The past couple of days I had an interesting revelation. I'd stop the discussion about mod payment, because of legal reasons it's hardly possible anyway. I think the more interesting aspect is how to foster a better attitude of donations and voluntary support. That's something I thought about alot reading this thread. In fact everytime somebody claimed he would pay for work, but once they could do so voluntarly by donating… nobody does. I am wondering why this is the case and began looking around and checking out Modder's websites to see how many advertise donations. (For the record, CTDP hasn't advertised this alot either, so there is work for us in this regard too). What I found was not so much that I didn't find ways for donations but actually, in way to many cases I didn't even find a website or representation on the web. I searched the released mods on virtualr of the past 2 months and the fewest Modders have a proper website, facebook page or at least a twitter account, where they could actually articulate the support they may require. Obviously this also kills getting any user the idea to support the work by any means, especially financial means. Now, it's up to every Modder to decide whether they want to advertise donations for themselves. But if 80% of the Modding community doesn't represent themselves at all, it gets tough for the remaining 20% to bring about the idea that donations are a great way to improve quality. So message to the Modders, no matter if you work solo or in a team. Organize! Get a website, or at least a team-twitter account!
Thats just wishful thinking Dahie, give someone the option to donate or not and they will 99% choose not to donate, give them the choice to pay for a mod, download link, and they will pay, how ever small the price is, You mention virtualr, virtualr recently posted a feature on a track I released through my site, they took the download link and posted that, no mention of my sites URL, in the "read me" of the download I included a message to "buy a beer" and this could only be done by being on my site and seeing the "donate" graphic, so we have a problem all ready, many people are missing the opportunity to donate simply becuase they enjoy what they have downloaded, since 30th Jan 2012 I have had 1784 downloads for this track from my mediafire account, the only donation we had was for $10!!!!, now imagine if everyone donated $1, that would be pretty nice wouldnt you say?
I think it is bit similar as how it was with bloggers some time ago, nowdays it starts to be much more normal to monetize blogs, but still some are not getting into train as they might consider it evil or something. Webcomics are something we should look bit more, authors of those have asked donations for really, really long time, so do software makers, I think learning from there might be good. Also one thing is that turn signatures on, you can put your website there. Also I think it could be possible to put links to donation pages to signature, for example donate to mod X, but I'm not quite sure if that goes close to boundaries of rules of sites? I had homepage once, 2006-2007 I think, but as I had no time for modding I shut it down, it did cost to keep up. Now I relaunched website, with inspiration of this thread, I try to do things way I have learned from webcomic authors, while reading their comics. There are even more plans, but they are just plans. However as simracing is quite small, I doubt that it will cover even hosting, but it is worth a try, it really does not cost anything at all to try, well except bit of time and electricity.
There's little doubt, the way I see it, that there will be mods that will cost money. More than likely it will be one that is loosely based on some real situation, but so loosely based that it will not constitute any kind of infringement. Some people will see the chance to make some money and will be more than eager to see just how much they can make. It happens, and I don't see it not happening with rFactor 2. But we as consumers are such that we can choose to buy or not to buy. Some will certainly buy, depending of course on the price and quality. It is certainly coming, and to think otherwise is foolish. The whole question is whether it will be worth the modder's time, and whether it would be better in the long run to release a mod for free and accept donations. A very good mod might make more money through donations than through outright charging, but that will be hard to determine. The fact that rFactor2 has pay-to-play online system makes it less likely that modders can make any serious money. There are going to be modders out there who are out for the cash, and others, the majority, I believe, who are just in it to make something out of nothing. Alan
That is also true, I think that those centralized sites could have possibility to add donation buttons on mod information page and certainly not upload someone else's work without credit/links. It is perhaps needed to create new culture, but we need a lot of modders to be part of it and get change into main download locations so that it would be possible to add those donation buttons there, creating a trend so to speak. I think that when donations are norm users will donate. Of course we have still situation of not saying thanks, so maybe donations are bit too much at this stage? Anyway would not except much more than 10% from downloaders to donate and that is maximum in any situation, 2% I think would be good already, but 2% donating 1 dollar from 1784 would be quite bit more than just 10. One of the things is that modder would offer more if he receives certain amount of donations, I'm thinking of doing one or two basic variants of Volvo and more if getting enough donations, this is just a idea at the moment, but it is based what I have studied from donations in few days, why to donate when you get same without, why not to donate if that helps to get more, I think that is basic catch one could try. Would it be greedy? That might be question that comes to mind, but then again, if donations help to spend more time with modding, would it still be greedy or would it be more of leverage to do better modding? OT: Dahie, you need to set up keywords in flattr, add game or games and set to software so that you are in catalogs they launched recently.
I,m not suggesting modders should start charging $20 per mod or something, but when you realise just how many downloads are taken from one such link, $1 per download is peanuts lets admit it!, its not just the time someone takes to make a mod or track, they have pay for a pc to work with, buy software, yes it can be had for free, pay for their broadband to be able to upload their mod, track, and possibly pay for a decent upload site account to be able to host the file, so straight away one person has costs, yet the downloader gets for free.
Absolutely nothing. If I like a great mod and I'm given the opportunity to donate to the team, I will provided that I can afford to. But would I pay to use a mod? No. Irrespective of how great it is.
Like i said ,a bonus point system like 'fly buy' points . When your track or mod is added to a VMod or rFMod on a server you get 1 'fly buy' Each time you get a thousand 'fly buys', ya get a 50 buck "Prize" from ISI I'm sure with the .ID# system they can keep track of how many times your Mod or Track is used. I know this has been disscussed before the release but i see options open for modders. People wont donate unless its incorporated in the game some how.
Yeah is an option for sure, people would take to something like this, its when they see on a modders website a "buy now" logo they would be horrified and a witch hunt would start!!
F1Lover, why does that make you sad? kleanphil/Acestumacher: Money doesn't grow on trees, not even for ISI. Whatever would come to the benefit of modders has to be paid for by somebody. If you relay it from those using to mods to ISI, that just means ISI will have to generate more money from their commercial enterprise than without giving out such prizes. Instead of direct payment by those who want something to those who provide that something, you get a mess of collection from everyone buying the base product or subscription and redistribution to providers based on something manipulable like number of downloads that isn't even a decent indicator of popularity or quality. Never mind that such a scheme was the very thing megaupload got hunted down for - paying users to provide their service with not completely legal content.
Sure i will elaborate... It makes me sad to hear things like you posted ROON, moders work hard for (yes) there own enjoyment. But nothing comes for free. I mean that in terms of time and effort as well as personal funds to test these mods and actually get them working for great fun. I agree with Acestumacher, not to say modders should be getting rich ... no no.. but when modders take the time and personal funds to "HOST", "UPLOAD Accounts". then i think its nice if people recognized it by donating to their favourite modding group as a thank you. On a side note ROON, what are your favourite mods?
Yes I know money dosent grow on tree's, I,m definitely leaning towards the fact that donations are still the way forward and probably the only way, there are still people holding back from buying rF2, but they could be persuaded to buy and give it a go if they suddenly see their favourite track or car released, now who makes a little bit of money then?
Did you misread my post? My point is that I wouldn't be able to afford to purchase mods for a game that already set me back a significant amount of money, in relation to how much I have to spend. I'm well aware of the amount of time and effort, personal sacrifices and sometimes money that has to be put into developing a good mod, I'm involved in modding circles for other games, but not racing simulations. As I said in my previous post, if I'm enjoying a mod and I'm given the opportunity to donate, I will provided that I can spare the cash. What is so sad about that? I'm sorry I can't afford to pay for every mod I enjoy. I haven't played rF1 in quite a long time, so I don't have any current favourites. However back in the day I quite enjoyed the Skoda Octavia Cup, Bathurst Legends and F1 1988. For about the last year or so that I spent playing rF1, I was in a private league where we used a mod we developed for ourselves.
What if we would make rF modder webring that includes only home sites of rF modders? If anything that should make modder homepages bit easier to find. Now I could spend some of my time to that, I did start thing with really small in here http://finnsontrack.weebly.com/modder-webring.html but it is a start. Surely I could rip sites off from rFactor central etc, but I think that modder should want to be part of this, so this way it is modder's or team's own will to join or stay out. If there is lot of interest, then of course we need to build bit more infrastructure, but I thought to test idea first as it is always possible build more later.
No, but being part of the ring would probably give some more income with increased traffic. In complete form every site would have link to listing, also listing could perhaps have donate buttons for each. Mods that have been done should also be added etc. Then I think it would increase also donations too?
