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NYT on Game Mods

Posted by michael on from the foreign-territory dept.

Bansuki writes "The New York Times has an article about the role of the modding communities in the games industry. It's a decent overview of the current state of modding though it focuses heavily on Epic Games and the Unreal engine. They spotlight the Unreal University program (an Unreal sponsored event giving classes to potential modders) and Red Orchestra (a highly ambitious mod of the Unreal Warfare engine). The article also mentions machinima as a type of mod with artistic potential and gives due credit to Id Software and Bioware for their work in making engines available to the community. But here's a glaring omission: Half-life and its wildly successful mods. Odd."

7 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. It's not really all THAT odd... by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not really all that odd. The mainstream press isn't exactly tech savvy. Heck, mainstream press isn't exactly savvy in ANY field, and often relies upon press releases from outside bodies to figure out if something is worth pursuing as a story.

    The Unreal guys probably got proactive about getting this story out there.

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    1. Re:It's not really all THAT odd... by TopShelf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The point of the article isn't to list every significant modding community out there - heck, you could toss sports games into the mix as well. The story is that the relationship between game developers and players has changed significantly over the last few years. Whether one game is used as the example over another is trivial...

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    2. Re:It's not really all THAT odd... by Torinaga-Sama · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The Unreal guys probably got proactive about getting this story out there."

      Hey, it worked for Valve, it can work for us.

      I know Half-Life was the only game I ever bought more than once, as sick an fanboyish as that sounds to me now.

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  2. It's not a coincidence by Mukaikubo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The games with wildly successful modification scenes are games that are commercially wildly successful, in general. The positive correlation is real.

    It mystifies me that a game these days can possibly be shipped without a comprehensive editing tool. They're artificially limiting their games' lives and shooting their sales in the foot.

  3. user-created levels by theMerovingian · · Score: 3, Insightful


    are a great addition to commercial games...

    so long as there is a moderating system to sort the wheat from the chaff (to use a biblical metaphor)

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  4. Mods... by Predathar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I played lots of Quake2 mods, Action Quake2 being my favorite. Personally I didn't like the Half-Life net code when the game first came out but I heard that it got much better, but by that time I had dropped the game and moved on to something else.

    Games with mods do seem to have a much longer life than non-mod games, look at Tribes, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield 1942, Neverwinter Nights (which LIVES off of the mod concept), heck, even games not designed to be modded (Silent Hunter 2) have had mods done by very creative and dedicated fans.

    Allowing people to make their own maps is not enough, let them play with the engine, the graphics, the models, the scripting, it pleases the fans and makes them come back for a sequel. Its been proven lots of times, heck, people still play QUAKE1 because of the mods!

  5. Game mods are the best card for PC games by Walkiry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And NOT trying to start a PC vs. Console war, game mods are one of the most important features that keep the PC gamers coming for more and paying big bucks for hardware (well, compared to consoles that are sold at a loss).

    On the other hand, mods (and in general, user-created content) are responsible for the metamorphosis of the computer games industry since the early 8-bit era to what it is today. No longer can you sell a hit game every 6 months , due to this extra content the average life of a good game has increased immensely, and thus, game companies now have to think carefully about their plans and development programs.

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