I paid a fair bit of attention to Korsakovia’s ModDB page after the release and there were very, very few people who simply didn’t get the whole idea (ie found it boring and not enough like your average action FPS) but there were a good number of frustrated people who wanted to play the mod but had real difficulty with things like that one ladder in the warehouse or the apartments level with doors everywhere you look. I think their criticism has been valid in that respect as the mod does still need to be playable and some concessions have to be made, having an great story and top notch audio doesn’t mean you can leave identifiable Half-Life 2 meshes referring to bits of HL canon and people won’t care.
I would suspect a lot of people had played Dear Esther and were having a good look around to find extra bits of story only to find the exact opposite. It breaks the immersion in quite a significant way.

The funding thing makes sense as it’s directly furthering his career by providing research data. Most mods are for fun or for helping to gain a career in game development, they’re more like practice whereas Dan’s projects are work. I can certainly understand him wanting to pay people and I suspect the people he works with only want a minimal fee.

I did find it quite surprising that the enemies were supposed to be a significant part of what Korsakovia was examining, enemies that don’t behave in a human way aren’t really anything new to gamers are they? I don’t think many people really look all that much into what the enemies in games are doing (they’re only playing preset animations after all), it’s just an enemy and you need to damage it in some way until it can no longer damage you. It can be a bipedal animal, a cloud of smoke, a textureless cuboid, a vehicle, a walking mushroom or a giant spider but at the end of the day if you have a weapon or several and they do damage to all of those things in a similar manner it doesn’t matter what the enemy actually is.

I’m rather wishing I’d stuck with Source now, I had a brief stint with it then moved onto Unreal as it’s so much easier to use (but unfortunately has a small playerbase). I’d have loved to be involved with a Korsakovia do-over too.

He’s definitely helping to push things in the right direction, hopefully we’ll see less generic sci-fi setting FPS deathmatch MP mods and more people trying to emulate the kind of single player experience that Dan has created with Dear Esther and Korsakovia.
I wouldn’t worry about ranting, it’s positive that the projects are inspiring a level of discussion about mods that goes beyond “weapon x is too powerful” and “those textures needs more work”.

I just had the chance to read through the interview – sorry I couldn’t in time for the podcast. One thing that really interests me about Dan is that he combines mod development with academics and the study of human perception. Video games have a strong bond with emotion, not only mental emotion but metaphysical as well – and I don’t think this is explored enough. With an engine so versatile as the source engine I think it would be stupid not to incorporate some form of in depth interactivity into a mod or piece of work.

I loved this quote:
“At the same time, if you’re a researcher and interested in what you can do with this genre, where you can break the rules or test things out, then you’ve got to take any feedback as being of equal value.”

This is what I try to do with Podcast 17… even though a lot of our negativity is bullshit, some of it, or at least the bits that I try to communicate are addressing those who I believe can break the rules if they just push a little further. By no means do I want to see the mod community stagnate into a pile of zombie mods and cs clones.

I find it utterly surprising that Dan got as much negative feedback and he describes. I know a lot of people didn’t feel a strong connection to Korsakovia as I did, but I’m surprised that people can’t appreciate it for what it was/is.

I sincerely hope developers, both mainstream and community based (like the Half-Life community) can learn something about Korsakovia. Dan was trying to something experimental and he did just that. He wasn’t trying to woo anyone with aesthetics; he wanted to question the way mod development is done.

All you readers out there… (at least the ones that got this far into my comment), how many mods can you count that has done something unique – I guarantee you can count them on one hand. It really does anger me when developers decide to just “go with the flow” – why don’t they take all their talent and determination and direct it towards something unique and creative.

Dan talks about his mod getting negative criticism, but then he also talks about how that alone is a complete success because for him he can build upon that and for him it’s a research technique. For me personally Korsakovia was a mod I have been waiting around for for years, but for others… well they like that same shit different pile crap.

I do find it disheartening though, that Dan says “funding” was a great issue with the development of the mod. Budget shouldn’t mean anything for Dan and for the developers of Korsakovia; I guarentee Dan could find plenty of people in the Half-Life community that would LOVE to work with him for free. Hell I would! I would do anything I could. If he wants voice acting – I’ll try to make it happen. There are many talented people who I’m sure would work with him too (campaignjunkee from radiator comes to mind).

Another quote comes to mind:
“Anyone wants to take on Korsakovia, I’d be delighted to let them have it… – also, as far as I’m concerned, this is all open source, public domain stuff, so I’ll take whatever people want to give.”

Epic… this is what the community is all about… pure gold.

Either way excellent interview – sorry if this turned into some what of a rant, but I truly believe Dan is a genius and an asset to the community.