Battlefront Mod and Scenario Depot - your opinion counts

[Moon]

"Would"?

Let me guess. You never used the existing sites, right?

That would be part of the reason for why we need a central "official" repository: many new customers don't know where to find the "existing sites" or how to use them. A central file depot that is part of the official site would be a great starting point for many new fans that would only help in getting them "on the hook" for more mods, more sites, more content.

Contrary to what some people may want to believe, the world didn't stop spinning when CMx1 came out a few years ago.

[Taki]

Yes, I run the two that are listed there, "The Proving Grounds" and "The Scenario Depot II".

I don't want to compete with "official" BFC scenario hosting either - I see no need in having the two, so if yours would be the preferred "vendor", then I'd most likely just go ahead and shut down. Again, we'll see what happens after your launch.

I`ll stick with CMmods since Year 2002 (was it 2002?) and so i do in the Future. Hope you keep that great site running. I wont pay for downloading scenarios. Its not that easy to me (paypal, Visa) and transfering to the states or anywhere else in the World.

[GSX]

That would be part of the reason for why we need a central "official" repository: many new customers don't know where to find the "existing sites" or how to use them. A central file depot that is part of the official site would be a great starting point for many new fans that would only help in getting them "on the hook" for more mods, more sites, more content.

Contrary to what some people may want to believe, the world didn't stop spinning when CMx1 came out a few years ago.

Of course you could link to some of those sites from your main page and to save you some money give them a little donation to help them do what they do so well.

I think your idea is great, but really should be totally unlimited and free, maybe thats an ideal world view but the impression your giving by your repeated statements that it is free does not factor in human nature, your limiting guys to basically 2 downloads per month and however much you protest otherwise it doesnt feel free at all.

How about guys accruing points, these points equal megs. So every day if Im registered I get awarded ten MB, I can then either download a couple of scenarios or a Mod, or if I want that campaign I have to wait a few days. Heres the good bit where you can recoup some of your losses, if I want, I can buy more Mb. Say $10 gets you an additional 100MB. That way guys that want a bit of stuff arent limited to 2 downloads and guys who want to pay for more can do as well.

Your plan seems OK, but if guys are coming to BF they will meet guys with the mods they want already, emails will fly and Mods will be swapped, I imagine a Thread titled Swap Shop will arise.

[ColumbusOHGamer]

Wow! I don't know where to start..., so many topics, so little time.

Let's start with some facts...

1. I currently pay about $80/mo for a 1.5M/756k, unlimited byte count, commercial class connection with Time Warner Cable. This is a second, dedicated line. My other line is used for my in-home business and personal use, not cmmods.com.

2. I just purchased my 3rd server upgrade for cmmods and will install it within the next couple weeks. Running the site ain't cheap, but it's not going to crush me either.

3. I used to see a fairly regular stream of donations in the beginning. There was a handful of VERY generous people that pretty much paid for the first year or so of operation. But now it's pretty rare to get even a couple $5 donations per month. The last 3 years have been pretty much out of my pocket, including the hardware upgrades. I'm not complaining though! I very much appreciate ANYONE who takes the time to send me a couple dollars. Every little bit helps!!!

4. I tried the banner ads for a short time. They sucked. I ended up making $0.50 per week in ads. Not worth putting the users through the hassle. I also thought about charging some sort of fee, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. I wanted a *FREE* place where modders and mod sluts could meet and share their warez. I HATE THE IDEA OF RESTRICTING CREATIVITY OR MAKING OTHERS PAY FOR IT! I'll get back to this later.

5. I am averaging about 2GB/day in downloaded bytes.

6. I currently have about 20,000 registered users, although I'm sure MANY are inactive (one-time use) or duplicates. So let's say 40% are active, about 8000.

7. The earliest mod on my site is from November 2003, authored by the great pakfan. And that was after the great crash of 2003. The site was originally started October 2002. So CMMods has been operating for about 6 years.

8. I'm hosting about 17GB of downloadable mods and scenarios total. This amount grows regularly.

9. The mod/scenario creators have NEVER been paid for their work They do it because they love it! It's such a great thing to see so many modders contributing to the CM community by providing all of us with their wonderful artwork. They really do enhance the experience when playing.

10a. I'm getting tired. I love the CM family of games, but I have so little time that I haven't played one in over a year. I have a 8-5 day job, an in-home business (another 30 hours/week), my family and I'm trying to build a cheap race car (http://www.donateliferacing.com) in my "spare" time. The CMMods website is getting less and less attention every month. If you have emailed me in the past 3 years, you probably have not gotten a reply. I don't open that mailbox but once a month now. For that I am sorry, but I hope you understand.

10b. I haven't made an update to CMMods in... well, I don't remember the last programing change I made. Which means I'm not keeping up on the latest productions from bf.c and consequently, the databases are not as full featured as they should be.

11. I talked with Matt/Steve (they are interchangeable aren't they? ;-) ) in the past about some sort of "agreement" between cmmods and bf.c, but they wanted to have control if it was going to be an "official" bf.c website affiliate. I totally and completely agree with that decision. As someone who owns their own business, I understand the value of having control over ALL it's aspects.

I hope the information above will help everyone understand what's at stake.

Let me try to sum things up. I like the guys at bf.c and have no bad feelings for them. In fact, I was kind of glad to hear they wanted to open their own mod hosting website. The thought of letting someone else have the burden of expense and time for mod hosting sounds pretty good in my busy life.

However, I will say that I was very disappointed to hear that some sort of fee or usage limitation would be implemented. I always envisioned all the modding websites, not just cmmods, as a FREE place for the modders to host their artwork and the mod sluts to grab them all.

So now I'm in a dilema. I'd love to turn off the website and let someone else deal with all the issues. But I just can't stand the thought of telling my 8000-20000 users "Hey, you have to go pay for the mods now". It just doesn't sit well with me.

So, for now, I'm going to keep it up and running. Not as a "competitor" to bf.c, just another resource the community can use.

[Redwolf]

That would be part of the reason for why we need a central "official" repository: many new customers don't know where to find the "existing sites" or how to use them. A central file depot that is part of the official site would be a great starting point for many new fans that would only help in getting them "on the hook" for more mods, more sites, more content.

Yeah, but you could fix that by linking to them

My point is that you are unlikely to come up with a UI and the functionality you want. This is a highly interactive process. All that review, rating and discussion stuff has been coded step by step using feedback from the users. You cannot replicate that with something that you build once.

I, too, think it would be better to throw some money at the existing guys, require cosmetic changes to make them BFC look compliant, to move to a properly backed up host with enough guaranteed uptime (if not already). Or buy their sites and contract them for changes.

I don't see how you are going to get the programming done. A build-once thing is guaranteed to suck. And I don't think you'll have a "real" programmer full-time to adjust the way the existing sites did, that way too expensive and there's no justification if you already have volunteers insane enough to do it.

[GJK]

CoG: well said, I hear ya.

[El Hombre]

There's something I don't understand here. The numbers don't add up, so I must be missing an important piece.

Let's recap the costs:

1- Development cost (making the site)

2- Maintenance cost (making sure the site runs 24/7)

3- Hosting cost (storing all the files)

4- Bandwidth cost (serving the files)

Development cost is a one-time fee (at least for a couple of years). Let's say this costs $30k (to be conservative)

Maintenance cost for BFC should be almost nil, since the ops team already exists to manage and maintain the site+forums. I don't see the need for more than a couple of hours/week of maintenance on this, if at all

Hosting cost: worst, case take Amazon S3: $0.15 per GB-Month of storage

Bandwidth cost: same, take Amazon S3: $0.20 per GB of data transferred

Let's assume the new mod site is VERY successful. Something like 10x the usage of CoG's site. We're talking 100,000 active users, 20 gigs/day of download, 170 gigs total storage.

Hosting cost is $25.50/month

Bandwidth cost is $120/month

So in a worst case situation, you're talking $150/month of recurring non-people costs, pretty much peanuts. The missing part is the expensive human involvement, especially the development costs. Worst case, make a deal with CoG to get his source code and tweak the html/css.

Anyway, to me this looks like a no-brainer for making the mod site totally free. It's not only costly to implement all these rules and regulations for downloads, pricing models, etc..., it also could reduce the chance of the mod site being extremely successful (and that's probably what you want, right?)

[Moon]

Of course you could link to some of those sites from your main page

We do. We have a Weblinks section:

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&Itemid=23

[Moon]

ColumbusOHGamer, thanks for posting here!

So now I'm in a dilema. I'd love to turn off the website and let someone else deal with all the issues. But I just can't stand the thought of telling my 8000-20000 users "Hey, you have to go pay for the mods now". It just doesn't sit well with me.

Point taken.

So, for now, I'm going to keep it up and running. Not as a "competitor" to bf.c, just another resource the community can use.

That's exactly how I would have hoped you'd see it. More resources can't be a bad thing.

A build-once thing is guaranteed to suck.

There it is again... "I haven't seen it but it's guaranteed to suck." The only thing that is guaranteed seems to be that people make up their minds very early in the opinion-finding process Or perhaps it's a forum/internet problem... opinions often appear stronger in writing.

So in a worst case situation, you're talking $150/month of recurring non-people costs

El Hombre, your calculation is off on many levels. Without going into details, let's just say that Amazon S3 is not a suitable solution for something like this. As with many such offers you need to look at the fine print.

Having said that, we are currently trying to come up with a plan to launch and run the depot for free without any restrictions or fees, at least as a test for some time. We are also looking at changing plans and use a couple of dedicated servers instead of the server network we planned to use initially. This will most likely mean slower download speeds for everyone, but it can be free. Stay tuned.

[kerko]

"Would"?

Let me guess. You never used the existing sites, right?

No, I haven't. I've used CMMODS couple of times, which has very good content but interface is pretty crappy. Which other sites people find good?

[ColumbusOHGamer]

Having said that, we are currently trying to come up with a plan to launch and run the depot for free without any restrictions or fees, at least as a test for some time. We are also looking at changing plans and use a couple of dedicated servers instead of the server network we planned to use initially. This will most likely mean slower download speeds for everyone, but it can be free. Stay tuned.

OUTSTANDING!!!!

I can tell you that most people will not care about slower d/l speed, as long as we're not talking about 2k/sec. They'll just click the link and walk away/go to bed/watch TV. They'll b!tch from time to time, but if it's free, they'll take it. But if you were to charge them even $5 PER YEAR, your usage will drop by 80%. I surveyed this idea a long time ago. 80% said they would NEVER pay to d/l mods.

Martin/Steve/Matt/Charles/Etc., I think that once bf.c looks at the total monthly maintenance cost, you'll hopefully see that it won't be as bad as first anticipated. I can not speak for your financial situation with this effort, but c'mon guys, would it really cost that much? Think of the ROI you'll get with your happy customers coming back to your website religiously!

RedWolf, It *IS* possible to build a "one-time" setup website and have it be successfull. Once the initial development is complete, it really only needs updated if a new game is released. As I said above it's been a LONG time since I did any programming on my site, and its going fine.

[ColumbusOHGamer]

No, I haven't. I've used CMMODS couple of times, which has very good content but my face is pretty crappy.

CORRECTED.

[Moon]

Martin/Steve/Matt/Charles/Etc., I think that once bf.c looks at the total monthly maintenance cost, you'll hopefully see that it won't be as bad as first anticipated. I can not speak for your financial situation with this effort, but c'mon guys, would it really cost that much? Think of the ROI you'll get with your happy customers coming back to your website religiously!

We have a pretty good idea of what it would cost if we were to use the same infrastructure that we're using for game downloads, which is basically a worldwide network of servers. It's very expensive. Of course we're talking about many thousands of full game downloads here, usually between 500 MB to almost 2 GB per file, so that kind of infrastructure is needed. We used to always have problems with download speeds before switching to this kind of service and never looked back.

Since mods are "free", and based on our current daily website traffic, we anticipate very high bandwidth requirements indeed. Perhaps we overestimate them, we'll see. For our current full game downloads we are using up way way way way more than 2 GB per day, but if that's all that CMMODS is requiring, perhaps a much simple one or two server solution (one per continent) would be enough.

We will be running some tests in the next days. Pending the results, we'll probably launch the depot 100% free and see how it goes for some time.

[Gorgin]

CMMODS is woking just fine. And it's free.

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

It looks to me like you guys are just looking for another revenue source to tap into.

[ChrisND]

CMMODS is woking just fine. And it's free.

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

It looks to me like you guys are just looking for another revenue source to tap into.

Pro-tip: Try reading the thread before responding.

Just out of sheer morbid curiosity, where did you get the get idea they would making revenue out of this? I understand the reluctance for any type of charge, but where do you get the idea they would make a profit?

[ColumbusOHGamer]

Since mods are "free", and based on our current daily website traffic, we anticipate very high bandwidth requirements indeed. Perhaps we overestimate them, we'll see. For our current full game downloads we are using up way way way way more than 2 GB per day, but if that's all that CMMODS is requiring, perhaps a much simple one or two server solution (one per continent) would be enough.

Let me give you some better numbers...

http://www.cmmods.com/web/cmlog.nsf/489a06c8d54df42c85256c75007e92f2

You can see that I'm averaging about ~80GB per month until May 2008. (OK, so my original math was a little off) Those numbers are just the d/l bytes. Total website usage is about 1GB per day more. Something happens in June and the amount of data climbs. Probably some good mods came out or maybe a file leech found the site. The highest single day byte count since Jan 2007 was 19GB. Obviously the average is much lower, but you need to account for spikes. Also, some of my high volume days came from people using auto download tools that would create dozens of sessions, d/l'ing the same file over and over. I had no good way of controlling that, but if you can limit the sessions to something like 3, you'll eliminate that issue and significantly reduce your bandwidth.

I really think that if you simply limit the number of concurrent connections and/or set a bandwidth limit per user, you'll easily be able to host a mod website on one server. Of course, I would suggest a redundant box for safety, but that's a business decision. CMMods has been running on one server (1.8GHz, 2GB Ram, slow 250GB HD) for 6 years. No one really complains about speed or downtime, but really, how can they complain about a free service?

[MeatEtr]

We will be running some tests in the next days. Pending the results, we'll probably launch the depot 100% free and see how it goes for some time.

This is great to hear no doubt. By the way, I'm sure this has been mentioned(long thread), but wouldn't a small amount of ads pay for this. Since you guys will get a helluva lot more traffic than COG gets. I know most don't mind minimal ads as long as it remains free.

Good to hear COG and GJK weigh in on this. But it shouldn't come out of your own wallet COG. Which is why the common "If it ain't broke don't fix it" comments aren't fair IMO. Sure it's not broke because we're all getting it for free while somebody else pays for it. Bandwidth isn't free and it certainly won't be cheap at the magnitude BFC needs.

[JonS]

Have you given any thought as to how the IP would work?

[Moon]

Let me give you some better numbers...

ColumbusOHGamer, thanks for the stats. I actually have looked at your stats recently One thing to keep in mind of course is that mods and scenario sizes are increasing. CMSF mods and scenario files tend to be much bigger than CMx1 for example.

I'm sure this has been mentioned(long thread), but wouldn't a small amount of ads pay for this

Yes, it has been mentioned. People keep forgetting that we're not just a fan site but a company, and a games publisher at that. We do not want to be showing ads for competing or irrelevant product. Besides, ads only pay enough if you do it in an extremely aggressive way.

Have you given any thought as to how the IP would work?

I assume you mean intellectual property and copyrights? Each uploader is able to upload a "license text" for his file. You can even set it so that people have to click to accept. If you don't upload a license, our standard license is used, which says that all files can be distributed for free but cannot be charged for. This is in fact part of the End User License Agreement for all our games.

[Boris Balaban]

Moon, sign me up.

I have been a member for a long time and Battlefront has done an excellent job in providing games. We followers in the past wanted to help and this seem a good way of providing finances and get something in return.

[MeatEtr]

Yes, it has been mentioned. People keep forgetting that we're not just a fan site but a company, and a games publisher at that. We do not want to be showing ads for competing or irrelevant product. Besides, ads only pay enough if you do it in an extremely aggressive way.

Ok I wasn't aware of that, thanks for clarifying this.

Now that this has been officially announced, about when will we see this actually happen? (ballpark figure)

[sfhand]

I support the plan. If I ever create a scenario or campaign worthy of submission I'll submit it.

Thanks again, BF.

[Scipio]

That would be part of the reason for why we need a central "official" repository: many new customers don't know where to find the "existing sites" or how to use them. A central file depot that is part of the official site would be a great starting point for many new fans that would only help in getting them "on the hook" for more mods, more sites, more content.

That's a good point. The people on this forum seems to believe that the most people who purchased CMSF (for example) use this forum and download stuff from the internet. But truth is that many people don't know about all the great clubs and forums out there, and even if, many of them are absolutly not interested into them. And I bet most of all people who have purchased CMSF do not even know nor imagine that the game can be easily expanded/upgraded/altered with mods.

Most people here sounds like 'thousand of people DL stuff every day', including the BFC people to some degree . CMMODS is a well known site to the CM internet community! Some of my mods are often named as 'must haves' (excuse the self appraisment). But fact is: my mods are being DL in average between 250-300 times, with a peek of ~360 for my Green/Yellow weapon icons (=~50 MB of traffic). It can't be figured out on CMMODS, but I bet the most of the DLs happen in the first weeks after release, and then drop to somewhere below 10 DLs per month.

Anyway...I wouldn't have a problem with a small fee for a DL site. $25 for a year are no problem. My concerns are of a different nature. Let me assume that BFC will advertise this site in their game manuals, or even add a direct link to the games main menu - what is the biggest potential to let the community grow, IMO. Now people will go there and read 'you need to pay x$ for subscription', than this will automatically turn off many people, even if you can DL some stuff for free. No matter if the x$ are justfied or not, if it's meant as compensation or profit.

Another point is, that many people do not even know how to install a mod or a scenario. Some of my friends - long time computer users/players - can't even use the Windows Explorer savely without the risk of ruin something . It's already an adventure for them to find out where the things are going to on there HD when they DL something. 'What do mean with DL folder???'. Keep in mind that many frequent computer users still can't find the 'Any-key' on their keyboard . I think BFC should add - if not even an implemented Mod/Scenario manager - at least a section in the manual about how to download and how to install stuff!

[Moon]

Ok I wasn't aware of that, thanks for clarifying this.

Now that this has been officially announced, about when will we see this actually happen? (ballpark figure)

Won't take long. Maybe already next week. I think I mentioned before that a beta version of the application is already running, we only need to finalize the server setup now. How fast we can deploy depends on what the testing next week reveals and how well it goes.

[purpheart23]

I came to the party late, but is battlefront going to make some of the scenarios that will be available to us? I do enjoy the quality of the scenarios that come with your games.