China's map makers can make money on dz platform

[lishi1608]

Don't know if you guys know this. I think this will interest you if you didn't.

NetEase is a China company, Blz's partner. Every Blz's game is run by NetEase in China.
DZ platform("魔兽争霸官方对战平台" don't know the English name, but the Chinese meaning is "official warcraft battle platform") is a wc3 platform developed by NetEase.

DZ is probably the most popular platform to play wc3 in China, as it does not require a valid CD Key to play(can you believe), and it can automatically download and keep up-to-date your wc3.
Many wc3 matches are now on DZ, such as WGL("黄金联赛"). And it contains a separated Ladder system, not BN, most top Chinese and some foreign players are playing on this. And there's an international version: Installation Tutorial-WarcraftIII Battle Platform

We can also play custom maps on DZ. Many of the custom maps are created and uploaded by map makers. To play the map is free, but many maps provide something like "in-app-purchase". You can buy items in a shop inside DZ, and next time it will effect in your game. The item can be anything you could custom in your map such as custom model, enhancement, hidden hero. The money will share between map makers and NetEase. Smart. And there's a special function: you can save custom value in platform for each player in game, persistently! This enable makers to make online multi player RPGs. (they provided special common.j which has many additional function, only works on DZ)

Some map makers make lot of money and even build their game making studio( article in Chinese ).

I hope Blz will make a platform for all map makers to make money. I know many of us make and share maps just for fun. But if there's an option to make money, more good map will come out I think.

 

[deepstrasz]

We know and we also know how many of those maps are stolen from the west and sold there.

 

[lishi1608]

We know and we also know how many of those maps are stolen from the west and sold there.

I guess so. Does Blizzard know?

 

[deepstrasz]

Does Blizzard know?

What do you think?

 

[Daffa]

When we talk about whatever NE done in China and think about having similar thing from Blizzard, we need to account the fact that the west has quite a different response to the Chinese market. Many prefer to not have their modding world polluted with real-life money. Some would, but the uproar is quite big enough that it's might not be the best of ideas.

 

[lishi1608]

When we talk about whatever NE done in China and think about having similar thing from Blizzard, we need to account the fact that the west has quite a different response to the Chinese market. Many prefer to not have their modding world polluted with real-life money. Some would, but the uproar is quite big enough that it's might not be the best of ideas.

Now more and more companies encourage modding. Some of them will use money if it's worthy for their business. In the end gaming companies are companies, they need money to run business. The only problem is if it's worthy or not.

True money can bring bad human behavior, but it's not totally evil thing. This world can't run without money.

I'm not 100% sure it's a good idea, for the long term, for everyone. But I think, this way the quality and quantity of custom map will increase. At least I see it happening in NE platform. And I know there're thieves, map hackers. I despise them. If there's something I can do, I'd like to help.

And do you remember Diablo 3 once had a auction house with real money? I don't see how Blizzard not want money to pollute it's game. They closed it because it hurts the game and hurts the business. Is there a way which comes with money and won't hurt business?

 

[Daffa]

It goes reversed when money is on the table on map development. The only way to have models and icons monetized is to have maps locked. If maps locked, it will cut down the growth of community (since we strive by having lots of open source maps). That's one thing. If maps are monetized, then there's the issue of protecting said maps from duplicates, stolen, hacked versions and so on.

I personally up to have such monetization, if it weren't for the inherent issues it harbors when applied to Warcraft 3 Modding Community. Requests will completely get ignored if you can't throw money. People who lack skills will have a harder time growing, since talented people will get more focused on getting money than helping other (profit reasoning) and so on.

 

[lishi1608]

It goes reversed when money is on the table on map development. The only way to have models and icons monetized is to have maps locked. If maps locked, it will cut down the growth of community (since we strive by having lots of open source maps). That's one thing. If maps are monetized, then there's the issue of protecting said maps from duplicates, stolen, hacked versions and so on.

I personally up to have such monetization, if it weren't for the inherent issues it harbors when applied to Warcraft 3 Modding Community. Requests will completely get ignored if you can't throw money. People who lack skills will have a harder time growing, since talented people will get more focused on getting money than helping other (profit reasoning) and so on.

I know it's quite different, but think about software industry. In the early ages, software are opensource and free by default. Now people make money from it. There are hackers, thieves, reverse engineer your software and sell. But there are talented people willing to share and help, like in stackoverflow.com, and there are opensource projects all around. Check github.

I agree that technically, wc3 doesn't provide good mechanism to help prevent maps to be hacked. But that's something can be improved.

 

[~El]

I know it's quite different, but think about software industry. In the early ages, software are opensource and free by default. Now people make money from it. There are hackers, thieves, reverse engineer your software and sell. But there are talented people willing to share and help, like in stackoverflow.com, and there are opensource projects all around. Check github.

I agree that technically, wc3 doesn't provide good mechanism to help prevent maps to be hacked. But that's something can be improved.

The notion that software was free and opensource by default is... wrong. In the age when computers took up an entire room's worth of space, the software to operate it costed proportionally. Even compilers, something which we take for granted right now, were all proprietary and had very expensive licenses. Wanted to program in C? Fuck you, pay me. Wanted to program in C++? Fuck you, pay me. It wasn't really until the 90's with the advent of Linux that we even got an operating system that was open source and truly free, and was actually usable. If anything, the FOSS movement is stronger than ever nowadays, not the other way around.

This is, of course, very tangential to the topic at hand. The concerns Daffa raises are all valid and shouldn't be hand-waved away just because it works in the Software world. What is applicable to software in general should not be necessarily applicable to the gaming industry. The optics surrounding monetization in video games are VERY BAD right now. So bad, in fact, that multiple countries in the world are starting legislative action to control gambling and monetization in video games. Introducing any form of microtransactions in custom games, in a game where custom games were entirely free for almost two decades now, is bound to create another massive shit fest. The community has gone through enough drama over the past two years, over the patches, over the bots, etc. Is this really what the community needs?

While I am not entirely opposed to the idea of rewarding modders monetarily, I would be very concerned about introducing microtransactions into maps. I don't think there's even enough people playing WC3 right now for most modders to be able to benefit from it in any significant way. Even if player counts increase, we can easily fall into a situation where 90% of the players play a small selection of a half-dozen maps, making a very small subset of modders very rich, while not really doing anything to help the rest of the community.

Besides, think about what kind of maps this scheme would encourage? If you want people to engage in your microtransactions, then you have to design your map around that. You have to incentivize it. The way most games do that, is by introducing inconveniences if you're not willing to shell out for it. What if I don't want to sacrifice map design for microtransactions? What if I want everyone to have a level playing field? Matter of fact is, modders who refuse to engage in sabotaging their own map design to encourage buying mictrotransactions will inevitably be left behind, even if they make great maps.

Matter of fact is that the model you're suggesting simply doesn't encourage good game design.

 

[Wrda]

I hope Blz will make a platform for all map makers to make money. I know many of us make and share maps just for fun. But if there's an option to make money, more good map will come out I think.

N-O F-R-E-A-K-I-N-G W-A-Y
Imagine all the maps some map makers have done and quit wc3, wouldn't they be worth of earning money?
Who decides which map maker is worth of that money? Who decides it was him who made that map? What about several versions? What about similar maps made from scratch? Who is going to pay for precious privileges in a map? Who is going to buy something in the game and that was not made by the developer? What about losers who steal maps and claim them their own, you want them to profit at your costs?
These are all questions that need to be answered.
I find it disgusting any one using their maps as a source of money since they were not technically made by them, it belongs to the actual developer. And I hate microtranscations.
If somone wants to earn money from a game then they should make it with their own tools, not a game inside another game...

 

[Shar Dundred]

No.

 

[Daffa]

I know it's quite different, but think about software industry. In the early ages, software are opensource and free by default. Now people make money from it. There are hackers, thieves, reverse engineer your software and sell. But there are talented people willing to share and help, like in stackoverflow.com, and there are opensource projects all around. Check github.

I agree that technically, wc3 doesn't provide good mechanism to help prevent maps to be hacked. But that's something can be improved.

People only help with generic issues, but once specific tools are needed, more than likely the said tool be paid (since maps gets money, why not tools too?). Money involvement means there will be lot legality problems down the line as well. I'm with @Wrda here.

As @Sir Moriarty states, the initial history of software industry is closed source. Because of this, the IT development was pretty slow, IT related universities need to invest shit ton of money for development back then, and so on. Grateful that open source (non-exclusivity) is a thing now, else I'm sure my IT study will cost me several times as much as it currently is.

If I am being honest, I would love to earn money from map making, cause hey, free cheap money! But as I said, in term of community effect, it will cause a downright spiral right now.

 

[Shi_1906]

Capitalization has both advantages and disadvantages

The advantage is that the industry is more standardized.

The disadvantage is that there will be more bad people.

The conclusion now is that there is an uncertainty as to whether it is good or bad.

Because it is not known whether capitalization prolongs the life of War3 or accelerates its death.

 

[deepstrasz]

Capitalization has both advantages and disadvantages

This is not a political thread.

 

[tulee]

It is funny how the original poster completely ignored issues like Intellectual Property Rights and Theft that will occur as a result of monetization in custom maps.

Forgetting all the issues raised above about the effects of monetization on the player base for one second, it would almost be impossible for Blizzard to implement something like this without facing massive lawsuits, unless all the material within the map came only from blizzard games.

 

[Shi_1906]

This is not a political thread.

I made a mistake.

Correctly described as commercialization

 

[yxq1122]

No, this will completely ruin the community and the game itself.

As a Chinese developer, I actually feel things go towards what @Daffa the Mage said.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

If models, icons etc. would be commercial, it would be really difficult to make modding. We have something like 200 custom resources in Gnoll Campaign Chapter 1 alone — a small part made by us and a big part downloaded from the Hive Workshop.

When you keep things uncommercial, it helps developing maps with a really small budget. Basically, you just need a computer, some time, and maybe a few bucks to pay for something like new custom models, voice acting, etc. I find it very good that we have 12,500 free custom models here on the Hive Workshop. Gnoll Campaign would never have been possible without marvellous custom gnoll assets from folks like @Mephestrial and @Kimbo, and great buildings from @Ujimasa Hojo.

If you want to make money, maybe just set up a company and develop a game using Unity? Then, you need to pay for every single asset that you do not develop yourself. Then, you need also quite a big budget.

 

[Ether]

If you start to monetize your maps, then you are killing the fun in it. Most people are interested in downloading and playing, rather than spending couple of bucks to a map or mod which is not made 100% paid content, I saw a whole hell lot of chinese maps and they also used hiveworshop models, so I do not like they have sell it. I'll agree if you make a full standalone warcraft game that uses a different engine and not any from Blizzards. You can't sell something made of what has been already sold 15 years ago.

I would rather support donations and fundraising rather than pricing a mod or map.