throwing needles in haystacks. Documentation prevents Modders being subjected to months of trial and error. Thus if CA is absolutely forbidden from giving us the tools we want and unable to respond to the petitions and so on, can we at least know what we can do? Pretty Please?

Now, let us mention the “thunder stealing” that seems to be going on. MarcusCorneliusMarcellus mentioned some very important points. Napoleon Total War is being marketed as the first story based version of the game, besides the fact they forgot about Alexander Total War let us not forget that Modders have been releasing these sorts of things for over five years. The First Triumvirate is the first one I personally remember and that was in 2005, if my memory has not failed me. Indeed it would be criminal for CA to ignore that fact that a Napoleonic themed version of their game has been out for well over 5 years in the shape of the Medieval Total War’s Napoleon Mod and the Second one which was released on the Rome engine. Creative Assembly can take credit for naval battles, 3d battles, merging TBS and RTS, graphics, game engines, agents and so on, but let’s not steal the Modders thunder? Infact let us not even think about competing with them and possibly realize that they are an integral part of the total war franchise.


"Darth Mod's revolutionary AI is an example of Modder genius"


Why don’t we try something new? The CA team is driven for self improvement, so release your tools and open yourself up to competition! Throw down the gauntlet so to speak and stop this from being a one horse race! Actually realize the fact that the Modding community can be used to sell more games, it can be marketed and boasted about, and it can be used to generate customer loyalty! Praise your modding community as an asset; don’t think of it as just something that exists. Scroll through the main forum index of this site and note that at any time the most viewed forums are in fact the Kingdoms modding sub forum (TAtw) and the Rome hosted modifications.


CA, rethink your position and find a way that this vibrant, creative and loyal community of Modders can be marketed. Modders, think of how you can “sell” the idea of them giving you more tools. Napoleon is coming, we want mods! Kieran stated to Strategy Informer that, "Ultimately it’s the players that keep a studio alive, and it’s them that we want to deliver for." Holding him to his word, its perfectly clear what the community want!


Viv la resistance!

Writer - Belisarius
Editor - Augustus Lucifer
Special Thanks to MCM and the Modding community.

[Tony83]

Epic matey, very well written.

[Belisarius]

Thank you, this is the contents staffs way of supporting our beloved modding community P.R

[Zhuge_Liang]

Very Interesting and well written.

[Blackshamrock.]

Well done. Its nicely written and delivered Thank you.

[abbews]

Weee! My banner! And thanks for the nice written words Belly!

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Eloquent and passionate. I endorse everything you have stated here.

[Hobbes]

Wow. If only the guys in CA read this...

[Lysander13]

Outstanding read!!

Here's hoping it strikes a cord with someone from CA; who's in a position to do something to alter the lack of support they show their incredibly loyal modding community.

[Belisarius]

Wow. If only the guys in CA read this...

I'm pulling some strings for both this and the petition.

[Beorn]

A good read, though I don't believe that it'll drive to anything

[Nevada]

Nice text!

Now let's hope someone at CA reads this

[Hobbes]

That's great then!

[Gaidin]

Does anybody know whether its the developer or the publisher being dicks about modding tools? Last I checked, wasn't it Sega that was hemorrhaging money and needed to release Empire before it was really ready? Combine that detail with DLC and you have a nice coincidence.

[Darth_Revan]

well said my friend..lets hope they listen to their customers, and not subject themselves to being money grubbing capitalists...

[Daneboy]

Well put, mate.

[Agisilaos]

Excellent, i hope the message will be "delivered"!

[apple]

Well written mate.

[Killerbee]

Great job mate(s) ! Let's hope CA(or Sega) finally sees what kind of gold-mine they're sitting on !

[Heinz Guderian]

Brilliantly written. +rep. Well done Bel and Augustus.