"Speaking for myself at least, is that it's impossible to justify spending so much time on something that will never give a return."

I guess the counter question to that is, why are you expecting a hobby/fun thing you do on the side to generate a return? Isn't the return the act itself?

Maybe I'm thinking about this whole hobbyist thing wrong, I dunno. :) 

The distinction between hobby and work is $$$ so maybe it is unfair to try and make one the other.

If love to be able to carry on working in Quake, it's a comfortable place and everything is secure - I know how to do good work in it.

Unfortunately I don't earn enough in my day job to pay for everything I want to do, so have to use the skills - many of which I learned and refined from this awesome hobby - to make something which is financially viable. 

If authors got a bit of cash for all the hundreds of hours they spent perfecting something?

Maybe a donation format would be the better way to go, as someone suggested above. 

The thing is that you would never get a "fair" amount of money for the numbers of hours invested. So if you are not motivated without the money, I doubt the small amount you might with donations could help. Daz probably made a whopping 5� with youtube ads so far.

Community driven donations with a solid "hard" purpose and fixed outside target are much easier, see Quaddicted hosting or Daz' new gfx card. Here the money serves as means to infrastructure, not the motivator (although to me it feels so fantastic and I am sure Daz is glowing with community spirit as well). 

I really don't see the problem with wanting to make a living from doing something you enjoy, isn't it what everyone should be aiming for?

It's not easy though, that's for sure (and unfortunately for sock I doubt it's viable in such a small community), but saying that suddenly throwing money into the mix will degrade some holy hobbyist activity is a load of crap. 

I think we're conflating motivation and opportunity cost here. 

Bal - It's a bad precedent. So then say someone else well loved wants to make a map ... they think, "Well, sock got $500 for his last level - fuck this, I won't even get started for less than $350". Eventually, maps are commissioned rather than done for the pure joy of mappping.

Oh, and this WILL inevitably lead to people feeling that since they kicked in $50, you have to let them beta test the map AND implement their suggestions. They're paying you, after all.

See? It's a mess. 

And I know the predictable func response to that would be, "Tell the cunts to sod off" or whatever it is that you people say, but ... then they stop funding maps. And now where are we? :) 

Could be a happy compromise. I mean if they are totally blown away by the level, then they may well have a 'moment', and donate!

What would be really cool (sort of) would be if you incorporated a donate button into the game. I would be impressed by that (I still probably wouldn't donate though, I just don't have a huge amount of money).

Or you could make the player wait for 10 minutes before they could progress OR donate and access level 2 now....

Like Candy Crush Saga! 

I think sock just wants to make Quake maps, but his time is at a premium (I assume he does contract development, or similar) and thus he was looking for an avenue to ease the financial pain of the time investment needed to fulfill that desire. This is just a theory though.

We all need to get by, we all want to do particular things and sometimes those particular things take a lot of time (mapping being a good example, particularly at the quality level sock delivers). I doubt I would make a donation due to my own financial situation, but I would applaud sock if he were able to fund the time investment made into Quake mapping. And I would get another awesome Quake map out of it.

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Donate buttons are awesome, it lets people who have some free finances easily support the content that they like, but doesn't encourage an expectation of compensation for community activities. 

I don't think that donate buttons work. I had zero donations from the button at Quaddicted. All donations came directly from the active fund drive. 

I produced 4 pro quality maps to learn some new level design tricks and I had a blast making them. I said I was not going to make anymore and some friends said they wanted more and would offer donations, so I thought why not, a little bit of cash for some quality maps should ok, lets see if anyone else is interested? There is no hidden agenda or refusing to make maps unless I get paid.

@Willem, I am not holding the community to ransom, I am just responding to what people have said, they like my stuff and are willing to pay to see more of it. The whole "It's a bad precedent" is dramatic and misleading, if you don't like something then don't pay for it!

@RickT23, not sure why you are flaming this thread with comparisons to F2P games or that you are outraged about paying someone to make something you enjoy. I am assuming you played all my maps and enjoyed them! I think everyone here understands your viewpoint, multiple times. 

"The whole "It's a bad precedent" is dramatic and misleading, if you don't like something then don't pay for it!"

It's not dramatic. If people don't pay, that content doesn't get made, and that starts a negative spiral.

I'm not trying to target you, I think you're a good guy and have done some great stuff. However, I think gathering up cash before being willing to make maps is ultimately going to be bad for the future of a mapping community.

That's all. 

"I don't think that donate buttons work. I had zero donations from the button at Quaddicted. All donations came directly from the active fund drive."

I agree and putting one on the download page is even worse. Even if you LOVE the map, what are the odds of you going back to the web page to click the Donate button? Almost zip. 

I think you should nevermind this thread and just go for it. Worst case scenario, it won't work out and no one will lose money. 

I'm generally negative on this for a few reasons:

First as others have mentioned it seems to go against the spirit of the community which is people creating levels for love of the craft, and giving them away. In theory, other people in the community repay you by making their own levels and then everyone effectively gets hundreds of free levels in payment for the 1 level they made. Obviously some people don't make maps, but play them, so they get a free lunch, but then again some of those people make websites or editors or engines, and that is how they pay back the community. It's a bit communist because people pay into the community based on how much they are able to -- people with fewer real life obligations can obviously donate more of their time and energy.

I also don't see how anyone can get a decent hourly rate mapping for an audience of a few hundred, unless each donor puts in a lot of money. Perhaps sock is very efficient (he did produce like 4-5 maps in one year) and maybe those maps only took a few weeks of his time, but I'm not sure that he can expect to actually earn a living wage from quake mapping. So if it's not to make a living, is the money just symbolic? (obviously this is up to sock whether the economics make sense, but other people are throwing around terms like "if he wants to make a living on quake maps, more power to him!" etc. which assumes a lot about the volume of money involved.)

Also I wonder if this idea is sustainable. Question was stated "would you pay some money for a new sock map" but the follow-on question is "how often would you be willing to do it again for another map?" If all maps were paid maps, would you buy 1 map a year? 10 maps a year?

Finally I hope this idea doesn't alter people's attitudes towards making maps and playing maps. When you look at a lot of professional and end-user game reviews, they seem to be all about "was this game worth the money" instead of just talking about the game on its merits. I hope that quake map reviews and feedback don't devolve into the same "This level was too short for a $10 level" etc.

As a counter-proposal, I feel more positive about paying for new models, sounds, and textures (also tools, engines), released either GPL or public domain, any of which have a longer-lasting benefit to the community. For example a set of faithful replacement models would benefit everyone permanently. Or new monsters that are at high quality and can be used in many maps. 

Why aren't you doing any more q1sp's sock? What are you going to do now? 

Bit of a tangent, but this caught my eye:
"When you look at a lot of professional and end-user game reviews, they seem to be all about "was this game worth the money" instead of just talking about the game on its merits."

At TruePCGaming, the reviews we write always culminate in that actually, literally the final paragraph has a header of "Conclusion - Is it worth the money?" because the reviews are written from a consumer advocacy perspective rather than a ludological angle, which stems partially from the fact that so many PC games are bad ports these days so it is a valid concern. It comes from "Regardless of how well designed this game might be, it performs poorly/crashes all the time/has dreadful controls/has a constrictive FOV you can't change" (and why we have in the Technical Summary, an FOV Slider bit).

On the subject, I agree with what you are saying, at the same time I don't feel negative toward sock's idea, I guess I just view it as more of a mixed economy.

I do hope we see more work from sock though. 

 

others have said this better than i but since you specifically asked:
i would not pay. i strongly believe that modding should be free. 

the ogres wore sexy stockings and were underage 

When I said "please make them work with Darkplaces", I didn't mean HD or flashy assets. I like quake as it is well enough, except for blocky blood particles. It just so happens that darkplaces is my favorite engine for its versatility and proper blood particles (what I miss most when using fitzquake and its derivatives), and your past work doesn't work very well with it. For example, at the final arena of Ivory Tower, if you are using darkplaces, the ogres would not show up as intended when you enter by using the lift, but remain hidden and still able to toss grenades at you. I am writing this from my memory only, so it might not be Ivory Tower but another excellent map of yours. It's the one with the said final arena where you use buttons to crush enemies and three or so ogres and then vores and multiple knights and hell knights would appear to give you a good time.

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in response to "@doomer, I can certainly create a rtlight file, include some extra shaders for liquids and setup some particles but I have no plans to create full HD assets." 

Sock, your point surely fits well in the Quake world, here's my thoughts:

-First, yes I'd pay but only for a consistent release such 1 or 2 episodes, possibly something as Nehahra eheh

-Curious what Carmack/Id could say about from a legal point of view.. anyway it's a donation fee we're talking or not ?

-I don't know if sites like Kickstarter are viable options legally speaking because you're selling a game based on a proprietary engine except in case of a true total conversion (that's the way I'd choose myself) 

+1 to metlslime's comment, very closely mirrors my own feelings.

I don't think I would donate towards a single map being made, even at the high quality that sock makes his at. I prefer the Quake community as non-commercial, especially since it's been that way for so long. I also don't think there is enough wide appeal that you would get much more than a couple hundred bucks and would mostly just serve to create unreasonable expectations for that map.

Not a fan of Kickstarter or other such methods of 'the consumer pays before completion' in general anyway. I'm not against helping out a friend who needs and asks for help... but as a general method of funding in game dev at large, I hate them. 

except ricky's first post :)

Although I think people worrying about the legal side of things are thinking too hard. It's a 17 yr old game and regardless of whether there is any legal implications (and I think those are debateable anyway), they would never be enforced.

But even though I would be persoanlly happy to contribute, I do understand the points raised by willem, metl et al.