Mods cities skylines for free#
Mods cities skylines mod#
Mods cities skylines mods#

In the wake of his layoff, Shannon said he fell into making new Cities: Skylines content not as a potential new career, but as a fun way to keep his skills sharp and add some new work to his portfolio. Then the game got released, 'Oh, I didn't know this was going to be the final version.'' AdvertisementĪ time-lapse video of one of Shannon's creations. 'I thought it was going to be more than that. 'When I was there at my internship, I remember seeing the city size and thinking 'Oh this is a great start,' he recalls. Shannon's dream job turned out to be a little less than idyllic, though, thanks to SimCity's inauspicious launch, which was plagued by server issues and some downright broken gameplay promises.

To me, I just treat everything like 'Who's going to pay me' and I'm here to get a job.' 'It was like 'This is exactly what I want to do'.

'When the opportunity presented itself, it was amazing,' Shannon told Ars in an interview. As a big fan of city-building games, Shannon said landing that position right out of college was something of a dream for him. After studying at Florida's Ringling College of Art and Design, he got an internship and then a full-time job as an artist for SimCity maker Maxis Emeryville, designing buildings for the game's DLC expansions. TwitterBefore finding Patreon success, Shannon's game development career was following a much more well-worn path. Shannon acts more like an artist-in-residence within Colossal Order's popular city-building game, supported by the largesse of some of its biggest fans. There are a few other game developers using Patreon in a similar way, but they're all making their own titles, not working on content for an existing game.

Mods cities skylines for free#

Shannon mixes both models, in a way, taking money from a few hundred patrons but distributing his work for free to the millions of people playing the game.

Mods cities skylines mods#

To make a living, though, those modders have traditionally had to sell their efforts directly to interested players or use freely distributed mods to get noticed and hired by an established developer.

Mods cities skylines mod#

In a way, Shannon's situation isn't too different from other mod makers who have built their game development careers quite literally on top of existing games. He's not working for a developer, and he's not working for himself instead, he's working for a small subset of devoted Cities: Skylines players that want to share his work with the world. Right now, 233 members of the Cities: Skylines community are paying him to create new content for the game, to the tune of $735 per building created. Or you can go the indie route, creating a game by yourself (maybe with a few people to help) and selling it directly to the consumers (maybe with the help of a publisher).Īrtist Bryan Shannon seems to have hit on a third path to a successful living making games, via his unique Patreon campaign. You can sign up with an existing game developer, earning a salary or freelance rate to provide some small part of the art, code, or design that goes into a larger product. There are two main ways to make a living making games.