Development Things: Success is an Anomaly - a Requiem to Total Conversions (Patreon)

This is something I've been trying to write for a while but ended up delaying and rethinking several times. The first time was actually a rant I almost launched into in the middle of another post but cut it short to avoid derailing it. Then, I tried again in April, as one of several non-specific, development-related essays (-ish... not really) I had on my mind but I managed only to get halfway through before I noticed it was a bit *too* ranty, with a lot of words and very little point.

So! Here's take #3! Featuring (hopefully) some semblance of structure and informative value. Enjoy! And/or get very depressed n_n

Nico Nico N... No

Since we started developing Asari Civ over a year ago, people have been asking us about doing a total conversion.

And perhaps some of you may be wondering why my answer has always been "NO"?

The truth is, I wish I could say yes, I wish I could share with you the grand vision I've had for a long time and say how determined I am to bring it to life. And I wish it wouldn't be a terrible mistake that would probably ruin me and turn me off modding forever.

Sadly, I know better and in this post I hope I can help everyone understand why "NO" is the only correct response to the question of Mass Effect total conversion at this juncture.

Like a tourist in a graveyard 

My experience modding other games and being involved in several large projects over the years (some of which never took off the ground) has taught me that... people tend to take mod development WAY too lightly and don't understand the reality of large-scale, high-complexity, long-term projects.

And the reality is that the modding world is built upon a giant mountain of unachievable ambitions, unrealistic expectations and fading traces of modders who flew too close to a black hole and were never heard from again. And on top of that mountain sit... a small handful of success stories, famous by the virtue of being rarer than unicorns.

As they clamour and gape in awe at the majestic creatures, the people obliviously trample the fresh graves of stillborn unicorns whose uninspiring fate did not register as brightly to their perception...

And so they forget that success isn't the norm. It's an anomaly.

 Unicorns! <3

One of those magical steeds of legend, the incredible Star Trek: New Horizons, was born in Stellaris and continues to not only survive but expand, improve, excel and basically wrote the book on how a total conversion project in Stellaris should be done.

So it's understandable that some users may look at it and go "so where's the Star Wars TC? Are there not enough Star Wars fans modding the game? What about Mass Effect? Stargate? Insert Your Favourite Franchise Here?"

Why, then? Did nobody read STNH's book? Surely, it's just a matter to applying the same template to a different project?

Eenie Meenie Miney Mo... 

Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Having established that successful total conversions are an exception, not the rule, what IS responsible for this state of things? Why is knowing what to do not enough to do it?

There is no way to put it simply or encompass it in one sentence. But there is a certain keyword that captures the soul of the problem: "unreliable".

The larger the project, the more moving parts it has and the harder it is to control everything. More and more aspects of the project take on a life of their own and can no longer be feasibly micromanaged. In essence, as the project grows, its success becomes increasingly dependent on outside factors. Success is no longer a given, now it involves dice rolls, now it involves hope and trust. Unreliable.

That complexity is both a curse and a blessing. It allows for small failures to happen without putting an end to the entire project. But on the flip-side... nobody is interested in small successes. Total Conversion is a go big or go home kind of thing. Either you complete it or you've wasted everybody's time! In that way, lack of a big success is in itself a big failure.

And when projects of that magnitude fail, they fail badly. Sometimes quietly, sometimes disgustingly messily. Their teams fall apart as key members run out of patience, succumb to drama or just get snatched away by the dreaded Real Life. Or they take forever and even if the team is committed, the players waiting for results stop waiting and move on, and by the time something playable comes out, no one is interested in seeing it go any further. Or a DMCA notice simply comes down from the heavens and that's it.

There's a thousand different ways a Total Conversion can fail, but only one in which it can succeed: it gets DONE.

Most don't get to the point of getting DONE, it's not the end goal that's the hard part, it's surviving the way leading up to it.

Defeat isn't the result of a battle that went wrong, it's the consequence of picking the wrong battle to begin with

So how does a thing like that get "DONE"? It's very easy to say! I say it to my job every day but... for some reason it never listens and I have to do it myself.

Knowing that total conversion projects are a gamble, what can one actually DO to come out of that casino with more than she went in with?

Honestly... I don't know. As I said, my experience with large-scale projects consists of failures. I associate them with mistakes, drama and disillusionment. It taught me a lot about risk-management and downsizing my ambitions but not necessarily about overcoming the issues that destroyed those projects.

To continue with the gambling analogy, I don't know how to play well enough to win the jackpot, but I play safe enough to walk away from the table with most of my clothes still on n_n

But perhaps there is a way to cheat? Get the jackpot while minimising the risk? While I have no intention of starting any total conversions at this time, I have been toying with the idea of maybe one day putting all the standalone Mass Effect Civilisations modules together and creating something greater than the sum of its parts out of them. However, it's too early to plan around that just yet.

As I said, I refuse to take risks. I will not commit to anything until we have actually made all those modules and decided whether that's enough to build a foundation for a reliable conversion project. Maaay-be ~_n

But we have a long way to go before that's in the cards. For now, we're focused on the work at hand: Asari, Omega and whatever comes next when it comes. And that is that.

So my answer to the question of whether we would create a Mass Effect Total Conversion continues to be NO.

But I hope that this little rant helped you understand why ^^

Thank you very much for getting this far down this huge wall of text! I hope you enjoyed it and/or found it insightful. Sharing progress is fun but sometimes I want to rant like this and pour out my thoughts on various issues not strictly related to ongoing projects.

If you did find any value in it, please let me know! Is this kind of thing, just general development-related articles, behind the scenes stuff and modding commentary something you'd be interested in seeing more of?