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Post feature Report RSS 2011 We Barely Knew Ye!

Take a look at what our Editor noticed throughout 2011!

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ModDB and IndieDB see a lot of new content, everyday more being added, everyday never slowing down. It is enough to make a man go postal, however unlike the post (hence postal getdit?) our lovely sites see their fair share of quirky uploads, odd groups, awesome/mind blowing news, OCD content creators, shitty trolls and WTF moments to quell the rising psychopath inside me, only slightly however.

The Awesome:

The Making of Afraid of Monsters/Developer commentary
Golly gosh, who would have known that AoM had such a detailed and colourful history. Any onlookers might has mistaken some of the direction the mod took as short-cuts or the ramblings of a diluted watered down version of Patrick Bateman. However that is not the case, AoM and AoM DC had quite a lot of thought and work put into the game, well worth the watch!

The Not-so-awesome:

Why we removed High School Shooter
We should have seen this coming, yet our best hopes for humanity were drained when we were mistaken as the creators of this modification by people in a position far greater then our own to falsely report the story of the modification. You can read more in the article itself, but know this. It was not-so-awesome.

Our comps your submissions:

We do smashing comps, partly because we do a good job editing and arranging the comp itself but the real star's are you guys.

We had a converstation with the CD Projekt RED guys about how best to promote their new Witcher game. The answer was for you guys to sharpen up your photoshop and slice the two heroes of the game into moments of history. The submissions were fantastic especially the winners.

Our other events where the RIFT comp and the Amnesia Comp. We also had our community run Desura comps page for a while as well.

2011 AAA Game developers either hate or love Modders?!?:

First they shun us, then they take us in with open arms, then we are banished again! WTH! First Battlefield 3 told modders we are too dunce for their SDK (hardware limitations on normal PC's), then Diablo 3 gets greedy with players being needed to be online all the time to buy virtual items (functionality for a modern gamer), finally we get a bone with Doom 3 Source Code being released with RAGE (nothing to rage about here) and Modern Warfare 3 gets dedicated servers (gun shooting).

ModDB's to catch a Predator:

Come in, come in. Sit down, now tell me what are you doing here? Do you know what you are doing? Did you know in 2011 a few modders added over 130 skins for AvP 2010 with a very short timespan? There were days I thought the onslaught of predator faces would never stop!

Post comment Comments
KnightofEquulei
KnightofEquulei

Moddb is a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of anything.

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Henley Author
Henley

You know it sister!

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Tatsur0
Tatsur0

A fun year that blew by quite fast. Cheers guys on all the hard work.

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Havoc_frost
Havoc_frost

I support your decision to remove school shooter solely because
A. When something like that crops up the uninformed masses will completely blow it out of proportion (e.g Mass effect's romance scenes and Fox News).
B. Video games are becoming more and more accepted as a medium yet we are not at the point where we can make something like a mindless shooter whos only objective is to kill unarmed civilians without a massive backlash.
Just look at MW2 and its No Russian mission as an example.

I feel that in a few years time this may change but I just dont think that everyone's ready for it.

now that that's over with 2011 was a great year as many of my favourite mods got released and were just as good as I thought they would be :D

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architectts
architectts

Well up until these idiots showed their mod to the public, media was over exaggerating about everything, and especially their dunce ringleader Jack Thompson. Video games today are like comic books then. I agree 100%.

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masternerdguy
masternerdguy

Guys, School Shooter 2012: North American Tour was a troll mod. They were trolling and they did so very well. How did so many people fall for it?

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AirborneSn1p3r
AirborneSn1p3r

yea school shooter just may have been taking things a little too far

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Slevo
Slevo

you do relies the school shooter was only about killing civilians in half life 2 the only people taking it out of proportion were media and mod db, shoot we all go around killing and stabbing civilians in half life 2 its not uncommon, they just gave it a background of killing in a educational area the story they gave it was off cause too far for most people but the game itself is nothing different from what we all do in 90% of First person shooters. but yeah i don't know why we have to dig up old dirt everyone forgot about it but thanks for reminding us.

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cW#Ravenblood

Nope, its about killing students, childs.

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KnightofEquulei
KnightofEquulei

Exactly. I'm all for freedom when it comes to RPG games, so long as bad choices have consequences but a game simply where you're killing children to score points? For me, that just lacks imagination and for that reason alone, it didn't deserve to be hosted upon Moddb.

Video games get such bad press because of stuff like this, the good things of videos games are often ignored. Video games are expanding and are covering many topics in mature ways (games like Dragon Age: Origins and Deus Ex prove this). School Shooter was the past. It was a mindless shooter. Moddb didn't deserve to get attacked like it did for removing it. I can understand why some people felt as though it should have remained (freedom of speech and whatever) and thought of it as being harmless but at the same time, Moddb has rules.

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masternerdguy
masternerdguy

To be fair, not all students are children :P

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Nathanius
Nathanius

An RTS mod made it into the top 5! I'm impressed! There's hope yet :D

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Kizzycocoa
Kizzycocoa

have to say, I disagree with the school shooter mod being removed, if only for free speech. yes, it was vile. yes, it deserved to never be played. but, you could draw parallels with other games.

though, I can understand why it was removed, I feel games as a medium should allow even this.

the hint of suicide before being apprehended, for example. it could have hinted at a more complex story. the developer could have simply let the player run off into the sunset after the shooting, but instead chose suicide. why not the first option? why back the player into a corner? to teach others that it would happen to them if they started a shooting?
suicides, shootings and bullying all should be talked about more. yet, they're seen as taboo, even in games, which frustrates me to no end.

still, for the site, I suppose it couldn't be allowed, as it would be seen as supporting it. but it infuriates me that video games are targeted so vigorously as the source of all violence, when there are movies ten times as violent, with much less reason to the violence. yet when a mod like this comes along to breach that gap, no matter how brainless it is, you have idiots complaining to Gabe newell to somehow shut down that mod.

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Dr.Goupyl
Dr.Goupyl

Anyway 2011 was a really good year for good mods, indies and upcoming stuff.
Especially for Indies, keep growing and getting better !

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Otter.
Otter.

Well this year had some pretty good mods. I still haven't tried NMRIH and Off Limits but I will get on to that sooner or later.

Also
I still think removing that POS reskin mod was a good idea. It's outdated, lacks any moral and *cough* "fun" which the developers desperately hang on too, and has been only done to bring them some (evil) repute, nothing else, you and your time wasn't in thought at all.

I mean why should moddb (and Valve!) get bashed for some unresponsive trolls that refuse communicating with the admins about the hatemail they get but was posted in moddb's letterbox. It's like if you would get your fat, dirty, smelly neighbour's bills and he wouldn't want to take it or acknowledge their existence because he thinks you will eventually pay it for them. ಠ_ಠ Well f*ck that, they deserved to grow up and take responsibility for their own sh*t.

(Actually, now that I think of it, I think they didn't made anything at all, just thrown together something which resembled a map in Hammer, took screenshots and posted it as an up and coming mod)

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medve
medve

booooo, give us the moty winners already!

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SHREDDER_OiM
SHREDDER_OiM

Yes! When the results are known?

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romnus
romnus

I don't see any mention of the dissapearences of all the Battlestar Galactica mods? That happened this year, where are they Mod-Database, hmm????? :P

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mackyman
mackyman

Could you reference to where you found that Battlefield 3 says that the mod-community is to dunce to use their SDK? I can only find a reference where they say that if they should do modding support, they should do it properly

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TALON_UK
TALON_UK

Hmmm, I didn't even notice the removal of all Battlestar mods until you just mentioned it. Indeed, what has happened there? Legal issues? Something to do with Battlestar Galactica on-line coming out?

BF3 article was towards the beginning of the year. First they were saying there would be mod tools for FB engine, and then not, due to being too complex, and requiring too many man hours to make publicly user friendly.

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TALON_UK
TALON_UK

Here is the link to an article regarding the BF3 mod tools situation from earlier in the year.

Bf3blog.com(Battlefield+3+Blog)

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mackyman
mackyman

Thanks for the link =) Got a bit irritated on the wording in the article after reading the article without the reference.

I think a few dedicated persons would have gotten the SDK working, but I still DICE did the right decision thou, what would they had to remove to get in the mod-tools?

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BlackDanaraki
BlackDanaraki

Those are the big news for the site, some copyright stuff came down again this year and forced the removal of Sci-fi at war, one of my favorite mods. Damn you NBC!

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Spiffy664
Spiffy664

2011 was an interesting year, non professional development of video games has really shown its strength and reared its mighty head.

The issue with bf3 mod tools is I think EA and dice are too focused on their own product, what with Origin, etc, they seem to think that only they know how to make their product good, they forget the best facets of BF1942 was in fact the stunt mods, no questions or arguments could possibly prove that one wrong. Just like most AAA developers, they quickly forget their communities and early grass roots for loftier canopies. The issue with making developer tools that are "dumb enough" for modders isn't about time or money, but about getting over their own ego and giving their existing in house tools a GUI :| (which it probably already has one..) - in 10 years, their will be mods that far exceed BF3, made by computer science undergraduates, not because modders got smarter, but because somebody took the time to release some tools, pushing the already smart modders along in the right direction.

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TALON_UK
TALON_UK

There were some other issues if I remember rightly, something about the development system needing a powerful networked server to run it or something like that, don't remember the exact details. But yeah, they do need to give modders more credit, and have a bit more faith in our abilities. For me the best part of BF1942 was the Desert Combat mod, how much extra longevity did that give to that game?

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