Back in March 2007, that’s over 3 and a half years ago, I asked Would you pay for a Half-Life 2 Bonus Content Pack from Valve? 77% said “Yes”.

The poll question was really about content for modders to use but we discussed normal content.

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I received an interesting link a few days ago to a dev blog. The post was entitled Why aren

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A comment on this week’s Podcast17 got me thinking about the connection between retail games and mods. Many times I have heard of people buying retail games so they could play multiplayer mods; Counter-Strike and Team Fortress are the obvious examples, but I am sure there are others. However, I’ve never heard of anybody buying a retail game just to play an SP mod.

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I’ve discussed this before but as I get older the length of my gaming sessions (which are not very long anyway due to running the site and projects!) get shorter and shorter.

I have a fair amount of free time but can’t play for long because my mind wanders onto all the tasks and work still needed. That said, even if I didn’t have other things requiring my attention I doubt I would play for me than a couple of hours, it’s just too much for me.

What about you?

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There’s been lots of talk about the Black Mesa mod this week and it reminds me that not too long ago they said it would definitely be released before 2011.

The recent preview on Atomic Maximum Power Computing shows that a lot of the game seems finished, although I haven’t actually read the article because I want to be surprised.

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You’ve probably seen the recent Portal 2 videos and news about the voice of Wheatley; the companion in Portal 2.

When they first released a video it apparently had one of Valve workers voicing the part and , at least for me, I thought he did a great job. However, then came the announcement that Stephen Merchant was doing the voice.

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I originally used to believe that the bigger mods should release demos. I viewed things from the perspective of retail sales. A player is a customer and a mod a product. Players “pay” for their mod by the time and effort of downloading and keeping up to date.

To convince players that they should play a particular mod, a demo could be used to show how good a mod is. I no longer believe that’s true.

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I read quite a lot but recently I haven’t had access to new books, so I have had to start re-reading some old ones. Some I remember very well and stop reading almost before the end of the first chapter, others seemed to have faded from memory and only some things are familiar.

At first i thought it was simply the amount of time between each reading but now I don’t think it’s that simple. I then thought it was how much I enjoyed the book the first time, and again, I now don’t. To be honest I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s interesting.

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Each month seems to see the announcement of a new mod whose objective is to release a recreation of the leaked beta.

The four I have heard of are: Project Terminal, Beta Source, Anonbeta mod and Missing Information.

Seems a shame that so many people are working on more or less the same thing when they could be A: working together (although that’s a lot easier said than done) or B: working on something original.

Obviously a lot of people love this sort of thing but are players really that interested? You tell me.

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Wow, this is going to be an interesting discussion. Firstly, I heard about this mod via the Podcast 17 Agenda and what specifically caught my eye was William’s comment…“This is the one and only time I will address this mod. It will not be covered on Podcast 17”. Mmm, I thought, what’s this about?

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