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An anonymous reader writes "The Desura game distribution client for Windows and Linux and developed by ModDB is now open source software. The open source version of the client is called Desurium and is hosted on GitHub."

tekgoblin writes "Were you a fan of the original GoldenEye on the N64? Well, this Half-Life 2 mod called GoldenEye Source, five years in the making, has just come out of beta and been fully released for free. The game is a creation of fans with the objective to bring the original experiences from GoldenEye on the N64 back to life. I remember spending hours upon hours playing GoldenEye on the N64, and was sad seeing it go."

Lanxon writes "Wired has a lengthy investigation into the state of PC game mods, and the amateurs keeping the scene exciting in the wake of draconian DRM placed on many PC titles by major studios. It highlights a number of creative modders, such as Scott Reismanis, founder and editor of Mod DB, and his community-driven alternative to Valve's Steam — Desura — which is 'a distribution system, and, like Steam, will sell games and champion indie titles. But the way it handles mods makes it even more exciting.'"

In a recent article for Offworld, Jim Rossignol writes about how the experiences offered by games are broadening as they become more familiar and more popular among researchers and educators. He mentions Korsakovia, a Half-Life 2 mod which is an interpretation of Korsakoff's syndrome, a brain disorder characterized by confusion and severe memory problems, and makes the point that games (and game engines) can provide interesting and evocative experiences without the constraint of being "fun," much as books and movies can be appreciated without "fun" being an appropriate description. Quoting: "Is this collective imagining of games one of the reasons why they tend to focus on a narrow band of imagination? Do critics decry games because games need, more than any other media, to be something a group of people can all agree on? Isn't that why diversions from the standard templates are always met with such excitement or surprise? Getting a large number of creative people to head out into the same imaginative realm is a monumental task, and it's a reason why game directors like to riff off familiar films or activities you can see on TV to define their projects. A familiar movie gets everyone on the same page with great immediacy. 'Want to know what this game is going to be like? Go watch Aliens, you'll soon catch up.' We are pushed into familiar, well-explored areas of imagination. However, there are also teams who are both exploring strange annexes and also creating games that are very much about imaginative exploration. These idiosyncratic few do seem like Alan Moore's 'exporters,' giving us something genuinely new to investigate and explore. Once the team has figured out how to drag the thing back from their imaginations, so we get to examine its exotic experiences — like the kind we can't get at home."

intenscia writes "After 10 years of Half-Life and dealing with its silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, ModDB looks back at everything that Valve made possible with the release of its first game. The freedom and flexibility the Gldsource platform gave modders resulted in a plethora of user-generated content such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. In this article they take a brief look at the mods that made the jump to retail as well as the top non-commercial mods that have become perennial classics." Planet Half-Life used the occasion to look back at the history of Valve. Valve is celebrating by offering the original Half-Life for less than a dollar on Steam.

intenscia writes "After 10 years of Half-Life and dealing with its silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, ModDB looks back at everything that Valve made possible with the release of its first game. The freedom and flexibility the Gldsource platform gave modders resulted in a plethora of user-generated content such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. In this article they take a brief look at the mods that made the jump to retail as well as the top non-commercial mods that have become perennial classics." Planet Half-Life used the occasion to look back at the history of Valve. Valve is celebrating by offering the original Half-Life for less than a dollar on Steam.

intenscia writes "The 2007 Mod of the Year Awards players choice winners have been announced, capping off a great year in gaming. This year titles which were influenced by the War in Iraq fared well, with Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2 and the GPL'd ID Tech 3 engine polling strongly in the indie games and released mods categories. Crysis mods, though still in the early stages of development, did well in the best upcoming category as indie developers attention shifts to some of the next-gen engines."

intenscia writes "The 2007 Mod of the Year Awards players choice winners have been announced, capping off a great year in gaming. This year titles which were influenced by the War in Iraq fared well, with Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2 and the GPL'd ID Tech 3 engine polling strongly in the indie games and released mods categories. Crysis mods, though still in the early stages of development, did well in the best upcoming category as indie developers attention shifts to some of the next-gen engines."

TheRealFritz writes "It's that time of year again and ModDB has released the winners of their annual Mod of the Year contest. Gamers who like to go beyond their initial investment have chosen their favorites for 2006: Point of Existence and Project Reality according to ModDB's Mod of the Year competition. The contest took in over 80,000 votes and narrowed the field from 4,000 mods to the Top 5 released and unreleased mods, as well as a handful of genre awards and the Editor's Choice awards. Perhaps it is ironic that the two top mods of 2006 are both for the Battlefield 2 platform, which has been abandoned by its developer and is notoriously buggy and difficult to mod. Despite these problems, both mods went on to beat out mods from the ever popular Half-Life 2 platform. The much better maintained Source engine is represented with the winners of the third through fifth places: Goldeneye: Source, The Hidden: Source and Minerva."

TheRealFritz writes "It's that time of year again and ModDB has released the winners of their annual Mod of the Year contest. Gamers who like to go beyond their initial investment have chosen their favorites for 2006: Point of Existence and Project Reality according to ModDB's Mod of the Year competition. The contest took in over 80,000 votes and narrowed the field from 4,000 mods to the Top 5 released and unreleased mods, as well as a handful of genre awards and the Editor's Choice awards. Perhaps it is ironic that the two top mods of 2006 are both for the Battlefield 2 platform, which has been abandoned by its developer and is notoriously buggy and difficult to mod. Despite these problems, both mods went on to beat out mods from the ever popular Half-Life 2 platform. The much better maintained Source engine is represented with the winners of the third through fifth places: Goldeneye: Source, The Hidden: Source and Minerva."

An anonymous reader writes "After nearly 30,000 votes were tallied, Mod DB has posted its 2005 Mod of the Year winners. Source engine mods really cleaned up with the occasional Unreal, Doom and Battlefield mod making the cut. What started out as a slow mod-making year quickly gained momentum as mod teams made the switch to the next generation games, and began learning the in-and-outs of these new engines. 2005 was an exciting year with lots of great mods and games. Now it's time to look forward to a fresh year of creative minds formulating engines into masterpieces as we enter the next generation of gaming."