Where's the bit.net support for modding comunity?

Modding content is extremely difficult. It's now exclusively done by the community and so organizations like bit-tech and CPC rely solely on the community for content. More often than not modders are in different timezones with language barriers to cross, and projects are often subject to the amount of spare time/cash people have. Essentially it is a nightmare to manage. Historically bit-tech had in-house modders so these problems were once easy to overcome, but not anymore - and I serverely doubt CPC have or have ever had any serious in-house modding talent (no offence, CPC ). These factors put together are why the bulk of the content is now hardware and gaming (just look at the front page), and also you have to consider what is revenue-generating (yay buzzwords) and what isn't. There are no prizes for guessing which content attracts advertisers. Bit-tech has bills and salaries to pay, and profit to deliver to the new owners.

Put short, banging out modding content is not just like commissioning a freelance hardware/gaming review where it's pretty much as simple as agreeing the content, deadline & money.

Does it suck? Yeah. Is it likely to change or easily solvable? Nah.

£0.02.

 

Well put tbh.

 

I think there's a LOT of gaming and/or hardware sites all over the world. LOTS!
But the modding comunity in BT is the greatest and the best in the world.

I don't want to be rude, but looks like no one in BT cares anymore. I know there are salaries, bills, families with problems and such. But not even a word in the sense that "BT is trying" is kinda sad.

In this route, BT is becoming "just another site" with not a real personality. Don't get me wrong: I check BT in a daily basis. Sometimes more than my own e-mail and IT IS my source of knowledge. Good professionals, nice articles and a terrific community. But it's loosing it's personality.

Perhaps opening a channel or a topic like "what can BT do to help the modding community" would at least show interest from BT.

I personally think that the senses of community and DIY things are very appealing to any midia. So, any incentive to, for example, readers tutorials would be nice. From time to time, BT could front page a tuto from one reader with some prize or such.

I am not asking for you to put a professional modder in the BT editor's bill. Me and some others are asking for more attention to the modding community.

 

I worked in publishing for some years. There is a market out there and it's growing. Where there is a market there is money. Someone will tap it. It is not a difficult equation.

Crazy B

 

It's of my personal opinion that the past modding support, is what made this forum and community the place that it is today. It's what brought me here in the first place. Right now, I still consider it the 'go to' place for modding and project logs. However, with support for that waning, the community will get fractured make other places their home. Once that happens bit-tech will lose what sets it apart, and become just one more hardware and gaming site. The reality is, sites like that are a dime a dozen. I can go read a review on the latest video card anywhere. I really expect something different here. Sure I understand there are bills to pay, but it's not worth it if you sell out (or sell short) the community that made you what you are today...

Wow, just what I was trying to say... I guess I need to type faster. (I didn't see this until after I posted)

 

The majority of the original content on this web site comes from un-paid amateur case modders who are asking little in return. The fact that you employ people and generate operating costs to support your piddling little contribution is frankly pure genius from a business point of view. Bravo!

 

Im sorry but we've looked at this route for years and years and years. There is sponsorship, but no money in "modding". Companies cant make products from it outside of very small scale operations, it takes many months to do - longer than product cycles in many cases, and people do NOT buy pre-modded stuff on mass. End of. It's not even job-lot, modding is single product, of low value (when we talk about other "single products: cars, boats, buildings).

 

The reason behind acquiring Bit-tech was simple, to strengthen Custom PC; a good selling magazine is a great source of revenue, you have adds inside, subscription, monthly sales,...and the ownership of a hard paper issue is a capital, that you can easily sell for hard cash.

At the begging they were keen on selling the same product under two names; however you need people. The end result is that the magazine ate Bit-tech; if you look at hardware articles in last 4 months and compare to a similar period in time before Custom PC, you'll notice, that the articles got reduced to unavoidable ones (such as ATI 5800 series; published by all on-line publications) and the ones taken from previous magazine issues.

The Bit-tech staff is working around the clock, but a number of people cannot do three jobs in one shift, even if they burn lots of their free time.
The concept of magazines and journals launching net portals is old and we all know what and how they offer; here the process got inverted. An excellent on-line publication was bleeded dry to give life to one of the publications of a small island publishing imperium.

Let's say, that Bit-tech got bitten by a vampire.
The result is a walking carcass.

 

Sorry dude, you being new and all, but thats not true.

 

Of course not; I agree with you.

 

Word Mankz! As I have said before, I never heard of this site until the acquisition by Dennis publications was announced in the Custom PC mag. I even had modding logs on other sites and I suspect there are quite a few others here as well as the lurkers that could say the same.

 

Bindi took the words right out of my mouth. There may be a market with money, but it's not a big enough one to be of any significance or interest to bit-tech or CPC. bit-tech has been in this game since 2001 so they'd know by now if modding content is profitable or not

 

So bit-tech is selling advertising to companies who think that your huge traffic numbers are being generated by gaming and equipment enthusiasts? Interesting.

 

The reality is that it's where the majority of our traffic comes from (approx 70%, including the forum which I'd classify as non-hardware/gaming content, without looking at the numbers in detail). That's not to say we're not supporting the modding community - we wouldn't be already working on sponsorship for Mod of the Year if we didn't support the modding community. It's actually very difficult to get mods featured on bit-tech, which is absolutely nothing against the work the modders do, but timezones, language barriers and the inherent delays associated with any big project mean it's impossible to guarantee something will be done to a timescale.

We tried to get into commercial modding (to a deadline) with the Creative mods and they practically killed any passion Chris (eddie)/Dave (macro) had for modding because it took away their creativeness and they just had to plough on even if they had one of those days where they were in a bit of a rut. The SupCom mod was another failure - it sapped the enthusiasm out of Micke and he disappeared... a great loss to this community in my opinion.

We also had a number of other commercial projects which, when published on the site (part of the deal), were frowned upon by the community because they weren't built to the same high standards as other front page mods (which took many months, even years to build compared to the weeks we had to deliver something to the paying client) because there was a budget associated with them.

All of these effectively killed any want for us to get involved in commercial modding again as there was little chance of us getting the budgets (and time) required to do something "special enough" to be on the front page, while also retaining the modder's passion and enthusiasm for modding. Essentially, as the two R's have said, it's very, very difficult to generate revenue from modding content without killing ourselves. If we'd relied solely on modding as our source of income, there simply wouldn't be a bit-tech today and, as a result, there'd be absolutely no support from bit-tech for the modding community.

I want to improve that support - of course I do - but there are limitations to what we can do, especially considering the economic climate over the past 12 months or so where every expense has had to be justified.

 

I'm not saying you are not supporting the modding community and meant no offence in my last post.

I do also believe the growing interest in modded (custom) PC's creates a market for more content relevant to that market.

Crazy B

 

I feel the original title is what's misleading people somewhat.

It's visibility not support that is missing. We get support from MOTM and MOTY. It's the absence of modding as an eyegrabber on the front page that is missing. We now have a news article from Mankz (and a nice piece too) but modding just doesn't jump out anymore. We have the cool banner for modding just like games and hardware it just doesn't get used.

Visibility would be better in the thread title I think.
My $0.02

john

 

I'm with John on this one.

I don't think anyone can really argue that BT doesn't support modding/modders, but it certainly does seem to be taking a third row back seat in the news, and on the front page.

Don't get me wrong - I love the articles that are up there, but I know I came here to look at all the pretty things people made, and it definitely feels like the modding aspect has taken refuge in the forum section.

I'm glad to see that there was a recent "Hey, look at this cool stuff in the modding forum" news post recently, and I hope that continues.

My thoughts have all been spelled out before, though, so I'll shaddap and let those of us with properly baked ideas continue.

 

One thing I would say is that how would you get the content out there?

There are many project logs in the forums, many of them spanning hundreds of pages. Some are half-baked scratch builds which evolve as they go along, some are sheer masterpieces of design and planning. When do you put them up as an article? At what point do they stop being half-baked ideas and become something worth writing about?

Don't forget that someone has to write up this coverage, and knowing what's good and what's not worth writing about (yet) would be a big hurdle imo.

I'm not a big reader of the modding here, I have to admit. I came for the community and the hardware. I dabble occasionally, but somehow I'm not a habitual browser, and I usually wait until the mod is done before delving into a log; so my ideas are thoroughly grounded in speculation town.

 

That is probably the most switched on post in this thread and I can see what you're saying - we can only work harder on that front.

 

I agree with Tim, however:

How easy do you think it is to get the right text that makes enough sense to use, with the right pictures, and references to know where each picture goes?

Editorial time is extremely limited and sometimes it takes a long time to work with people to get a project into a position that we can use. Not to mention the calibre of projects AND DETAIL you expect to see on the front page.

Im certainly not having a go at modders and not expecting everyone to speak English. We heavily edit and even re-write a lot of the content we get given. We've worked with non-English speaking before, that's OK. It's the pictures that really take a long, long time to organise and get site-ready if they are a mishmash. It's getting better as digital cameras get better though, and those we work with regularly know what we need