Mod Development Environment

In an effort to keep roll20 game-agnostic, the interface, tools, and options have been kept fairly simple. This is great, but it leaves players that are playing only one game feeling as though the site is a bit lacking. I propose that you create a roll20 development environment so that programmers can make their own custom mods to serve the community. This has at least three benefits:  It allows players more flexibility with their game at roll20, giving them the potential to tailor their experience to their own needs. It creates a market dynamic whereby good ideas are picked up and developed quick - quicker than the team at roll20 could ever do it. Good ideas could then be implemented into the core site. It frees up roll20 developers from working on tools, options, and interface capabilities to work on more important matters. (Possibly) The mods could be distributed at a price. This would add another revenue generating element to roll20, which in turn would aid everybody.

I am apprehensive about the idea. It may bring up some issues with quality control, no? The devs are trying to create something of high quality, and if there are a bunch of buggy mods being produced it may bring down the reputation of the service. The decision is partly between trying to create a lot of different interfaces, some of which may not be very good, and creating one excellent general interface which is useable by all. The devs seem to have chosen the latter, and they may not want to open it up to anyone to modify in ways possibly counter to what they are trying to do. Which would be understandable.

You could make the same argument for basically any game that was opened to mods. But the fact of the matter is that without exception (I'm not aware of any, at least) mods always bring more benefit to players and increase the games popularity. Bad mods fall at the wayside and good mods get picked up without it affecting the developer's reputation, the same way a bad-tasting candy bar (let's say, an Eat-More bar) doesn't affect your opinion of a corner store. This is why many huge developers add mod support; it generates attention, solves community needs, creates more opportunity for fun, which keeps players interested, and all for free!

There's going to be an API for mentors to do programming. And anyone can make a module to be sold.  You just have to own the involved assets and set them up in Roll20.