I am posting this here so that I can hotlink this post's URL to requisite sections in the places people can download my mods; I consider this my personal policy going forward. I am also posting this here to open a dialogue with other authors to see if my experiences have been unique, or if this is a more widespread thing. I also apologize in advance for coming across as ranting.

Video Reviewers for Mods:

First, let me start by saying that I genuinely appreciate anyone taking the time to review, critique, criticize, or mention my work. It means a lot to me and it certainly helps increase the exposure of my work, and I am aware of the hours that go into getting a video "just right". Any author is tickled when someone cares enough about their work to make a video of it. That being said,

• Posting a video on any of my pages is a courtesy that I am under no obligation to extend, and I can choose not to do so for any reason (or no reason at all). I have observed an unfortunate trend where some video authors are... excessively pushy about getting their video on the front page of my work, as if I am somehow indebted to them, or that their video will help increase the number of downloads I get. General observation: most video reviewers only review the "top" mods of the week, month, or what-have-you; most of the time, they don't go out of their way to find something that isn't on the front page of the Nexus or the Workshop. That means that my work was already popular by the time it was reviewed, not the other way around. While it may be true that an embedded Youtube video on the front page of a mod may make some users feel more comfortable about downloading it (because, hey, it's been featured in a video, so it must be good, right?), I don't wish to propagate the illusion that a video review was instrumental to its success. And spending time, no matter how long, on creating a video does not entitle a video author to consume space on any of my pages.

• I do not require a Youtube video to legitimize my work. This dovetails into the point above. Video reviews on mod pages is a "Nexus-ism" whereby authors post video reviews of their work on the front page in order to give the appearance that their work has been "vetted", give it the appearance of popularity, and / or increase the amount of content on the page. That's fine, I do it too, but I am under no illusion that my work is something "less" than what it could be if it doesn't have an embedded video plastered on the front page.

• If a video "review" consists of reading my front page's top paragraph verbatim while showing a 30-second clip of some part of my work, it will not be posted, no exceptions. Any videos of this nature will be pulled from my current pages. At best, they have nothing interesting of their own to say. At worst, they are engaging in parasitic behavior by freeloading on the number of page views of my work in an effort to gain additional subscribers to their Youtube channel, which is a behavior that I'm tired of perpetuating. I don't want spokespeople, I want actual, well-formed opinions. I need a good reason to take up 1/4th or more of someone's screen; I could put useful information in that space. If a "reviewer" is just regurgitating what I've already written on the very page they're on, it has no reason to be and is a waste of time and space.

• If a reviewer has something to actually say, then that's perfectly fine; that's part of the give and take. Reviewer helps spread the word about my work in an informative, professional, entertaining way, and I help the reviewer with additional views to their channel and subscribers; that's the very nature of social networking. I simply ask that reviewers play the mod, come up with their own conclusions (positive or negative, though negative mod video reviews are highly rare), and share thoughts and first-hand experiences. People love to hear first-hand experiences. It feels less like an advertisemant and more like a genuine review (because, well, it is).

Mod Authors:

Have you had any experiences like the ones I describe above, or am I out in the woods? Am I being too harsh?

I just can't shake the feeling that sometimes, this is a very one-sided relationship wherein I'm posting someone's Youtube channel on my front page, but they haven't taken the time to take more than the most superficial of attempts to investigate what my mod does, or (oh boy this grinds my gears) read a 15-second blurb of text that they didn't even write, having come directly off of my front page instead.

I don't want to call anyone out specifically (I will request a lock if this veers into personal territory). What is your policy on videos on your pages? Do you not care either way, or do you go the other direction and not allow embedded content, period?

Sorry for this sounding like a rant, this is a frustration that I felt like I needed to get off my chest. Thanks for reading.

Edit: and to be clear, many of the people who have reviewed my work are very informative, talented, entertaining, and good at what they do, and I appreciate them and the time that they put into doing this. They are not the reason for this post.

I do video trailers and demos for specific mods. They take alot of work to do (at least 20 hours), and alot of co-ordination with the mod authors to do it right.

If someone does a multi-mod compilation review, and mentions your mod for 15 seconds while reading your words without any value-added anolysis or high quality demonstration of what your mod actually LOOKS like (or sounds like or whatever) or showing what it does, then yes, they are using your mod page to advertise their vids, rather than the other way around.

So, I don't think you are being harsh at all...I think what you are saying is completely reasonable. IMHO.

There's no reason to include a video of a mod if it's not necessary. I never really thought your more complex mods needed it. Sometimes reading is just better, and like you said, there are programs you can get if you really do need somebody to read the Nexus description word-for-word to you. I've been making comparison and display videos of mods for a couple years, and I still don't see a huge reason for why some people consider them necessary. I do it because I find it fun, the same reason why mod authors do their "work". I don't like calling my videos reviews, but I now some people do. I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I just want to say that you're not alone in feeling this way.

100% agree with everything you've said. Most 'reviews' tend to be mod compilation-type stuff, anyways.

Most of what I do is just stick it in the videos section of the nexus page, and stick interesting and informative video reviews towards the top. I respectfully tell others that I won't be putting it on the front page of my mod. I've gotten flak for that, too.

I think those are very valid guidelines to live by Chesko. It's nice that someone takes the time to make a video of an authors mod but you also want it to be meaningful.

Seems fine to me. To me it looks like many of those mod reviewers are looking to boost their own popularity on Youtube rather than the popularity of the mods they're covering. It's often more of a basic spotlight with basic information, rather than an actual review with pros and cons from someone who has played the mod thoroughly.

It's your mod, and your mod page, so you decide what gets on there and what doesn't. That makes perfect sense.

Glad to know I'm not nuts and that my experience hasn't been unique.

Yea. If anything, a tutorial might be nice, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

I think you're taking a perfectly valid stand. You should feel no obligation to embed a video on YOUR page.

From another perspective, when I browse mods on Nexus it actually annoys me to see a video splashed on the description page. I want to read a quick description, not wait for a video link to load that adds no purpose. That's what the video page is for.

As a mod user, this. For graphics/texture mods and ENBs, it is of course useful to have a vanilla/mod comparison video on the description page, which may or may not take the form of a review. But for gameplay mods I'd rather read a concise and informative description of the features and other necessary info such as known compatibility problems, without having to scroll, scroll, scroll, to reach useful information interspersed between several embedded videos which take longer to load than a text only description page. It seems to be a recent trend to increase the amount of visuals and video reviews on the description page, and it's annoying - just give me a text description, put screenshots in the appropriate place (which would be the screenshot page), and provide links to any useful gameplay/tutorial/review videos that are hosted elsewhere, so that I can easily find them if I wish to do so.

I'm surprised that all this has to be said, I'd have thought it obvious/common sense.

Well, I'm basically in a full on agree with you here. I have not yet experienced anyone PUSHING me to post their videos. I have had MANY people make review videos, and message me them. But they have all simply said 'Hey here is a review of your mod I hope you like it.' I'm sure they were hoping that I posted it, but they didn't ask or act forcefully or anything.

I will post a mod review if I feel it is well done, just like you. So far my 100% endorsed reviewer is AlChestBreach. I post plenty of links to every video he does of my work. I think he's hilarious, but on top of that he does an amazing job at providing a quality playthrough and spreading the word about his chosen mod. On top of that, he does a lot of random mods, not just 'top 5' type things. I really respect him for that and his videos will always have a place on my mod pages.

But I agree. You choose whos videos you post. If you dont want it posted, no matter the reason, you are in no way obligated to post it.

Hanaisse - This is why I usually relegate any embedded videos to the bottom of the page. All of the information you actually need should be up top.

wrinklyninja - The primary function of that post was to give myself something permanent that I can reference back to in the future on my pages so that I can cut down on some of these issues. I know most of this is no-brainer stuff, but if I say no to someone, 99/100 times they want justification, and this is it.

The problem I think we're seeing is that a lot of these video authors are primarily there to increase page view and subscriber numbers, because Youtube pays video uploaders for that sort of thing. They can essentially make money off of my work.

This could be a rant all on its own (edit: and now it is!), but for the hundreds and hundreds of hours I put into modding, I'm getting a little fatigued of everyone getting paid for it except me. This whole video thing caused me to stop and think about it. You have the video authors, who get paid for subscribers and views from Youtube. Only the ones with a high number of subscribers are really even worth noting here. (Edit: Game reviews cannot be monetized, see below). I am personally responsible for bringing the Nexus family of websites over 600,000 page views. Running that through a calculator, 600,000 pageviews against the average national click-through rate of 0.2%, at a cost-per-click of around 80 cents (based on my personal experience running a blog with Google Adsense), I've probably brought the Nexus just south of $1,000. Google takes a cut, too. Steam Workshop, while not utilizing paid advertising space, uses the Workshop as a value-add for purchasing the game, which fuels additional sales for Bethesda.

And that's fine; I want as many people to experience the same games I like as possible, and I want Bethesda to keep making great games. I want Nexus to keep providing great hosting, it's my favorite modding site. But there is money in user-created content. If the Nexus has a good hosting deal, my files have cost less than $100 to distribute, so unless their clickthrough rates are critically bad, their Premium members are in low numbers, or their hosting deals just plain svck, one should not kid themselves into thinking that they are providing a community service at-cost.

Yes, there have been those that have donated, and it is sincerely appreciated and completely unexpected; I don't mean to insinuate that I have some sort of profit motivation for doing this (else I wouldn't have started to begin with), I think profit incentives for modding incentivize all of the wrong things. Modding should remain free and open.

In Nexus's case, they provide a great service for essentially no cost to the user, and the cost of not hosting your mod there is potentially tens if not hundreds of thousands of users; I use them because it brings my work to as many people as possible, and I think that's great, I want people to use my stuff.

But the fact is that someone is getting paid for my work, somewhere. And it isn't me.

Sorry again. This is "Chesko needs to vent" day I suppose.

Not if it's game review stuff. I just recently asked Gstaff if I could monetize my trailers (I'm trying to avoid getting a job so I have time left to mod...) and he said it was a no-go. Meaning if someone reviews your mod or Skyrim and get's paid you can stop that.

Ah, did not know that. Thanks for the info. I'll correct that post.

At the risk of sounding incredibly old, the internet has taken a turn for the nasty. The main problem is that it has become monetised, and that the creator of the work is seldom the one to make any money out of it. This is almost universally true - music, films, whatever - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Ride-Internet-Destroying-Business/dp/1847921485/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343851010&sr=1-1 covers it at great length, as does The Trichordist blog.

Modding used to be fun.

People were just grateful for the construction set, which wasn't anywhere near as swish as the one we have these days, and we made and shared files for fun. Hosting sites did so out of the love of the community. It was the golden age and though there was always modding drama, we were generally happy. People were actually forbidden from soliciting donations, and anyone who did accept donations was frowned upon as being a grubby, greedy type who just didn't "get" what modding was about.

I don't know about Skyrim, but I presume that not much as changed from previous games: the developers wrapped up the Creation Kit for release unpaid, in their own spare time, for the love of the community.

See how that works? They make it for free, they give it to us for free, we make the mods for free, distribute them for free, users enjoy them for free.

It's a gift.

And now ... what? People ripping each other off, fighting over a few pennies, hard-selling their mods (literally), scrabbling over front page listings. It's ugly.

Since Oblivion, my mods have been almost completely ignored, and it's no doubt because I'm somehow not "playing the game" right. I'm not interested in learning the game, whatever that is. Doubtless there has to be some sort of publicity technique to get your mod even into the position where people see it and know it exists, let alone download and recommend it. It's pretty unlikely anything I do will ever be reviewed in some youtube video, but then what? Thousands upon thousands of clips of pointless mugging by the terminally self-obsessed that most people will skim through and never watch because they're only looking for their own bit. Everyone's wittering on and nobody's listening.

We've turned into a Pitchfork world where everything is aggregated and decided by a committee. Nobody bothers to search for themselves or think for themselves any more but just slumps slack-jawed at the toes of whoever's deemed the biggest and most popular to be spoonfed whatever's popular which is decided by whatever's popular so that people can know whatever's popular and consume whatever's popular and recommend whatever's popular and reinforce and re-circulate and spin it round and round till it circles the drain as vapid and deformed as the most inbred of hicks because popularity discourages eccentric thinking. That's not to say that everything popular svcks, but it does explain Justin Bieber.

OK, so I'm ranting now.

Hi princess_stomper Not sure if I've ever told you this, but Homes to Let added more to my Morrowind experience than you may ever know. So, thanks.

And you're right, the "game" has changed. I still think high-quality work is what ultimately generates word-of-mouth and attention. Yes, you do need to beat your own chest every now and again, but mostly I just focus on talking about what I'm working on. Filling a perceived need is also just as important as it ever has been in the past. I think the biggest thing that I've seen change is that modders are expected to communicate on a more continuous basis with users in order to be successful. Unless it's perfect, people aren't going to be satisfied if you just pitch something over the wall and expect them to accept it as a gift (which, as you say, it is). They want some degree of participation in the whole process. Fortunately I think that part is the most fun and I try not to be a "my way or the highway" kind of modder.

But you're right. It got popular, far more so than the days of Morrowind (if Morrowind's days can even be said to be over), and with that comes some ugliness. I try to keep my mods and my threads drama-free and operate outside of some of that nonsense. Thanks for the link to the book, I'll check it out.

I still think modding is fun. Is that the only thing it's about anymore? Perhaps not.

Which actually kind of ties into the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-rbxJMBjmU&lc=ksBoB3SYEtR8nIK4-DVFOa_Ef6t18bP5aEewOEEqumQ&feature=inbox I just made and uploaded. I've been a part of this community for 3 years. What have I given to it? Well, most would say my 3 mods. Many people here have greatly enjoyed them. Okay, well yeah. But what else? The truth is, not really anything. I sit around the forums and answer questions plenty, sure. But I haven't done anything long lasting and helpful. On top of that, since I'm here for a job (And fun, of course) I'm sure I come across to many as pushy and 'salesy' so I hope to make up for that.

That's why I'm kind of looking to turn that around. I want to make a huge amount of videos that can help the community. On top of that, I wnt to be open and available. I hate how closed off developers are, and I don't want to head that way (Which I slowly seem to be...). Even once I'm hired by BGS I want to be active and helpful. So hopefully I can start a routine now, and continue it through that. I would KILL for a chance to talk with SureAI. They made Cube Experimental, like, my favorite quest mod ever. That said, I'm sure there's a few people out there who would like to chat with me, so I hope to be more open. And to be helpful to counteract what may look like pushiness...

That's my rant. More of a personal one, and not too ranty. (Maybe a tad off topic...) But still I feel it fits.

Yup, modding has definitely changed and not for the better. Not sure how or where this sudden trend of putting flashy graphics and review videos on your mod page come from, it was not a common thing in Morrowind or Oblivion modding. But since Skyrim modding came, everyone is doing it. I remember the days when you just listed a text description, uploaded images to the image section and there was your mod uploaded. Seems that things have become far more of a popularity contest in Skyrim modding. Not sure why. Sometimes I come across a mod where the 'advertising' is so pushy that it seems just one step off creating squeeze pages and affiliate sites to market their 'product'.

I have had my popular mod Enterable Windows video reviewed. At least while it was popular there were video reviews of it popping up everywhere. Then it dropped off the most currently popular page and that was that. But at no time did I feel pressured to display those videos on my mod page and if someone made a video and put the pressure on me to do that, I would tell them that I did not ask for a video review to be made and consequently I am under no obligation whatsoever to display ones made entirely on the maker's initiative.

As far as I understand it, and I haven't really looked into it too much. When you get a large subscribership and lots of views, Youtube gives you the option to make money from ads in your videos? Not 100% sure, but I understand that some people make a lot of money from Youtube. Best to make your own video showing what is in your mod.

I have had some really great review videos made of my Oblivion mods and it was lovely to hear what people said and did, I really enjoyed watching them. Until I came across one where one guy had literally done an hour long video on a few of my towns. Well all was good until he got to one part where he couldn't access a house. He repeatedly called me a 'lazy modder' who hadn't bothered to create interiors for that house. If he had just read the freaking readme or the mod description or watched the video that I had made of that particular house, then he would have seen that there were actually a choice between FIVE completely different interiors for that one house that could be purchased from an NPC. The first and only player house created in Oblivion that offered the player such a choice.

Well, thousands of people watched his review videos and thousands of people would have believed that my work was incomplete and that I would actually cut corners and not bother to make interiors for buildings. Something I would NEVER do. That svcked. Video reviews are all good if the person actually properly researches the mod, but too many times they don't and the video is a pretty inaccurate portrayal of what is in the mod.

Just to put it out there, from what I've heard on the Nexus, they receive an abysmally low amount of money from ads.* There's also the consideration that a few hundred thousand downloads of mods that are 100mb+ is pretty significant on bandwidth regardless of the hosting deal. I wish I could remember the numbers mentioned.. All I can remember is that the numbers made options such as Amazon s3 not applicable, as Amazon's servers would be too unreliable and expensive for the amount of data passing through.

*Reportedly due to the fact that there is many, many returning users, and not enough unique viewers in comparison. And as people see the same ads, they block them out, and the companies know this and pay less for it. I'm not certain of the exact mechanics.. but this is what I've heard.

Not to be a nexus fanatic or anything, but just giving fair credit where it's due. I would imagine they make far less than most people think.

Not sure really what the problem is with the reviewers and your point on the topic, so I can't say I have understood what you want to say , but also I can't speack for myself because I do not think I was reviewed by any of those reviewers so I dunno what to say but I can say that it seems that it has become a sort of new fashion for people to put their voices and plaster some videos on youtube to just show off , become popular in something and cut out their little niche of celebrity ....
I personally Look to the videos just to see how the mod looks ingame , most of the times the reviews where quite rushy or hilarious making fun of the very same game ... Seems also that many reviewers tend to favour weird mods, crappy stuff and strange implementation of the game just for the wow factor .... I can't think of the usefullness of a pink dragon shooting WMCA beat or a cadillac in place of a horse or the worst the Dragonborn farthing ... personally with all respect to the modders that made this stuff and the amazing abilities they showed in making them for me is like a waste of talent in making crappy things just to be showed off in a video by some reviewers ....

Other than that I wait your explanation on your point , perhaps my English is not so good to understand the summarization of your thread topic .

I'm a mod reviewer, and I doubt any other mod reviewers will post to this topic.

I make videos about mods I enjoy because that's what is fun for me. I am NOT partnered, I do not earn anything from my videos that I post about mods that others make. The only people that gain out of this current situation are the Nexus, Steam, and Betheseda (free promotion). Oh and Google too!

Now certainly, there are people that are making videos with a primary intent for money, that's not me though. I've been offered several partnerships, and declined them all. If any mod reviewer or content maker for ANY reason has a primary interest in earning money off of gaming videos (whether mods or not), they will disappear. I intend to stay around for the next couple of years though, because this is my passion.

Do I focus on hotfile mods? Yes. Because generally those mods are pretty good.

Note that I tend not to review every skimpy armor that gets released (or skimpy followers), which Suprise suprise! is a big market share for views and subs. I only have like 2 videos that cover those type of mods, and each mod was exceptional in quality.