How many of you consider modding to be worthwhile for games? HHS and Slave maker are two well known games that did a lot to make it "easy" for normal people to add content. I'm curious if you guys think this adds enough value to the game or is it a waste of a developers time?
While being mostly based on text, the two games you took as example have the particularity to not really be driven by a story. There of course a leading track, but it's more a patchwork of independent anecdotes, or individual stories, than an effective story itself. For such kind of games, it can worth the efforts. If you game make it big, there will be people ready to had their own piece to the patchwork.
But if the game struggle to start or don't really make it big, it can also quickly become a burden more than anything else. You'll impose yourself more constraints, and constraints that end being useless.
The best solution being probably to choose an engine that make it easy to mod a game. Then, the only thing you'll have to do is to keep this possibility in mind while writing the story, letting place for the addition of some pieces.
But note that this answer only apply for games that effectively looks like
HSS and
Slave Maker ; few CG and a not effective story. If your game looks more on the side of nowadays games (providing an effective visual part, and giving it as much importance than the text one) and/or have an effective story intended to be followed from start to end, then it's more than probable that no one will try to mod it. Mostly because someone who can do it will prefer to make his own game with his own story, than modding your game.
By example, among others, games like
WVM or
Harem Hotel, offer a context that open the game for such modding ; especially
Harem Hotel which already have a part totally optional and not really linked with the rest of the content. Yet you'll probably never see a single mod adding content to them. Not because it's technically difficult, they both use Ren'py, which is the easiest engine to mod, but because of the abilities needed to do so.
If you've the knowledge needed to create the needed CG and write the story and dialogs needed for your content, then you have all it need to make your own game. And in this case, why struggle, relatively speaking, to extend a game in tracks defined by someone else, when you can just make yours and let your imagination go as wild as you want ?
