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Bethesda will partner with modders to release new premium content for Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
Bethesda Games Studio is launching Creation Club, a service for PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One, this summer.
Bethesda's new Creation Club will contain a series of mods developed for Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition both by Bethesda and "outside developers," including those from the games' communities. These will include weapons, abilities and gameplay, according to Bethesda. A trailer above, from the publisher's E3 2017 press conference, shows a few of these in action.
[...] Yet the publisher also stated that Creation Club is not equivalent to "paid mods," similar to what it used to sell through Steam Workshop.
Bethesda will pay approved mod developers:
Creators are required to submit documentation pitches which go through an approval process. All content must be new and original. Once a concept is approved, a development schedule with Alpha, Beta and Release milestones is created. Creations go through our full development pipeline, which Creators participate in. Bethesda Game Studios developers work with Creators to iterate and polish their work along with full QA cycles. The content is fully localized, as well. This ensures compatibility with the original game, official add-ons and achievements. [...] Just like our own game developers, Creators are paid for their work and start receiving payment as soon as their proposal is accepted and through development milestones.
Also at PC Gamer, Kotaku, Gamespot, Gamasutra, and GamesRadar+.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday June 13 2017, @03:21PM (4 children)
Skyrim fanboi here. SSE is a hogwash and is absolutely abysmal in comparison to mods that were released years ago. Bethesda is only looking to milk more and more money out of a dead horse. I mean, they released SSE after 5 full years and they have fixed hardly any bugs. The graphics engine is shiiiiit and even the modders have moved on now. Even SKSE is not yet ported. And instead of bringing the old modders together, Bethesda now wants to milk whatever is left through this "enticement". I doubt it will work, because Skyrim's engine is so old, honing your skills on it doesn't translate to being a better graphics designer anymore.
I have played TES:Online. It is... kinda okay. But even a damn horse is DLC. Now I am the kind of guy who will still explore every nook and corner on foot without fast-travel, but I cannot anymore justify the amount of dedication it takes.
I don't mind if they don't release TES:VI for another, say, 2-3 years. Beyond that, I doubt a lot of fans will stick around. Especially most of the casual players have only played Skyrim.
I so hope it doesn't turn out into another HL3.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13 2017, @04:16PM (3 children)
I imagine the issue they're having is Fallout 4.
It's clear that they've been trying to make the games more and more 'accessible' each iteration. While I think they might have overdone it a bit with Skyrim, it still was a relatively fair medium between core appeal and mainstream appeal. And mods really picked up most of the slack there. But then we get to Fallout 4. Bethesda proudly announced how many copies they shipped at launch and how much they made from that (12 million and 'over $750 million) but and haven't said much of anything about it since except in comments that implicitly go back to the shipped number. Looking at the steam player count [steampowered.com] it's continuing its steady decline and is just about to fall behind... Skyrim. Seriously, in a strange coincidence the games are currently neck and neck.
I believe that they probably went a bit too 'accessible' with Fallout 4 and, more importantly, I think they know it. Continuing to appeal to numbers shipped and launch while trying to stay ahead of a game they released 6 years ago in player count is definitely not the future they had in mind for Fallout 4. And I think there's every reason to speculate that the path they were taking for TES 6 was going to be the exact same sort of simplifying and streamlining systems. If this is the case, this might mean they could be looking at something close to a reboot of the work they'd done on TES VI. It also puts them in an awkward spot when all their success to date had been mostly just taking somewhat more esoteric systems and streamlining them with a new coat of paint and some incremental progress. TES VI can't just look like a nice Skyrim mod.
(Score: 1) by jshmlr on Tuesday June 13 2017, @06:35PM (1 child)
I'm spit-balling here, but I'd wager that there might not be a TES VI for some time. We'll see a revisit to Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion in the Skyrim flavor first, maybe through these contracted mods. The hard design work is already done for these games, and they are approaching the appropriate age for another round of nostalgic fans with some disposable income.
Need nothing, then see what happens.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 13 2017, @10:11PM
We might not need Bethesda's help to revisit Daggerfall:
http://xlengine.com/ [xlengine.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday June 14 2017, @05:23AM
I think you have hit the nail on its head. With Fallout they have made two mistakes: one is that they incorrectly assumed that the reason behind Skyrim's longevity is its accessibility, when in reality it is because of immersion. Secondly, they have reimagined Fallout into a post-apocalyptic Skyrim, which it is not.
I just hope they hop onto Nexus, list mods by popularity and downloads and then try to make sense of what is it that Skyrim was missing. And I sure hope they continue to provide better and better support for modders. They are half the game :)