LucasArts Embraces Game Mod Community

An anonymous reader writes "LucasArts has taken a great step in promoting the modification of their titles and supporting the communities that love them! According to this press release, LucasArts has teamed up with LFNetwork to open LucasFiles.com. The site is dedicated to all files that fall in the LucasArts realm." Given competing games like Neverwinter Nights, which have a phenomenal amount of user-created add-ons, this is a very smart move for LucasArts.

CS

[dirvish]

Very smart indeed! Just think about how successful Counter-Strike is. Sierra/Valve doesn't make anything from Counter-Strike but they make boat-loads from the Half-Life game that you need to run Counter-Strike.

Does it hold any potential?

[NetDanzr]

The only current game that I can imagine there are fan files for is the Galactic Battlegrounds, an average real-time strategy. Unless LucasArts prepares to release a strong single-player roleplaying game or strategy (single- or multi-player), I see absolutely no reason for them to have a mod community. Why single player, you may ask? Because in the world of RPGs, modding can affect characters in a profound way and can be considered cheating.

Re:They live again

[Anonymous Coward]

LucasArts doesn't even make games anymore. They throw their name on a product made by another company. Which is why the quality of LA games has changed so greatly since, say the Rebel Assault, era. I really loved the classic lucas arts games. Full Throttle, Loom, Monkey Island are, and will always be awesome.

But what was the question?

[Len]

NWN, great concept...poor execution.

I don't think you understand the concept. NWN was never supposed to be "EverQuest without the fee". It was supposed to be "D&D online" and BioWare sure delivered on that.

Personally I'd much rather play D&D with a good dungeon master than EverQuest, so I like NWN. I don't see why the camera angle is such a big deal; I can see more than far enough to cast a fireball without toasting the rest of the party. And I really don't get the "little customizability" comment - I can customize the whole damn game!

It's not EverQuest, and you don't have to like it, but NWN already has about 1800 published mods. Clearly a lot of people think it's a good game for modding.

Re:CS

[shogun]

Yep, after they started releasing all those half-life mods, old, cheap retail versions of half-life vanished off the shelves. Coincidence......

Nothing suspicious about that at all, people needed the basic to play the mods so they got sold...

Re:The best mods will still get killed

[Photon Ghoul]

Which is why the modding communities should maybe make something based on original content instead of other's copywritten works?

Re:It won't last

[ja2ke]

The TLF (Tighter Leash Factor) is definitely present but that's not the main reason. I mean, two years ago you'd never see LucasArts granting interviews to sites like The Grim Fandango Network and the Clearly Unofficial Monkey Island Website... They have opened up quite a bit (for instance they recently hired someone on full time as an Internet/Fan Community Relations person whose sole purpose is to help out small fansites), though obviously not fully (see: ScummVM). Still, big steps have been made by them. Us fansite webmasters are enjoying it... though its still nowhere near perfect.

Anyone remember the SWMA???

[cyberon22]

LucasArts attitude towards fan developers (who are probably its best customers) is astonishingly short-minded and sometimes insulting.

I'm thinking particularly of their shutting down the Star Wars Modelling Alliance [surfthe.net], a fan site devoted to developing (surprisingly good) models of Star Wars characters and creatures. The sheer amount of creative work that came out of people using those models was astonishing. In additional to publishing a lot of great freeware models the site would also post some of the "pictures" and "films" that people had made, etc.. Some were complete gems - one that sticks out particularly in my mind involved a few ATSTs rampaging around urban London.

Perhaps there is someone associated with the site here that knows better, but I was always under the impression that their persistent and long-lasting "hardware difficulties" which started shortly after E1 came out boiled down to letters from the legal department at LucasFilm.

It is a real pity that existing law is structured such that market-regulation can be used to crush non-market creativity.