A bit of clarification ...

2009-06-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

If you've read the original post carefully, you should be able to see beyond any fears of a select group of people trying to grab some power. In all the internal discussions we’ve had, power hasn't been mentioned a single time. However, something that was brought up every time, was the need to keep this clean, with no dictatorships or any possible action that could lead to any kind of strangling the community.

Anyway, it could have been a mistake to publicly release a statement. It would have been better to use a system like the old Round Table, where people could apply to join the discussion. At least that would have filtered out the completely passive side of the community, which seems to be the part that dreams about mod police, rules and public flogging. And incidentally, it's that part of the community that will eventually suffer from the growing situation where modding becomes 'tinkering with files I have found on the net', or simple hacking. Compare it to a bunch of parasites. Sometimes I feel people like that are digging their own graves. They say 'no' to everything, yet demand to be listened to when modders seem to take too long for a car or track to be developed, for instance. But it certainly isn’t always limited to that.

For the record, there have been a number of occasions when people would step up into gaps that were made by people leaving the community, and those people immediately started putting little © signs on everything they did. What if one of you decides to step up, fill a gap, and see countless hours of yours being cannibalized by people putting © signs on 'their' work? Can we simply close our eyes and assume that this situation is going to improve at all? When all 'arrogant' modders have been killed by a particular segment of the community, what makes you think they won't suddenly decide that these new people are becoming rather arrogant as well? The thought of that somehow reminds me of a revolution, where the mob sentences the king into exile. What makes you think or hope that the mob would be any better? In fact, history has proven that kind of situation to be worse, in a lot of cases.

That doesn’t necessarily have to do with power and policing. It certainly isn’t something we would like to accomplish anyway. The community just isn't a particularly healthy place, to live and grow. I don’t think anyone who is or has been active in the community can deny that. The first ones to ‘die’ will be those who spend nearly all their energy on scratch built content, because, respect shown or not, that content will be attacked and hacked. Oh, and the authors will be called arrogant when they show their faces.
Next in line will be those who 'need' that kind of new content, to simply convert it to other platforms, because there won't be any of that left, unless it was simply taken from another/new game.
And then F1 mods, for instance, could consist of taking a car model they found somewhere on the net, tweaking and butchering it into a 2012 version and slapping a MS Paint texture on it.
In the end we'll all be driving box cars on square tracks. And we'll still be racing on the countless versions of GPL and NR2003 conversions for instance, even though they are publicly known to be inaccurate. But hey, we're having fun!

In the end, discussions about this on different fora have given everyone the perfect opportunity to let their voice be heard. And to all the "I don't need to be told what I'm supposed to do; I bought the game and it's all mine and I do with it what I want" people, please feel free to do so. It is what you want and I personally will certainly not be trying to stop you at all. But remember that one day you might end up creating your own mods based on what you have found on the net today, and that you will be doing all the modding yourself when no one else can be bothered to live inside a place like this and give up their time building the mods for you to enjoy. You'd still be doing with your game what you want though.

It's not a matter of the arrogant and evil police modders threatening to leave the community (and flog a 1000 men in the process); it's simply a matter of 'the community' being a reasonable home for all, and above all, a sustainable place to live as a modder. When some say it isn't a healthy place right now, it could mean that there's no motivation or desire to keep doing what they are doing: building mods from scratch that involves a lot of work.

Think of it as natural evolution, where the people who build 100% scratch built mods are being phased out right now because the environment has changed in a way they can no longer survive in a healthy or productive way. And with them dies a lot of knowledge, research and experimenting they've been doing. It is them who have been leaving most of all in the last few months/years. Do we really want to lose that part of the community? And once they're gone, do you think a whole new generation of scratch builders will step up? Quality could suffer during the first few years, but I’m sure they will be able to learn and improve just like we did ages ago. And once they've learnt all the tricks, some will undoubtedly tag them as being 'arrogant' as well. The place would still be unhealthy, and so they leave. No one would be encouraged to even try.

As for the ever-returning reply that modders should simply leave if they cannot accept that their work will be ruthlessly ripped, please consider that one day, there may be no more fish in the modding waters. Modders who have the courage (and time?) to create something from scratch are a vast minority in the community, with a shrinking trend too. Is that something that the community – the entire community – would want to happen? Or is there a way to allow respect and knowledge to be shared on a healthy level?

Oh, and for those who can't be bothered reading all the above, just imagine I said a lot about rules, police, punishment, public flogging and all that kind of exciting stuff. It sadly is how it will be interpreted by some anyway.

2009-06-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Sim-Racing-Community,

as there are more and more "mods" that are using content with questionable origin we think it's time to release this statement.

We are members of the modding community who think that recently some things go wrong in our community including the modding itself. The community has made it's own morally questionable rules that every major site/board uses to stay "clean". On the one hand no mod is accepted that uses the work of other modders without their permission and also no mods are allowed that ripped content from competing games. On the other hand mods ripping stuff from EA or Codemaster games seem to be really welcome in the community.

And that's just wrong. If a modder deserves some respect for his work then game developers do too. There are even some mods listed as scratch made that are definitely using a car model from Need for Speed. Even if this model is slightly modified that does not comply with the term "scratch made".

So what's from scratch? Websters dictionary says: "to start (again) from the very beginning; also, to start without resources." Well for the modders it's clear we can't start without anything. We need a blueprint/photos etc. to model and paint the car. We need technical data to do the physics and some audio recordings to do the engine sounds.

What is a blueprint? We think that are the traditional blueprints you can find on the usual sites, photos and even an existing model. Game developers often use CAD data provided by the car manufacturers as blueprints. As long as the final model is made from the first polygon on by the modder himself it's scratch made.

Also for the physics it's clear that some mods will share some data if they simulate the same car. But if some mod even "shares" a great amount of data that is "fictional" work of some other mod that isn't scratch anymore.

So scratch made in modding is: do it from the very beginning by yourself given the needed resources; also do not use the complete or partial work of others without their permission. Also modding isn't a few clicks to convert a model to rFactor/GTR/Race etc. Modding is spending many hours working on models, physics and sounds and often spending some money to buy books/magazines for researches.

That said our vision for these new rules is the following:

- No mod may contain work without the written permission of the original creator. Regardless if it's work from a modder, a game developer or whomsoever.
- No mod may be used for commercial purposes without the written permission of the creator. A commercial purpose is given if some site, league, etc. earns and/or giving away money by using a mod. As for mods that simulate trademarked cars or series it should be clear that these NEVER EVER should be used for commercial purposes.
- No more logos/texts etc. on uploaded screenshots. The screenshots belong to the creator and not to the site hoster. Of course a site can add it's logo/text on the screenshots they made themself.
- Scratch-made, conversion, composite, it doesn't matter, it should be mentioned where the material is coming from and respect should be given to everyone who helped to create the product, either by creating or by giving permission.
- Modders should work together to use a uniform structure for their mods like a read me template, clear directory structure, installer etc. to make things easier for the end user.

We think these are some pretty reasonable terms. Of course we're open for a reasonable discussion. We know that some people in the community don't care where they get their stuff from as long as they're getting it. And that's just wrong. That kills the modding itself. As stated before modding is a time consuming hobby we enjoy yet. But we can't enjoy the recent trend lately that there are more and more "modders" who ripp off games and in the same time get applause from some members of the community for doing this. Is this the direction modding should head to? Respect if everything. Respect the time, effort and work people put into their work, no matter if it's a company or an unknown single-modder.

Maybe we all could create a contact point for every serious modder to talk about the modding, to help each other and assist interested modders-to-be in creating a new mod.

We hope that we all can convert these ideas. If not we hope you'll understand that we don't want to support any community site or board that can't accept even these small wishes.

If there are modders out there with the same or similar wishes and principles, then don't wait, join us. Together we can change something.

With best regards

CTDP
Erale

United Modders of RacingGames

A bit of clarification ...