BGS is already working on the Creation Kit. Come the 10th, they'll make it more of a priority to finish while also doing any bug fixes or patches they'll need to with the launch of Fallout 4. You are being overly optimistic. It took BGS months to release the Creation Kit for Skyrim because it takes a lot of time and effort. Again, if BGS was just giving players their tools unadvlterated, why wouldn't every developer do it? Presumably it wouldn't take any time or effort. That's because you aren't just getting their tools. Yes, you are basically getting the kit BGS used to create the game, but it has been repackaged for the public. That takes a lot of time and effort to accomplish.

On the PC? It encourages gamers to pick up the game years after it has already released. A thriving modding community always translates into longer term sales and greater interest in a product. As long as players are investing their time and effort into a game that others can take advantage of, it will lead to more consumers buying that product. If the mod kit BGS created didn't generate a single cent for Bethesda, they would never waste time, effort, and money creating it to start.

Except paid mods aren't too controversial for Bethesda as they already tried and stated they would try again with a different model. Actually, Bethesda was going to receive most of the money for the mod with modders only received 25% of the cut IF the mod met a certain threshold of popularity. In other words, modders were going to receive nothing for their work and Bethesda (with a small cut to Valve) would receive all the money unless it was a really popular mod.

Modding becoming a revenue for publishers and developers has nothing to do with the players. It has to do with the mod authors. The whole idea is for mod authors to gain money for their work product that they make available to the public. Paid mods is not unheard of and is not anything new. A lot of mod authors actually want paid mods to be a reality. This isn't just a hobby for some, but a life style. Regardless, mods will cost money eventually for BGS games, but that's not the call of the question for this thread.

If anyone is interesting in learning real facts about how modding has helped Bethesda, http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022107/Level-Design-in-a-Day by their Level Designer Joel Burgess. It's from GDC this year.

Why be so negative about it tho? The game has yet to be released and yer already throwing the joy of mods being transfered to console under the bus. I think the point of mods being transfered to console is to make the game more replayable. BGS understands that mods extends a games life span on PC waaaay beyond console life. Be optimistic about it

It's not about being negative. Rather, it's about seeing the shortcomings in the process and seeing what BGS can do to perfect it. Again, modding coming to consoles benefits everybody, console gamers and PC gamers included. My concern is given the slow pace of modding that many on consoles will never actually see the fruits of that labor. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither are modding communities. Sure, there will be those on consoles who play Fallout 4 for years and take advantage of the mods. Do you think that will be the majority of players though? Honestly it's just not likely. That's something BGS has to heavily consider when bringing mods to consoles, because this is a lot of time, effort, and money on their part.

Where are you getting the idea that Bethesda has lost money because of the modding of their games? If anything, modding has increased the number of copies of Bethesda games sold.

If you are saying that Bethesda has lost a great deal of potential revenue from the lack of paid mods, that I would accept and say you are probably correct.

But building the "mod tools" as you call them, is not expensive, or, rather, the Creation Kit / GECK is how Bethesda themselves create their games. The tools that modders use are (pretty much) the exact same tools that Bethesda devs themselves use to create a lot of the in-game content.

Your understanding of the process of how Bethesda releases the Creation Kit / GECK to modders and what they do / do not have to do in order to release the tools is flawed. Bethesda does not have to "overhaul" the tools in order to release them to the public, because 95% of the public doesn't care about the GECK or Creation Kit as software. The only thing that Bethesda probably did for the Skyrim Creation Kit was add in the ability to upload mods directly to the Steam Workshop - aside from that, the tools that modders use and the tools that Bethesda use are pretty much exactly the same.

Further, here are more reasons why your argument is flawed:

1. The Morrowind Construction Set was released on a second CD with Morrowind.

2. The Oblivion Construction Set was released on March 20th... the same day that Oblivion was released.

3. The Skyrim Creation Kit was released on February 7th, 2012, only 89 days after SKyrim was released.

Not to mention the fact that Bethesda did not argue for a heightened Mature rating - the ESRB did a re-review of the actual game content instead of the "trailer" that Bethesda had released to them prior, highlighting the differences between what the "trailer" showed and what was actually in the vanilla game.

Dang, 2016 is that close? Where did the whole year go? I feel like I blinked and it was just gone!

Funny. NOBODY knows how this is going to go down. But it's cute how some people THINK they know.

You don't have to take my word for it that Bethesda argues mods for Oblivion cost them millions of dollars, just read it for yourself:

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/04/27/why-were-trying-paid-skyrim-mods-on-steam/

"We have a long history with modding, dating back to 2002 with The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. It’s our belief that our games become something much more with the promise of making it your own. Even if you never try a mod, the idea you could do anything is at the core of our game experiences. Over the years we have met much resistance to the time and attention we put into making our games heavily moddable. The time and costs involved, plus the legal hurdles, haven’t made it easy. Modding is one of the reasons Oblivion was re-rated from T to M, costing us millions of dollars. While others in the industry went away from it, we pushed more toward it."

In general, yes, mods increases revenue because it makes the game relevant longer and provides free marketing. However, as Bethesda argues was the case with Oblivion (which I think is utter nonsense), it can cost them money as well.

I recognize modders are essentially getting the same tools. Again, it still requires months to make these tools user-friendly and accessible to the public, which is why the Creation Kit wasn't released until three months after Skyrim came out.

On Nexus Skyrim Mod Site,

Falskaar, no third party tools needed

Wrymstooth, no other mod required or third party application.

Hmm, that's two highly regarded quest mods for PC Skyrim.

Seems to me someone really isn't that aware of the mods that are out there and what might work for a Fallout 4 game.

Players on Console will likely play until satisfied and when the mods roll in, they will pick up their game see the hot new mods see that the one they really want requires a DLC purchase that install this and blam they roll up another 100 hours.

There really isn't anything of interest in this discussion for me.

Sorry don't see your points here OP.

Nothing stopping anyone (PC players or console players) from uninstalling a game then reinstalling when new mods and DLC come in. Same for all of us. I uninstalled Skyrim then played it again once the big mods and DLC were available, and it's a lot of fun again.

Thank you!

What a simply super link from the Game Developer's Conference! I added it as a permanent bookmark.

A great presentation by a Bethesda developer, covering the game industry as well as Bethesda.

It gives the history of mods and their influence on the industry and income by the industry.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in "the exact same tool they use internally". Long video, over 40 minutes. Watch all of it.

Good way to spend the remaining time until embargo lifts.

OP is clueless.

I think Skyrim was in my disc drive for 3 years...uninterrupted. I still play it but now I mix it up with other games.

And that was in Xbox 360, without mods.

I doubt any PC gamer can equal that.

Lmao, are you serious? As a console gamer I put hundreds of hours into Skyrim, Dragon Age Origins, Borderlands 1 & 2 and Deus Ex Human Revolution. I could go on, but I won't... but I could.

This pretty much sums it up. Thankfully Fallout and TES universes are still games that target grown ups. Immersion sandbox games that are focused around the PC, for which the cost of maintenance is still very expensive to upkeep. This confines the majority of those nasty console kiddies to just that--playing the console.

The fanbase of GTAO and CoD are the perfect examples of this "I beat the game in 1.5E-19 seconds while using mods and hacks to bump my achievement scores." And "I've got the biggest, baddest, most $$$ and chromiest weapon, form of transportation evar in the gaming universe my PC exists in"

I've also got an xbox but got it to play AC2 Brotherhood. Played it the first week or so that GTA and GTAO came out because I believed GTA III SA had been reborn. Was horribly disappointed by the end of that first year. Completely disillusioned by how R* kept rewarding the cheaters/modders/hackers whose only sole purpose was to break the game economy and game overall. Quit playing in disgust on the Xbox less than half year later. Abandoned it when GTA V hit the PC. And will likely never return to any online style gameplay where I subject myself to playing with socially challenged morons, shrill, immature, and nasty 8th-9th grader charadder @$$hat script kiddies. Will likely use the console very sparingly in the future now that FO4 is out. And will completely forget about playing console when GECK goes up for d/l on Steam.

Only exception to this is if I get hit with a nostalgic need to play AC2 or Bully for old times sake. Otherwise, the console platform is pretty much dead to me

You really aren't looking at the history of what actually happened. Modding itself was not one of the reasons that the ESRB re-reviewed Oblivion. Maeyanie released the Oblivion Topless Mod, which modified the femaleupperbody.nif file to remove the "bra" that female models used (thus exposing briasts / nipbles - content that Bethesda themselves created), causing a media furor, which then pushed the ESRB into looking further into the content that was included on the Oblivion disc itself - but not mods, because mods are not in the purview of the ESRB's rating system. The ESRB found content on the Oblivion disc that they were not made aware of in the "trailer" that Bethesda had provided them previously. Based on this new information, the ESRB changed the rating of the game.

And I see that you completely ignore the facts that the Morrowind and Oblivion Construction Sets were released on the same day as the games because it doesn't fit your narrative.

Can we not keep this a competition between PC and console players though? I think we can agree we are all passionate gamers and will play this game to the ground.

It's worth noting that even though DLC is incredibly profitable, most gamers still do not buy it. After the initial purchase of the base game, many do not come back later for the DLC. This is why the season pass was created as a means of making sure people buy all of the DLC instead of seeing huge drop rates in revenue. Again, BGS wants as many console gamers to have access to mods as possible. They don't just want the 5% of console gamers who stick around for years to reap the benefits.

Seems OP is hurt that XBox is getting mods. He no longer has anything to be "elitist" about anymore.

Really, with mods coming to console, why would anyone ever play these games on a PC anymore?

Oh come on, on the PC we can get better graphics, plus keyboard and mouse is really versatile. My PC is amazing, I watch movies on it, play music through it, surf the internet, play games, do work on it, talk to people using it, draw with it, and write things as well. A PC is much more feature complete than a console, if you're going to question the worth of a PC.

I played skyrim on my 360 for 2 years straight, is that a short life cycle?

Please try running a Skyrim 2k Textures mod and watch the PS3 / Xbox 360 choke and die.

Or try and run SkyUI. Oh, wait, that requires SKSE. So you can't do that either, because it is a third-party tool.

Wait till they try modding their consoles with extra NPCs and animals, and all the pretty things

It's basically the same tool. Again, I never disputed that the tools in use that modders have in the kit aren't the ones the developers have. What I have argued, and even that developer presents, is that they make the tools user-friendly, such as creating that wiki page among other things. These mod kits would be released immediately at release if it was that simple.

I understand entirely, actually. I'm aware the ESRB cannot rate content that is not in the base game. That being said, this quote is from Bethesda, who argues they "lost millions" because of mods impacting the rating for Oblivion. The fact you continue to ignore that modding actually did cost Bethesda a considerable amount of money leads me to believe you aren't willing to accept reality. If you won't believe a quote from Bethesda itself, who will you believe?

I completely ignored your points about Morrowind and Oblivion because that was a different engine (Gamebyro) and much simpler to release mod tools for given the less sophistication of modding back then. With Skyrim, BGS built an entirely new engine which required new tools and took a considerable amount of time and effort to streamline for the community. That is why Skyrim's mod kit did not release for three months.

You obviously haven't been modding very long or don't know anything about it.

SkyUI, the most popular mod for Skyrim, needs Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) in order to function. SKSE is also one of the most popular mods for Skyrim, because a lot of other mods will not function without SKSE. There is also Enhanced Natural Beauty (ENB), SweetFX, HD texture packs, and many more popular mods that will never work on console either because of 3rd party software or because of the locked hardware. Outside of just basic content mods adding quests or weapons/armor, there really isn't a lot to expect with regard to mods. The best mods, again, almost always require 3rd party tools in order to function.

Oh, you think the Creation Engine is actually something that Bethesda created completely in-house? The Creation Engine is a heavily-modified version of Gamebryo. It still contains Gamebryo code. See http://peter.corrosivetruths.org/2011/12/21/is-skyrims-creation-just-gamebryo/ for more info on that.

And as for the Wiki taking time? That also doesn't quite hold up, because, again, the Oblivion Construction Kit was released on the same day as the game. The Oblicion CS Wiki, on the other hand, was created on March 10th, 2006... 10 days before Oblivion was released. Skyrim's WIki was started on December 1st, 2012, which was only 20ish days after Skyrim was released.

And here is what actually happened for Oblivion's rating change, straight from the ESRB's President Patricia Vance: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/op-ed/797-Boobies-Did-Not-Break-the-Game-The-ESRB-Clears-the-Air-On-Oblivi