It’s too hot today for my brain to really work well, so instead of the ideas I had for today’s entry, I’m just going to write about something I love in vidya.
Mods.
I don’t mean any particular mods – though there are more than a few worth talking about – but just the whole idea of mods in general. Now, there are occasions when mods can be vital. A game which ran out of funding for example, and which gets tidied up and refined by the modding community. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines is the first example that springs to mind. They can take the rough edges off any game, wherever a player feels balance is off or something doesn’t work quite right. Now, this isn’t to say that developers have an excuse to be lazy, of course! But sometimes reality ensues and things don’t quite work out as one would hope – and mods can help reduce the impact of that.
More than this though, they are a source of content. I like SimCity4, but without sites like SimTropolis I’d have stopped playing it long ago. As it stands people are still putting out content every day for the game, even though it’s seven or eight years old now. And you can see real talent among the modders: the PEG team, the HKBAT team, the NAM team, and so on. They’ve done some truly impressive, amazing things given the constraints of the game, and they deserve much credit for it. In fact, modding is one of the better ways into the games industry these days, it seems. Make a solid mod and you could end up getting noticed by designers. And it is, ultimately, a great way for the communities around videogames to emerge and find each other. I know that there are names of people who worked on stuff as long ago as Morrowind who I always keep an eye out for, because their new mod for New Vegas, for instance, is likely to be great. That’s more loyalty than I display to most of the people who makes the games themselves!
What about you guys? Thoughts on mods? Any in particular that stand out in your mind as worth mentioning, and as examples of what can be achieved?
If you’ve ever played Total Annihilation, you probably know about TAUniverse and its host of mods. That first news post is an april fool’s joke, sadly, but it’s still amazing what people have done with a 14 year old game engine. I grant you, the engine was (for its time) robust in the first place – real physics, splash damage, decreased rate of fire with decreased health, shadows, in addition to the basics like, y’know, varied weapon systems, sonar/radar/jammers, and what have you – but Chris Taylor and Ron Gilbert certainly never told their team “hey, make it so we can add deflector shields later” or “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we spent an extra month or two on development to support units that buff other units?”.
The people who are currently remaking Half Life using the source engine, unfortunately it seems it’s a dam big project because they’ve been on it forever :(
http://www.blackmesasource.com/
Both great examples! Thanks guys :D
Oh, how I love the nexus. They have been a major source of mods for Morrowind/Oblivion and Fallout for myself. I think I have actually spent more time on downloading, installing and, on occasion, creating mods for games then I spent playing the games.
Bloodlines would be a great example, I hated how the Nosferatu chick looked, figured out how to change it and made my own. I defiantly hold more respect for game companies and developers who support modding of their games!