More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods. You have entire platforms like roblox where all the games are more or less mods. How long until the platform itself is community created and managed and the viability of games created by companies dissappears?
It’s been happening for years, almost decades at this point. In fact, I’d be willing to say that at least 50% of most games ever made were made by someone who used to mod other games for fun.
Most recently there’s been Black Mesa, which is a fan remake of Half-Life in Half-Life 2’s Source engine.
There’s also The Forgotten City, which was actually a Skyrim mod first and was so popular the mod makers were approached by Microsoft to make their own game.
Most Source engine games are actually mods of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Counter-Strike started as a Half-Life mod.
Decades.
Team Fortress started as a mod for Quake 1(30 years ago)Red Orchestra was the winner of the Make Something Unreal contest that Epic Games held over 20 years ago.
Famously, League of Legends and DOTA started as a custom map for Warcraft 3(Defense of the Ancients) and apparently Activision/Blizzard missed that window so much that they are a footnote in the genre they fucking started.
More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods.
But back then, modded games weren’t anywhere near as common as they are now.
What are you talking about? What new games with proper modding tools are there? Nobody wants to mod Starfield compared to Skyrim, Most of you probably don’t even know that there are modding tools out for Doom Eternal. CS server mods were effectively neutered by CS2’s matchmaking and skins store. There’s gooner mods for Capcom games and VR plugins I guess. Indie game engines ate the modding community’s lunch.
Were you playing games through the late 90s and early 00s, by any chance? Because we’ve been here before. At least three of the most-played games on Steam right now came from mods.
Didnt the whole moba genre start as mod?
The third-most populated game on Steam right now is Dota 2. Dota 1 is a mod. Counter-Strike was a Half-Life mod. PUBG came from the designer of a Battle Royale mod for Arma.
Is LoL still the most popular game in the world?
Based off Dota
Almost certainly not, but it’s probably not far down the list.
I did in fact play games then. But back then, modded games weren’t anywhere near as common as they are now. And the games that were modded to make new great games were great to begin with.
Now adays we seem to start from trash and use mods to make it playable. Soo, do we need the trash?Roblox gets mods and UGC because people wanted to be there to begin with. Mostly children, but still people. I don’t know how to make an apples to apples comparison about how prevalent modding was back then, because there are just way more games out today in general; but there were still tons of mods. Elder Scrolls and the mod community have always been intertwined, and once again, people like what’s there in the first place. Even with the reputation of Elder Scrolls being a game you install mods on, it’s only something like 10% of players that ever install them. I have never modded Elder Scrolls.
In fact Morrowind (arguably Bethesda’s best game) is still getting mods made for it over 24 years later. It’s biggest mod, Project Tamriel/Tamriel Rebuilt, is still getting made and worked on, and just had a major update last April.
I’d say maybe over 20 years ago until it starts?
The existence of engines like Unity and Unreal blurs this a bit. You used to see more full-conversion mods for games that make them into something else, because the engine was the hard part. Now that they’re available on very permissive terms, most hobbyist game devs will genuinely make a full game from an empty kit, and release it without players needing to mod a game like Half-Life or Quake.
But, having full ownership of that environment naturally means a lot of creators will want something back for their work. They have no choice but to shrug and accept it’s a free fan project when it’s built off a $60 game, but the story is different when that chain is gone. So most of this trend takes the form of indie game development.
Honestly, this is how I wish more of my favorite IPs would go. Elder scrolls and fallout especially, Bethesda couldn’t write a story for a bad porno, let alone compete with some of the story mods in Fallout 4 and skyrim. Just streamline the developer tools into an easy to access plug and play system for mods and quit trying to sell us a $40 knock off of an existing mod on nexus.
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S&box is coming out in like a month so probably then
I’m both super excited and very worried about this project. It has so much potential but there’s so little hype around it that it might not have enough creators and users. It’s also going to be paid which might be a tough sell considering other platforms like Roblox are free.
I tried the dev preview though, it’s pretty rad.
I plan to get it for my kid, they love creating games. Hopefully it helps them connect some dots about art and such. I plan to play with it too, excited to watch all my wonderfully intellectual game opinions get torn to bits by actual game dev experience.
What’s that exactly?
A modern attempt at a Garry’s Mod sequel by the same developer, basically.
Dunno “rise”, but certainly isn’t unprecedented for mods or similar to get standalone releases. Black Mesa and UNLOVED both come to mind.
And if we stretch definition a little, to my knowledge, Super Bernie World, Luanti, and apparently now S&Box all allow being used as engines for making mods as standalone games.
Legion TD2 is a game that was originally a Starcraft mod.
Aliens: Total Conversion - 1994:
You mean like Luanti? These platforms exist, but most people won’t know of their existance. Game companies invest heavily in advertisement to reach potential consumers
I feel like mods are coming back around to the general public again but I don’t think it’ll go as far as to take over a whole platform. Not even close to that happening.
Also a lot of us didn’t stop with mods and community servers etc but with the rise of PC gaming over the past 10 years of whatever comes a whole group of people who don’t even know how to troubleshoot the basics let alone make games…
There aren’t enough talented users like that. And no one will put in tremendous effort in for free. And almost no one will pay for a game twice.
I’m still curious how CDPR did away with Witcher 1 - whether they paid Bioware to use NWN engine or not.
They did.
So, add renting an engine to my list then.
