UPDATE: Fixed minor error regarding Velicky's actual place of employment Here's a 10-minute look at the benefits, detriments and challenges facing mod support in modern games.
All I can think of is that Doom is 20-soemthing years old, still sells, and still has an active modding community. Doom '16 does not allow modding beyond map creation, and there's no way it'll enjoy more than 20 years of sales.
What makes this more interesting is that Doom 2016 made things worse for SnapMap by inspiring mods for the classic Doom's, from the popular D4D, to the more evolved, but made-for-touch D4T, to something extreme like MetaDoom that tries to be entire Doom series all together. At least Doom 3 had some mod support and just like the reboot, it also inspired mods for the older games on its own.
I'll replay the original Doom and Doom 2 all the time and mod them half to death but I'll probably only play 2016's Doom one or two times in the next five years because nothing changes.
Mod support is pretty much the difference between having your dev studio only having about maybe 20-100 people, and the dev studio suddenly having thousands of people. You're getting free development and training people to create games. Modding is a benefit in itself. Shame that devs think nickle and diming is more important than that at times. I will give Saints Row a little credit too because the devs are working on mod tools, although not major ones.
How ironic that modding saved Saints Row 2 like it saved Dark Souls, but then it got ruled it out completely in the sequels. Talk about being completely ungrateful.
Well, it didn't get ruled out, you just have to pay for it now. The Saint's Row devs do what big game devs always do; they see a cute little thing happening in their game, try to stick a price tag on it, and end up starving the little thing. I dunno why other people play mods, but I play them because it's a fun, free and nearly legally immune bit of fun I can add to the game. Just stupid little skins of copyrighted characters, or extra guns or new music, nothing major. It's fun because it's free. If I had to pay $1.99 a pop to play Left 4 Dead 2 as Doomguy against hordes of cats to the backing of the Red Army Choir, I would appreciate it a lot less. More than that, I would never even get the chance because defunct nations and 20 year old IPs are hard to license.
realevilcorgi I had to uninstall the cats as they were a bit hard to hit/see, however I am now _fantastic_ at spotting special infected in a crowd of zombies X3
What's ironic is that SR is used as an example. SRTT had lots of mods, and Volition has been vocally supportive of modding and hired IdolNinja to work for them and make SRIV more mod-friendly. Could have something to do with the death of THQ, though. www.saintsrowmods.com/ Many many mods.
Dr. Martin Van Nostrand Did they really? I remember modders having to literally crack open SR3's engine in order to make mods, with no tools available whatsoever On a side note, I'll add this, I'm not blaming Volition for it, they're pretty good devs that care about what they make, I blame THQ's and, later, after they took over, Deep Silver's shitty politics about DLC. The latter publisher, in particular, really REALLY wouldn't like modding to happen. In fact, I'm looking at these mods and they're not particularly complex. They're either minor tweaks or swap stuff in the game with other stuff that is already in the game (or in the DLCs). I can see like two or three mods total that are original content and they just swap over models or textures. There's nothing of the size and scope of what they managed to do with SR2's engine.
Scrapjack SR2's mods are pretty much what you describe. Changing game balance, vehicle handling, nude mods, stuff like that. It's all there in SRTT and IV, for the most part, the main exception being that someone ported the DLC missions which were only available on console for SR2. Naturally, they don't allow DLC content for mods that don't require the DLC, because they still want to sell the DLC, but that's true for Skyrim too. And there were never any modding tools, but GTA doesn't have them either. Bethesda and Valve are exceptions in that regard.
As a developer, I love modding. It's how I got my start. I would be nothing without it. However, that also means I fear I don't have the ability to write my own modding tools. I'm going to look into it, though... basic tweakable values aren't too hard to get into external XML files. It's anything more complex than that (i.e. game logic) that I start to shudder at how much time I'd spend creating modding support, simultaneously not addressing actual balance issues. That said, I guess people could send their preferred balance setups and that could be incorporated into an official patch? Perhaps it would pay itself back, even for someone like me? Assuming anyone wanted to play the game hard enough to mod in the first place... hmm. That's that pinch... what if I can't get them over that barrier, or in doing so, suggest that "yet, I just didn't care enough about balance and I'm leaving it up to you".
You see a lot of that sentiment here in the comments, a lot of people assuming that the bugs and quality of TES and ARMA games were *deliberately* implemented to get modders to fill in the gaps. And to me that sounds absolutely ludicrous. The responsibility and onus of what mods do lie with the users, not the developers. They have no impact on the product being sold on the shelf, they only supplement it once it's at home, installed, and loved enough for them to mod it.
Right. It's definitely harder to make a hermetically sealed, totally safe set of modding tools, and when more money is on the line, larger companies (especially their lawyers) start to see the potential for people blaming them for bugs introduced their user installed mod. I think that paranoia is rife in the board room. And yet, I've never heard many public complaints about that sort of thing - no-one suing because a mod bricked their graphics card (possibly due to smart EULAs?). But generally, if you're smart enough to install a mod, you're smart enough for caveat emptor.
Aside from the Dark Souls example, mod's even make other games playable on low end machines. There's a Skyrim mod that makes the game playable on graphics cards with only 256mb of Dedicated Video Ram, sure it looks like garbage, but everything still works and is still playable. Mod's are fantastic. Unless your Beat Hazzard and make people pay 5 bucks for Steam Workshop Support...
Minecraft is probably the most powerful example of how modding benefits a game. Almost 5 years old and still going strong, and a big, active modding community is a major reason for that.
even though Mojang has been consistently stabbing the Modding community in the back with every single update. 'open modding support', though every single update, just as a single example, randomly shuffled all of the Class files around, forcing Mods to all rebuild completely for every version because the core data had all been shuffled around for no good reason. unless they stopped doing that eventually? that would've been nice. but i doubt it.
***** Mojang really just got lucky with a hit idea, and they show that time and again with update after update that has clear bad design choices, ruins mods, and generally makes the game more needlessly complex and moves the game farther and farther away from the charming simplicity that made it a hit to begin with. If I had heard of Minecraft now instead of back in 1.7, I'd never have bought it.
The best mod I've ever played, that I've got to mention is the restoration project for Fallout 2, so for anyone who played that game on release, you know it had numerous bugs and signs of cut content everywhere, it was unfinished, same with New Vegas, both were coincidentally developed in around 1 year, which is ludicrous for a game of their size. But the restoration project not only fixed almost all of the bugs that plagued the original game, but also added in the cut content, it added in entire new areas which actually feel like they belong in the game instead of feeling like a mod (and now I can finally get the good deathclaw ending.) I played through one of my all time favorite games and had an entirely different experience thanks to the hard work of modders, not the developers. That's special, and I think Fallout 2 has more relevance than it's ever had because of this amazing mod. If you've never gotten the chance to play the original Fallout games, I suggest trying them out with their respective mods.
Oh god, the Restoration project made the game playable as Valhalla Fallout 2 was broken beyond repair, my only problem with it is that you can't obtain the Bozar as easily. Not only that but it rebalanced the game as well, an exploit is where you purchase something and you would be able to steal your own money back, which meant you could get a T-51B power armour at level one if you looked out well enough in San-Fransisco.
Hotsex spy I wouldn't call the game "Broken beyond repair." It was just buggy, unfortunately rushed out the door. Now, I think the game is better than ever, it's almost just as graphically unimpressive now as it's ever been. But I don't think graphics matter, the text box does a great job of adding texture to the world.
***** Well for me I couldn't get it to work at all, I'm having the same issues with Morrowind, though it's much worse in Morrowind since even with mods it hits the shitter. Had no problem getting Fallout 1 or other Bethesda/Interplay games to work. Why Morrowind and Fallout 2 (Non RP patch) seems to be at my throat I will never know.
Hotsex spy Well you are talking about modern systems, a lot of games don't work too well on modern systems, when Fallout 2 released it worked fine, it just a had some bugs that broke a couple things. Morrowind is the worst I've ever tried to get working, even after two days of painstakingly installing mods it runs at like 30 fps for some reason whenever I'm outside, it's unplayable.
***** My gaming rig which includes a GTX 780 and a 4670k struggled to run vanilla Morrowind and had only 5-10 fps for some reason, every other game I have that's installed on there runs perfectly so IDK.
Everything right with games right now are also a result of "corporate greed" as well though. Presumably they are making these games to make money, so I'm not sure where this arbitrary line that people seem to have imagined is.
Stuart Knight The line comes is when a game is made worse for the intent of making more money out of it. When the game is designed to make the most money for as little value as possible. Trying to make money is not the same thing as greed.
Scrustle No it is the same thing. IF something makes money it means that it is becoming better. Games are sold by a volountary transaction. If you dont like something, there are plenty of mind blowing indie titles.
CrowbarOwner tons of factories in Vietnam make cheap plastic tat for dollar stores, but hey, it makes money so CLEARLY it's a quality product. I honestly can't name a single thing that a bloated triple-A game has done that an Indie game hasn't done better, assuming that it wasn't a shit idea to begin with (looking at you, U-play). The games industry is one of the few cases in which I agree with that corner of my brain that read too much Karl Marx and decided that it missed the Soviet Union. The corporations are almost universally bad for the industry right now, and the indies are it's saving grace. If Valve weren't responsible for Steam, I really would see any benefit to the big companies at all.
Hair mods. So very important so my character doesn't walk around with the same buzzcut as all other games. Good bless divinity OS for actually letting me have girls with feminine hair. Maybe one day I will master how to do it myself. On that day everyone will have Alice Liddell's hair.
It's really shocking how many older and smaller games only see sales because of mods. You have probably never heard of Darkest Hour. You have also probably never heard of Kaiserreich; Legacy of the Weltkrieg, but it's more likely you've heard of the latter than the former. Kaiserreich is a mod for Darkest Hour, and I and everyone I know who owns Darkest Hour bought it just to play Kaiserreich. The mod has a larger community than the base game, is constantly growing with real input from it's players, and it's quality STRONGLY rivals that of the base game. It's like Day Z times ten (minus the player base, which I suppose divides it by a lot more than ten...) It's just frustrating to know that there will never ever be a Kaiserreich for Far Cry or Call of Duty 27 or most new games coming out. The only mods that come out are tiny little $2 bits of Microsoft branded Fun™.
I see it as very poor game design when games come out that aren't good without any mods, which includes user-made patches. Skyrim, looking at you. Using that game as an example, it's dumbed so far down and stripped so thin as an action game that mods are necessary to recover old content, like spell-crafting. A feature that was in Oblivion and could've been better with some GTA V style overhauls. What did Bethesda do? Drop it and say 'you put it in. Do our work for us, plebs.' And people did so. Not to mention the countless fixes to the game's code like the shadow stripping fix, the SkyUI, and the UnOfficial Patches that many write off as 'works of enthusiasm.' No, it's the public being the servant class to a company that knows, and has learned, how to use them.
Just came here from the Dragon Age Inquisition forums... ah well at least Witcher 3 will have mod support! I feel that mod support is neglected so much because its a PC thing; and is of little importance to developers who want to sell 10 million copies @ $60 on console in 1 week and then sell micro-DLC for 1 year. And of course since Sony and Microsoft get a cut out of every DLC sale; its not in their interest to insist on bringing mods to their platforms. In doing so; all parties fail to see the larger picture. They could have sold 10 million copies @ $60 AND another 20 million more copies @ $20-30 over the course of the next 3 years; leading to a healthy flow of income even when they DO NOT have any major releases coming up; something that every company desires.
10:20 like you said, the ability to change the game around provides a huge value to customers. Without the ability to change the perspective from first person to third person, and without the ability to add anime mods and new levels, I would not have gotten left4dead 2
This is very true, It's probably one of the main reasons Gmod, and even Minecraft is such a hit. The fact that you can put anything you want, from the huge variety of mods available it's like endless fun trying out all the mods.
Also a great part of modding is the total conversion mod projects or even complete code projects such as Freespace 2's Source Code Project making the 1999 game into a fully modern product with mods based on that, the Europa Barbarorum mod for Rome Total War for history buffs or educational purposes, and so many more other great projects, big and small, there likely are too many to list here. Still, shoutouts to Freelancer's modding, Mount and Blade, Crysis 1, Morrowind, Oblivion, and of course those named in the video, including GTA 4. Great video overall!
I don't think the dlc as an advantage for non-modded games holds up. Skyrim has its own dlc while also being modded, but people still buy the official dlc because it is truly good content.
I'm very happy you came out in support of the modding scene. I am/was very active in it; some of the credits you might see to my name include voice acting roles in 1187, Cry of Fear, and others, including a C&C Red Alert 3 mod. Modding has to exist in order for the PC market to thrive. It's one of the biggest selling points for the PC market: there is a community and a set of tools that will let people make content for a game and expand the playability of it. Hell, we've had releases of CounterStrike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, The Stanley Parable, and Dear Esther [though my opinions about the last two titles are less than favorable because I know of their development cycles and fun stories about them] come from just a few guys and girls sitting in front of their home computer and opening up Hammer. This is also what propels some companies into super-stardom long-term; VALVe comes to mind, beyond the scope of their brilliant game design. Companies that shut out modding or make it hard literally are slicing off an arm, so to speak. They separate themselves from the community by putting them on a pedestal as the "hand that feeds" even if they release content that is inferior to the passion of a few players. Though modding is threatened right now actually more by the allure of the indie market [why release for free when you can make the same content and get money for it?] and not as much by the release of games that make modding near impossible, modding is still alive and well. You just need to know where to look.
I find strange that this channel has so few visitors, it's one of my favorite channels on youtube, intelligent critics and really good narrative, keep it like that!
Brilliant points, one thing I'd like to mention though is this current trend of new age PC Gamers who are afraid of stepping out of the comfort zone of Steam, I've seen many PC Gamers flat out refuse to try modding because it isn't "Steam Workshop Verified", like come on, that's the most anti-PC way of thinking, modding doesn't need Steam to hold its hand, modding can grow on its own, it has done for years without "Steam Workshop", there is no need for Steam Workshop to be forced onto modding communities because it's the latest thing because that's just putting us into a walled garden where we have to play it safe by what Steam will or wont allow, where as communities like nexus websites, etc, allow true freedom in trying things, seeing what works, etc, that is the point of modding. Places like ModDB are brilliant with that as well, allowing Total Conversion projects, such as the Vice City Stories PC Edition Project, which replaces Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on PC with a game that wasn't released on PC! I find it funny how harsh you are on Saints Row in this video because over the past few weeks we have got news about Mod Tools being released, a port of Saints Row 1 coming to PC via DLC for Saints Row 2, etc, so I guess they got the message at some point. I'm also all for modding fixing games, GTA titles on PC being a prime example of that, Rockstar's efforts on PC have been close to lazy ever since Grand Theft Auto III and you can find fan made patches out there that fix a hell of a load of broken things in these games that Rockstar were happy to ignore.
Minecraft servers are only hostable due to mods otherwise every server would be a barren wasteland of lava and griefed houses. Thank god for hMod and it's successor Bukkit. Now if only Bukkit updated faster... No, I no longer expect the Mojang API to ever come out they promised that it would too long ago to fool me any more.
According to steam, the longest I have played an unmodded game for was 48 hours (X-comm, enemy unknown). I have 6 games that have over 100 hours of game play, all of which had the life expectancy drastically extended due to mods. (Skyrim, Crusader Kings 2, Civilization IV, Victoria II, Medieval II Total War and Europa Universalis III) I've purchased games just for the mods before (Arma II and Europa Universalis III) and I've intentionally held off on buying some games (Saints Row IV) due to lack of mod support. Mods make games fun, there is no question about it.
realevilcorgi They have pretty useless conversations about games. Like that whole 'improvisation, planning, ehh'. I knew it was just stupid, but I love games so much I figured I enjoyed it anyway. Now I just think they've jumped on the hipster train. They're smart but I don't think they have one smack of integrity or conviction.
***** yeah, they know who their market is, and they know what that market wants. They gained a lot of their audience from the Escapist, and even after they split from them, a lot of the same crowd still stuck with them. Hearing about how games are sexist and how gamergate is like the worstest thing evar guise is exactly what their viewerbase wants to hear. At one point, I was willing to say that they were one of the few people I respected enough to consider their point, regardless of previous convictions, but as time went on they very gradually lost that respect. At this point I only stick around for Extra History (which is /also/ tinged with their hipster notions, watch their series on the Great War, it lacks any mention of the actual fighting or the peace negotiations because they're just too cool to talk about the parts most people actually need to know about for schoolwork purposes)
I've actually never liked extra credits even in their early days. To me it always seemed like they were regurgitating boring generalizations of average opinions of average gamers (I have no idea what they're doing now). I found more interesting analysis of video games in blog posts by developers and occasionally in forum posts from exceptionally insightful fans. While I don't agree with super bunnyhop about everything I've been impressed enough to subscribe to him. In what I've watched so far he's always given me at least some new ideas to grapple with which is a quality not easy to find on the internet.
I remember when I first got into PC gaming back in 2012, I bought the original Half bundle because I wanted Cry of Fear (before it was released on Steam), and Afraid of Monsters Director's cut. That bundle, and Age of Empires II HD, were the only games on Steam I ever bought for full price that had excellent mod support, and boy were they worth it.
You are absolutely right. I have had many games stay on my hard drive longer due to excellent mods that were created. One game that had an excellent list of Mods was Battlefield 1942. I ended up downloading a lot of different variations of the game and it made it much more interesting and enjoyable. It was also amazing that two of those mods Desert Combat and Starwars later made a huge impact on the gaming industry with the DC team developing the classic Battlefield 2 (that had so many innovative features that allowed for coordinated team play.) and the Battlefront series which was inspired by the Starwars mod indirectly. I am pretty upset that the gaming Publisher's and Developer's don't allow modding in a lot of their titles. As you said it really adds value to the game itself as well as a great stepping stone for aspiring game developers to use in order to get into the industry. Great Video. Well, all of your videos are excellent because I get something out of them. Keep up the great work! :)
As a new indie dev, I can safely say that the one thing stopping me having mod support is.... Well, it's hard to make in the first place, that's pretty much it.
I think that modding actually helps sell DLC. I bought Skyrim on a console because I didn't have a gaming PC at the time and then bought it again once I did have a PC just for mods. I had already played all the DLC for Skyrim, but I bought it again because several of the mods I wanted to use required the DLC. Whenever I see DLC or updates for games with modding communities I get excited about all the possibilities for modding that they open up.
Beautifully put as always SBH. Yes, modding gives tools for creative content, many mods even fix games that most won't play because of flawed mechanics or just bug fixing overall, Valve deserves congratulations for making their games super easy to mod, I remember in the old days that I didn't have money to get games every week like today, so many hours spent in Day of defeat, Natural Selection, Sven coop, The specialist. Whatever happened to modding on BF (well, yeah EA happened), the quality and focus of mods from BF2 in the new engines would be a blast. I wonder how much of this anti-modding scheme is our fault for buying DLC and how much can we influence the return of modding tools with our wallets...
Fun fact if a game can support dlc it can also support modding, infact it's safe to assume in many cases that some extra hoops where jumped through to make sure modifications are neigh impossible.
I remembered playing hours upon hours of custom maps on Starcraft 1 because of its custom map editor, from crazy RPGs to Tower defense games. Heck, DOTA was originally a Warcraft 3 map/mod that now spawned two of the biggest franchises out there (LoL and Dota2). Modding, I agree, is very, very important.
Good points about modding. It really does prolong the life of games way past their prime. Asheron's Call is still around and i played that game so many years ago.
As someone that is becoming a programmer for a living, I completely agree with the modular development style. Easy to read code that can be easily changed should be an industry norm. It doesn't just help the modding community, as it can help developers while making the game. Being able to see what someone else in the studio is doing makes it so much easier for you to add what you need to add. It also helps when fixing bugs and balancing gameplay before release. Whenever I write code, it bothers me when I write some code that looks really ugly. My mind is always "what is the most elegant solution" to the problem. I don't understand why some developers don't do that. Even if you don't have mod support, it still helps development and makes the work developers less of a pain.
Exactly. I take a block-coding approach with every little section that does something getting its own comment. Sometimes my comments are just as long as that block of code.
saxdude01 Well comments should be easily understandable so shorter ones are much more useful here. But I of course don't know what you are working on...
I mean for the really technical stuff that someone not that experienced in code code understand what I am doing. I mean basic stuff like checking if the command line arguments are right would be short. So if I was writing code for a game that will support mods, the harder to understand parts if would have much more detailed comments. For short stuff like gun stats, it would be more like: AK-47 stats. Damage, accuracy, range So it does depend on what the code looks like and who your audience is.
Mount and Blade:Warband with the Floris modpack, STALKER Call of Pripyat with the Misery mod, Minecraft with TerraFirmaCraft mod, Skyrim with the Brutal Skyrim mod list (survival, basic needs, hypothermia, more challenging combat and economy) along with a huge texture, atmosphere, and animation mod pack I forget the name of, and Fallout 3 with the Wanderer's Edition (along with a few others). Some of my favorite and most expansive mods I've ever used. If anyone likes any of these games, consider checking them out. Some of them, as the names suggest (Misery/Brutal) make the games pretty challenging so read up on the stuff first see if you're into it.
It's ironic that you start with GTA V since when it was released on PC rockstar started banning modders. I'm pretty sure they recently banned the guys making GTAVMP, which is a huge scumbag move.
I found a mod for Red Faction Gurilla that took the reconstructor weapon from multiplayer and put it in single player. That alone elevated it from a good game to a great game for me. It's way too fun tearing down the massive bridge just to rebuild it and knock it down again.
I subscribed after watching this. I like SR4 a lot, but mods would be a great addition. Loved the total conversion of Oblivion, Nehrim. Please continue talking about interesting stuff.
I just bought Skyrim aa few weeks ago and it's the first game which I started unleashing mods on. Holy hell, this video really does hit the nail on the head.
as i rewatch stuff years later while idly playing BOTW, this is really applicable to the old Petz games versus new Petz games. you can see exactly how that series went from cult classic to now, well, a sad nintendogs ripoff. and the main thing was... the loss of it being easy to mod. a large part of the player base was into "hexxing". for many there, it was their first taste of computer programming, and uniquely so with a playerbase that was predominantly female. there's some interesting articles already written out there on Medium about women who followed that interest in STEM pointing directly to hexxing new petz dog breeds as how they got their start down that road to computer programming or engineering or any matter of things. and bizarrely, this is still going! people are still trucking along doing that in modern day - just like how people are still out there modding Jedi Academy. but the petz games that switched to a nintendogs style play, with modding impossible or at least highly improbable? yeah, nobody's playing those anymore. it's the same thesis, proven in a really interesting sphere that was - and still is - predominantly female. and that's kinda neat to me, and probably to you too as well, if you ever get the time to poke your nose in and have a look around.
note: i might be showing a little too much that my Perfect Super Bunnyhop Video would be an examination of the AI life/pet sim boom that there was, and how much like point-and-click adventure games, it seems to have straight-up died due to shifting market forces, and hearing George examine both what those market forces were... as well as the interesting unintended repercussions of that boom (ex. hi my name is Calamity Janine and i went and got me a biology degree in part 'cos i grew up playing the Creatures games and being able to see the simulated hard science behind the cute critters, so it didn't seem overwhelming or beyond me or unimportant to me, because i'd been introduced to it in that way).
I think I've found my new favourite channel ^^ I totally agree though. Games like The Sims, Half Life, Skyrim etc live and die by their mods. I've put hundreds of hours in to each of those due to their mods.
I would like to mention Dawn of War: Ultimate Apocalypse as an excellent example of a mod that has kept people playing Dawn of War: Soulstorm 8 years after launch. It essentially compiled a lot of mods created by numerous groups and added additional content to essentially allow players to play any army they wanted if it was found in Warhammer 40K. Tyranids, all 4 Chaos greater demons, titans, etc were available when Relic couldn't add them to the game in the first place. A much better experience than DoW2, and I hope those guys were hired to help with DoW3.
One example I'm surprised no one mentioned is Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Most people would probably agree that it was pretty crappy on its release, mainly for its limitations, less-challenging campaigns and even its art style (which personally wasn't an issue for me). Then somebody came along and created a program that allows someone to import models from sketch-up or blender into the game to create custom scenery, and there would later be programs made to do the same for custom rides. Now the game has maintained some level of popularity with the community, as its vanilla content becomes more irrelevant. Then again, this is mostly from an idealistic perspective that's centered around making a fantasy possible, not actual park management and handling finances, like it was in the first 2 games. RCT2 has its own batch of user-made content too, but I personally dont think it has the same appeal, since you don't feel the need to add fine details to your creations in an isometric game, and RCT2 didn't really need a saving grace like RCT3 did.
Thanks for the response. I actually may have heard of this game. It had some creepy enemies in it. Floating beds, and the like. Speaking of mods, I've been wondering what mods I should be using for GTA 4. For instance, is there a mod for setting in-mission checkpoints? I already know people have modded GTA 5's radial menus into the game, as well as the most recent graphical overhaul.
(waves at Bunnyhop from a dark alley, whispers to him) "Total conversions almost as good as proper releases, ey ?" (pulls something out of his coat and grins) "Here, The Dark Mod. You'll love it, kiddo. ;-)"
Eh, I don't like how you end on the note that the lack of modding is all about greed. As a business, frankly that's how the decision should be approached. You can't just take shareholder's money and waste it. I think what would be more interesting is identifying when it makes good business sense for a game to be moddable and when it doesn't. For example, does it make sense for the Call of Duty series to be moddable (I have no idea if it is BTW, since I'm a console gamer and never even played CoD)? The optimal strategy seems to be to get their fans to get to the next iteration as soon as possible (and develop the games on a timely manner too). So you have a downward pressure on revenue and upward pressure on cost. The counter argument is that there will be an INCREMENTAL increase in buyers of CoD, which I just don't see given how much CoD gobbled up marketshare. Another counter argument is that modding would increase the shelf life of the series, and while that might be true, if you do the calculations the profits gained by not modding is probably higher than the profits gained by modding. On the other hand, a game like Saints Row might have more to gain in terms of profit relative to GTA from being moddable. I don't know, but to me that's the more interesting and relevant question. Because for most people game development is ultimately a business, not a hobby like modding.
Yet one of your favourite games is a game that doesn't allow mods, MGS3. It could be that either it is only available for console or it could be something that the game includes features that would have been in mods like food, cure and camouflage (both in gameplay and appearance) or maybe it's just that there is something that is taking away the need for mods (like quality of the game or its 'open-ended' feel and play).
A mod scene for consoles actually does exist, but not in the form you're thinking of. They're mostly centered around romhacks for older games where the security of the underlying platform has long since been cracked. But mods on consoles are totally doable, it's just a matter of platform holders not wanting to let the community do what it wants with their hardware. Plenty of Japanese games that never came to the west have gotten English language releases thanks to fan translation mods, something I rarely if ever actually see on the PC side where such things are actually far easier to build. Everything from random NES games to most of the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem games to freaking MOTHER 3 are only playable for non-Japanese speakers if you use a ROM dump, a patch, and a system emulator. Before he was sweeping 2015 GOTY awards with UNDERTALE, Toby Fox had made a partial-conversion EarthBound horror mod some time ago called EarthBound Halloween. It added an original follow-up story featuring a new character and even added custom music to the game, something which was considered ridiculously difficult even now. (EarthBound's fanmade mod tools at the time were notorious for turning an in-progress mod into a corrupt, glitchy mess) Super Mario Maker is actually one of the rare examples of a console game that encourages some kind of player modification. I mean, it's obvious to more people than just me that things like the music box item were added to that game specifically to encourage it's use in recreating 2007-era Automatic Mario videos, right? I refuse to believe Nintendo employees weren't looking at what Mario mods looked like when they decided the set of features available in Super Mario Maker. Nothing else could explain why we had a music box and no checkpoints.
I'm a console gamer, but I am buying a gaming PC sometime early 2014 because of mods. I see myself becoming a PC gamer more so than console in the future. Question: how well does an Xbox 360 controller work with PC gaming?
You know all those multiplatform games that are on consoles as well as PC?. Well they all work with a 360 controller exactly like 360. You don't need to download drivers or mess with settings as it just works. I have my PC hooked up to my TV in the living room as it's 3D and I play nearly all my games with a 360 controller. In fact there is even indie games that are not on consoles that support controller. There is some PC games like say Amnesia that only work with mouse and keyboard or older PC games but for 95% of all my PC gaming is done with a 360 pad. Also about 4 years ago I decided to try PC gaming and am very happy with it. Before I got my PC I knew nothing about them and had no one to help me but by the end of the first day I was playing Crysis and downloading emulators for old consoles and arcades and playing retro games. I think you will enjoy PC gaming mate
Extra effort to introduce mod support? It's only extra effort if you already built your game with a piss-poor half-assed design that would barely work to begin with. Which makes sense when you look at BF4's current state.
Actually Volition (the developers of Saints Row) do support modding, and are trying to release as many of their development tools as they can. They just didn't until mid-2013 because THQ didn't let them before they were bought by Deep Silver.
I've always found it nerve wracking to ever mess with the code of a video game, even for mods that everyone says makes a game more playable. I'm always worried that I will delete something or replace an x with a y in the wrong place and competly ruin the game I was mildy enjoying already. Love the video man.
I 100% agree with your taste in Elder Scrolls mods, and your opinions on mods in general. However you did the entire video about PC game modding without mentioning Minecraft. It basically went from an indie hit into a AAA title on every console of the last couple generations. It's grown into such a huge cultural phenomenon because the community was very free expand on the source code and build a custom experience. I would love to see other games be able to have pre-built modpacks.
That's so true. Modding is the biggest reason i prefer pc gaming over console games. And because of mods it's still fun for me to play really old games like Half life
Greetings from 2017, you will be happy to know that there are some really big games adding mods now such as: Call of duty Black ops 3, hearts of iron 4, Fallout 4 and many more. Also in the latest battlefield they have introduced community game modes where the community can create new game modes.
I've noticed that the games that usually get modded really aren't good until someone mods them and fix them. The most recent example I tried out was Project M for Smash Bros. Brawl. And in someway this could actually hurt sales of Smash 4 since brawl has left a lot of people skeptical to the point where they might just stick with Project M. Or when WiiU gets emulated people might just move on and fix smash 4 aswell who knows.
retractingblinds those games you listed may be very good, but you haven't completely refuted their point. some games rely too heavily on their modding community to bring their standard up to par. see: bethesda games, or as the reviewer stated in his video, gta4.
Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3 is probably the only game ever to have proper built-in mod support on a console. Yeah it was limited in what it can do but it really was a step forward - it's silly how nobody else caught onto the idea.
I'm a bit surprised this video didn't manage ROMhacking, which serves a similar purpose to modding, but with (mostly) retro console games reverse-engineered by hackers. PC gaming may lend itself to modding easier, but ROMhacking has given an amazingly long life to games like Super Mario World and Super Metroid in pretty much the exact same way moddng does.
Watching this in 2017 and all I can say is "Just look at Minecraft"
:)
What about now?
@@husseinoskovjino9398 2024 here, it's the same thing
Plus, having an item in your main menu called "Mods" about quadruples your nerd cred while granting you the "cool guys" perk for free.
All I can think of is that Doom is 20-soemthing years old, still sells, and still has an active modding community. Doom '16 does not allow modding beyond map creation, and there's no way it'll enjoy more than 20 years of sales.
What makes this more interesting is that Doom 2016 made things worse for SnapMap by inspiring mods for the classic Doom's, from the popular D4D, to the more evolved, but made-for-touch D4T, to something extreme like MetaDoom that tries to be entire Doom series all together.
At least Doom 3 had some mod support and just like the reboot, it also inspired mods for the older games on its own.
I'll replay the original Doom and Doom 2 all the time and mod them half to death but I'll probably only play 2016's Doom one or two times in the next five years because nothing changes.
Mod support is pretty much the difference between having your dev studio only having about maybe 20-100 people, and the dev studio suddenly having thousands of people. You're getting free development and training people to create games. Modding is a benefit in itself. Shame that devs think nickle and diming is more important than that at times.
I will give Saints Row a little credit too because the devs are working on mod tools, although not major ones.
This video is now more important than ever before.
How ironic that modding saved Saints Row 2 like it saved Dark Souls, but then it got ruled it out completely in the sequels. Talk about being completely ungrateful.
Well, it didn't get ruled out, you just have to pay for it now. The Saint's Row devs do what big game devs always do; they see a cute little thing happening in their game, try to stick a price tag on it, and end up starving the little thing. I dunno why other people play mods, but I play them because it's a fun, free and nearly legally immune bit of fun I can add to the game. Just stupid little skins of copyrighted characters, or extra guns or new music, nothing major. It's fun because it's free. If I had to pay $1.99 a pop to play Left 4 Dead 2 as Doomguy against hordes of cats to the backing of the Red Army Choir, I would appreciate it a lot less. More than that, I would never even get the chance because defunct nations and 20 year old IPs are hard to license.
realevilcorgi I had to uninstall the cats as they were a bit hard to hit/see, however I am now _fantastic_ at spotting special infected in a crowd of zombies X3
What's ironic is that SR is used as an example. SRTT had lots of mods, and Volition has been vocally supportive of modding and hired IdolNinja to work for them and make SRIV more mod-friendly. Could have something to do with the death of THQ, though. www.saintsrowmods.com/ Many many mods.
Dr. Martin Van Nostrand Did they really? I remember modders having to literally crack open SR3's engine in order to make mods, with no tools available whatsoever
On a side note, I'll add this, I'm not blaming Volition for it, they're pretty good devs that care about what they make, I blame THQ's and, later, after they took over, Deep Silver's shitty politics about DLC. The latter publisher, in particular, really REALLY wouldn't like modding to happen. In fact, I'm looking at these mods and they're not particularly complex. They're either minor tweaks or swap stuff in the game with other stuff that is already in the game (or in the DLCs). I can see like two or three mods total that are original content and they just swap over models or textures. There's nothing of the size and scope of what they managed to do with SR2's engine.
Scrapjack SR2's mods are pretty much what you describe. Changing game balance, vehicle handling, nude mods, stuff like that. It's all there in SRTT and IV, for the most part, the main exception being that someone ported the DLC missions which were only available on console for SR2. Naturally, they don't allow DLC content for mods that don't require the DLC, because they still want to sell the DLC, but that's true for Skyrim too.
And there were never any modding tools, but GTA doesn't have them either. Bethesda and Valve are exceptions in that regard.
Modding > DLC
Modding is basically COMMUNITY DLC imo. But much, much better.
I don’t agree with this. If the dlc is bad its somebody’s fault in the companies involved with the game. It all depends but I don’t really like mods.
As a developer, I love modding. It's how I got my start. I would be nothing without it. However, that also means I fear I don't have the ability to write my own modding tools. I'm going to look into it, though... basic tweakable values aren't too hard to get into external XML files. It's anything more complex than that (i.e. game logic) that I start to shudder at how much time I'd spend creating modding support, simultaneously not addressing actual balance issues. That said, I guess people could send their preferred balance setups and that could be incorporated into an official patch? Perhaps it would pay itself back, even for someone like me? Assuming anyone wanted to play the game hard enough to mod in the first place... hmm. That's that pinch... what if I can't get them over that barrier, or in doing so, suggest that "yet, I just didn't care enough about balance and I'm leaving it up to you".
You see a lot of that sentiment here in the comments, a lot of people assuming that the bugs and quality of TES and ARMA games were *deliberately* implemented to get modders to fill in the gaps. And to me that sounds absolutely ludicrous. The responsibility and onus of what mods do lie with the users, not the developers. They have no impact on the product being sold on the shelf, they only supplement it once it's at home, installed, and loved enough for them to mod it.
Right. It's definitely harder to make a hermetically sealed, totally safe set of modding tools, and when more money is on the line, larger companies (especially their lawyers) start to see the potential for people blaming them for bugs introduced their user installed mod. I think that paranoia is rife in the board room. And yet, I've never heard many public complaints about that sort of thing - no-one suing because a mod bricked their graphics card (possibly due to smart EULAs?). But generally, if you're smart enough to install a mod, you're smart enough for caveat emptor.
Aside from the Dark Souls example, mod's even make other games playable on low end machines. There's a Skyrim mod that makes the game playable on graphics cards with only 256mb of Dedicated Video Ram, sure it looks like garbage, but everything still works and is still playable. Mod's are fantastic. Unless your Beat Hazzard and make people pay 5 bucks for Steam Workshop Support...
Minecraft is probably the most powerful example of how modding benefits a game.
Almost 5 years old and still going strong, and a big, active modding community is a major reason for that.
even though Mojang has been consistently stabbing the Modding community in the back with every single update.
'open modding support', though every single update, just as a single example, randomly shuffled all of the Class files around, forcing Mods to all rebuild completely for every version because the core data had all been shuffled around for no good reason.
unless they stopped doing that eventually? that would've been nice. but i doubt it.
*****
Mojang really just got lucky with a hit idea, and they show that time and again with update after update that has clear bad design choices, ruins mods, and generally makes the game more needlessly complex and moves the game farther and farther away from the charming simplicity that made it a hit to begin with. If I had heard of Minecraft now instead of back in 1.7, I'd never have bought it.
This has aged really well
The best mod I've ever played, that I've got to mention is the restoration project for Fallout 2, so for anyone who played that game on release, you know it had numerous bugs and signs of cut content everywhere, it was unfinished, same with New Vegas, both were coincidentally developed in around 1 year, which is ludicrous for a game of their size.
But the restoration project not only fixed almost all of the bugs that plagued the original game, but also added in the cut content, it added in entire new areas which actually feel like they belong in the game instead of feeling like a mod (and now I can finally get the good deathclaw ending.)
I played through one of my all time favorite games and had an entirely different experience thanks to the hard work of modders, not the developers. That's special, and I think Fallout 2 has more relevance than it's ever had because of this amazing mod.
If you've never gotten the chance to play the original Fallout games, I suggest trying them out with their respective mods.
Oh god, the Restoration project made the game playable as Valhalla Fallout 2 was broken beyond repair, my only problem with it is that you can't obtain the Bozar as easily.
Not only that but it rebalanced the game as well, an exploit is where you purchase something and you would be able to steal your own money back, which meant you could get a T-51B power armour at level one if you looked out well enough in San-Fransisco.
Hotsex spy I wouldn't call the game "Broken beyond repair." It was just buggy, unfortunately rushed out the door.
Now, I think the game is better than ever, it's almost just as graphically unimpressive now as it's ever been. But I don't think graphics matter, the text box does a great job of adding texture to the world.
***** Well for me I couldn't get it to work at all, I'm having the same issues with Morrowind, though it's much worse in Morrowind since even with mods it hits the shitter.
Had no problem getting Fallout 1 or other Bethesda/Interplay games to work. Why Morrowind and Fallout 2 (Non RP patch) seems to be at my throat I will never know.
Hotsex spy Well you are talking about modern systems, a lot of games don't work too well on modern systems, when Fallout 2 released it worked fine, it just a had some bugs that broke a couple things.
Morrowind is the worst I've ever tried to get working, even after two days of painstakingly installing mods it runs at like 30 fps for some reason whenever I'm outside, it's unplayable.
***** My gaming rig which includes a GTX 780 and a 4670k struggled to run vanilla Morrowind and had only 5-10 fps for some reason, every other game I have that's installed on there runs perfectly so IDK.
Sorry to say you might have to do another episode like this soon.
The Macho Man Dragon replacement made me play Skyrim until completion.
TheTrueChuster BOOONESAW IS REEEEADY
Andrew Marshall I'VE BEEN TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN!
It seems like everything wrong with games right now is the fault of corporate greed.
Everything right with games right now are also a result of "corporate greed" as well though. Presumably they are making these games to make money, so I'm not sure where this arbitrary line that people seem to have imagined is.
Stuart Knight And if developers who allow mods do so because they see the possibilites of larger sales, isn't that also "corporate greed" ?
Stuart Knight The line comes is when a game is made worse for the intent of making more money out of it. When the game is designed to make the most money for as little value as possible. Trying to make money is not the same thing as greed.
Scrustle No it is the same thing. IF something makes money it means that it is becoming better. Games are sold by a volountary transaction. If you dont like something, there are plenty of mind blowing indie titles.
CrowbarOwner
tons of factories in Vietnam make cheap plastic tat for dollar stores, but hey, it makes money so CLEARLY it's a quality product.
I honestly can't name a single thing that a bloated triple-A game has done that an Indie game hasn't done better, assuming that it wasn't a shit idea to begin with (looking at you, U-play). The games industry is one of the few cases in which I agree with that corner of my brain that read too much Karl Marx and decided that it missed the Soviet Union. The corporations are almost universally bad for the industry right now, and the indies are it's saving grace. If Valve weren't responsible for Steam, I really would see any benefit to the big companies at all.
Hair mods. So very important so my character doesn't walk around with the same buzzcut as all other games. Good bless divinity OS for actually letting me have girls with feminine hair. Maybe one day I will master how to do it myself. On that day everyone will have Alice Liddell's hair.
With the news of Skyrim mods now being monetizable, I hope you will put up a reaction/discussion video about it.
It's really shocking how many older and smaller games only see sales because of mods. You have probably never heard of Darkest Hour. You have also probably never heard of Kaiserreich; Legacy of the Weltkrieg, but it's more likely you've heard of the latter than the former. Kaiserreich is a mod for Darkest Hour, and I and everyone I know who owns Darkest Hour bought it just to play Kaiserreich. The mod has a larger community than the base game, is constantly growing with real input from it's players, and it's quality STRONGLY rivals that of the base game. It's like Day Z times ten (minus the player base, which I suppose divides it by a lot more than ten...)
It's just frustrating to know that there will never ever be a Kaiserreich for Far Cry or Call of Duty 27 or most new games coming out. The only mods that come out are tiny little $2 bits of Microsoft branded Fun™.
And Project M shut down...
Errr what!? really!? no Wii atm to test sorry for asking
RatGhoul projectmgame.com/
+Magikarpador Thanks :)
I see it as very poor game design when games come out that aren't good without any mods, which includes user-made patches. Skyrim, looking at you.
Using that game as an example, it's dumbed so far down and stripped so thin as an action game that mods are necessary to recover old content, like spell-crafting. A feature that was in Oblivion and could've been better with some GTA V style overhauls. What did Bethesda do? Drop it and say 'you put it in. Do our work for us, plebs.' And people did so.
Not to mention the countless fixes to the game's code like the shadow stripping fix, the SkyUI, and the UnOfficial Patches that many write off as 'works of enthusiasm.' No, it's the public being the servant class to a company that knows, and has learned, how to use them.
Ah yes, I remember crafting spells in GTA V. Those were the days...
Agreed. Skyrim becomes nigh unplayable after you taste your first mod.
Given that they don't even want mods since f76, I'd say this comment aged rather poorly.
the 17 fps gta 4 footage brings back crazy memories
the title: The Importance of Modding
the thumbnail: *Hodding*
Well mods were to be paid, but now it's back to being free again. Hopefully it stays that way this time.
Oh really?? When and why did Steam change their minds?
About the crack of noon. steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218
MetalSocks Newell just said that starting with Skyrim wasn't good.
+MetalSocks And hey what do you know it turns out mods are even comming to consoles
+MetalSocks i'm cool with the idea of paid mods, but it needs to be properly curated
you know
like how steam greenlight isn't?
Fantastic video. Your work just keeps getting better and better.
"you can't have mods on consoles"
Actually, Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3 does have mod support, amazingly enough
Just came here from the Dragon Age Inquisition forums... ah well at least Witcher 3 will have mod support!
I feel that mod support is neglected so much because its a PC thing; and is of little importance to developers who want to sell 10 million copies @ $60 on console in 1 week and then sell micro-DLC for 1 year.
And of course since Sony and Microsoft get a cut out of every DLC sale; its not in their interest to insist on bringing mods to their platforms.
In doing so; all parties fail to see the larger picture. They could have sold 10 million copies @ $60 AND another 20 million more copies @ $20-30 over the course of the next 3 years; leading to a healthy flow of income even when they DO NOT have any major releases coming up; something that every company desires.
"all parties fail to see the larger picture" seems like a fantastic summary of the entire industry from the Wii/Xbox 360/PS3 generation onward.
Yeah that corporate model destroys good honest modding.
Dragon Age Inquisition does have mod support.
10:20 like you said, the ability to change the game around provides a huge value to customers. Without the ability to change the perspective from first person to third person, and without the ability to add anime mods and new levels, I would not have gotten left4dead 2
This is very true, It's probably one of the main reasons Gmod, and even Minecraft is such a hit. The fact that you can put anything you want, from the huge variety of mods available it's like endless fun trying out all the mods.
Also a great part of modding is the total conversion mod projects or even complete code projects such as Freespace 2's Source Code Project making the 1999 game into a fully modern product with mods based on that, the Europa Barbarorum mod for Rome Total War for history buffs or educational purposes, and so many more other great projects, big and small, there likely are too many to list here. Still, shoutouts to Freelancer's modding, Mount and Blade, Crysis 1, Morrowind, Oblivion, and of course those named in the video, including GTA 4.
Great video overall!
As long as Bethesda open world games have mod support modding can never die
I don't think the dlc as an advantage for non-modded games holds up. Skyrim has its own dlc while also being modded, but people still buy the official dlc because it is truly good content.
I'm very happy you came out in support of the modding scene. I am/was very active in it; some of the credits you might see to my name include voice acting roles in 1187, Cry of Fear, and others, including a C&C Red Alert 3 mod. Modding has to exist in order for the PC market to thrive. It's one of the biggest selling points for the PC market: there is a community and a set of tools that will let people make content for a game and expand the playability of it. Hell, we've had releases of CounterStrike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, The Stanley Parable, and Dear Esther [though my opinions about the last two titles are less than favorable because I know of their development cycles and fun stories about them] come from just a few guys and girls sitting in front of their home computer and opening up Hammer. This is also what propels some companies into super-stardom long-term; VALVe comes to mind, beyond the scope of their brilliant game design. Companies that shut out modding or make it hard literally are slicing off an arm, so to speak. They separate themselves from the community by putting them on a pedestal as the "hand that feeds" even if they release content that is inferior to the passion of a few players. Though modding is threatened right now actually more by the allure of the indie market [why release for free when you can make the same content and get money for it?] and not as much by the release of games that make modding near impossible, modding is still alive and well. You just need to know where to look.
And then Rockstar and Take-Two officially stated they don't like mods for GTAV
I find strange that this channel has so few visitors, it's one of my favorite channels on youtube, intelligent critics and really good narrative, keep it like that!
Brilliant points, one thing I'd like to mention though is this current trend of new age PC Gamers who are afraid of stepping out of the comfort zone of Steam, I've seen many PC Gamers flat out refuse to try modding because it isn't "Steam Workshop Verified", like come on, that's the most anti-PC way of thinking, modding doesn't need Steam to hold its hand, modding can grow on its own, it has done for years without "Steam Workshop", there is no need for Steam Workshop to be forced onto modding communities because it's the latest thing because that's just putting us into a walled garden where we have to play it safe by what Steam will or wont allow, where as communities like nexus websites, etc, allow true freedom in trying things, seeing what works, etc, that is the point of modding. Places like ModDB are brilliant with that as well, allowing Total Conversion projects, such as the Vice City Stories PC Edition Project, which replaces Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on PC with a game that wasn't released on PC!
I find it funny how harsh you are on Saints Row in this video because over the past few weeks we have got news about Mod Tools being released, a port of Saints Row 1 coming to PC via DLC for Saints Row 2, etc, so I guess they got the message at some point. I'm also all for modding fixing games, GTA titles on PC being a prime example of that, Rockstar's efforts on PC have been close to lazy ever since Grand Theft Auto III and you can find fan made patches out there that fix a hell of a load of broken things in these games that Rockstar were happy to ignore.
Granted this person's taste in games, I think he should have mentioned Minecraft (really cliche, but a great example never-the-less)
Minecraft servers are only hostable due to mods otherwise every server would be a barren wasteland of lava and griefed houses. Thank god for hMod and it's successor Bukkit. Now if only Bukkit updated faster... No, I no longer expect the Mojang API to ever come out they promised that it would too long ago to fool me any more.
***** same thing happened with Counterstrike, and star wars battlefront
***** CS came from Halflife, battlefront came from a battlefield 1942 mod
The Dice and BF4 mod situation makes me laugh. Dice started out building the DC mod for BF 1944.
Battlefront started out as a mod for Battlefield.
According to steam, the longest I have played an unmodded game for was 48 hours (X-comm, enemy unknown). I have 6 games that have over 100 hours of game play, all of which had the life expectancy drastically extended due to mods. (Skyrim, Crusader Kings 2, Civilization IV, Victoria II, Medieval II Total War and Europa Universalis III)
I've purchased games just for the mods before (Arma II and Europa Universalis III) and I've intentionally held off on buying some games (Saints Row IV) due to lack of mod support.
Mods make games fun, there is no question about it.
Awesome channel. Brought here from Metal Gear vids. Subscribed. (My replacement for Extra Credits).
Why a replacement for Extra Credits?
Anti-gg and starting to really slip on content.
realevilcorgi
They have pretty useless conversations about games. Like that whole 'improvisation, planning, ehh'. I knew it was just stupid, but I love games so much I figured I enjoyed it anyway. Now I just think they've jumped on the hipster train. They're smart but I don't think they have one smack of integrity or conviction.
*****
yeah, they know who their market is, and they know what that market wants. They gained a lot of their audience from the Escapist, and even after they split from them, a lot of the same crowd still stuck with them. Hearing about how games are sexist and how gamergate is like the worstest thing evar guise is exactly what their viewerbase wants to hear. At one point, I was willing to say that they were one of the few people I respected enough to consider their point, regardless of previous convictions, but as time went on they very gradually lost that respect. At this point I only stick around for Extra History (which is /also/ tinged with their hipster notions, watch their series on the Great War, it lacks any mention of the actual fighting or the peace negotiations because they're just too cool to talk about the parts most people actually need to know about for schoolwork purposes)
I've actually never liked extra credits even in their early days. To me it always seemed like they were regurgitating boring generalizations of average opinions of average gamers (I have no idea what they're doing now). I found more interesting analysis of video games in blog posts by developers and occasionally in forum posts from exceptionally insightful fans.
While I don't agree with super bunnyhop about everything I've been impressed enough to subscribe to him. In what I've watched so far he's always given me at least some new ideas to grapple with which is a quality not easy to find on the internet.
I remember when I first got into PC gaming back in 2012, I bought the original Half bundle because I wanted Cry of Fear (before it was released on Steam), and Afraid of Monsters Director's cut. That bundle, and Age of Empires II HD, were the only games on Steam I ever bought for full price that had excellent mod support, and boy were they worth it.
So we can all agree, Minecraft needs a modeling API!!!
You are absolutely right. I have had many games stay on my hard drive longer due to excellent mods that were created. One game that had an excellent list of Mods was Battlefield 1942. I ended up downloading a lot of different variations of the game and it made it much more interesting and enjoyable. It was also amazing that two of those mods Desert Combat and Starwars later made a huge impact on the gaming industry with the DC team developing the classic Battlefield 2 (that had so many innovative features that allowed for coordinated team play.) and the Battlefront series which was inspired by the Starwars mod indirectly. I am pretty upset that the gaming Publisher's and Developer's don't allow modding in a lot of their titles. As you said it really adds value to the game itself as well as a great stepping stone for aspiring game developers to use in order to get into the industry. Great Video. Well, all of your videos are excellent because I get something out of them. Keep up the great work! :)
One of my favorite thing about George's videos is the scanlines and green/brown/yellow color schemes it just feels so comfy
1:50 god bless you magical flying bicycle man
It took awhile, but Saints Row 4 now has Steam Workshop support.
Saints row surely supported sexy shops with the giant purple dildo.
Jesus! I just saw the publish date on this!? This was released when I had only just left high school... Madness
As a new indie dev, I can safely say that the one thing stopping me having mod support is.... Well, it's hard to make in the first place, that's pretty much it.
"more worse" ugh that gave me a headache
grammar nazi much?
I totally would have been comfortable with this video being an hour long. Really well done, and totally on point.
>Grand Theft Auto embraces mods
>GTAV adds junk code to confuse modders and make it more difficult and to deliberately make mods run like shit.
again with a wonderful video, you guys rock.
I think that modding actually helps sell DLC. I bought Skyrim on a console because I didn't have a gaming PC at the time and then bought it again once I did have a PC just for mods. I had already played all the DLC for Skyrim, but I bought it again because several of the mods I wanted to use required the DLC. Whenever I see DLC or updates for games with modding communities I get excited about all the possibilities for modding that they open up.
Tripwire interactive is a shining example of the beauty of modding.
Mad props for including "Cry Of Fear", aka the last great "Silent Hill" game released this past generation.
Beautifully put as always SBH. Yes, modding gives tools for creative content, many mods even fix games that most won't play because of flawed mechanics or just bug fixing overall, Valve deserves congratulations for making their games super easy to mod, I remember in the old days that I didn't have money to get games every week like today, so many hours spent in Day of defeat, Natural Selection, Sven coop, The specialist. Whatever happened to modding on BF (well, yeah EA happened), the quality and focus of mods from BF2 in the new engines would be a blast. I wonder how much of this anti-modding scheme is our fault for buying DLC and how much can we influence the return of modding tools with our wallets...
This video is great and stands the test of time.
All the points he raised in this video illustrate perfectly my reasons for playing minecraft with ~30 mods.
God, I miss George!
Fun fact if a game can support dlc it can also support modding, infact it's safe to assume in many cases that some extra hoops where jumped through to make sure modifications are neigh impossible.
I remembered playing hours upon hours of custom maps on Starcraft 1 because of its custom map editor, from crazy RPGs to Tower defense games. Heck, DOTA was originally a Warcraft 3 map/mod that now spawned two of the biggest franchises out there (LoL and Dota2). Modding, I agree, is very, very important.
Good points about modding. It really does prolong the life of games way past their prime. Asheron's Call is still around and i played that game so many years ago.
Love your videos dude! Thx for the hard work
As someone that is becoming a programmer for a living, I completely agree with the modular development style. Easy to read code that can be easily changed should be an industry norm. It doesn't just help the modding community, as it can help developers while making the game. Being able to see what someone else in the studio is doing makes it so much easier for you to add what you need to add. It also helps when fixing bugs and balancing gameplay before release. Whenever I write code, it bothers me when I write some code that looks really ugly. My mind is always "what is the most elegant solution" to the problem. I don't understand why some developers don't do that. Even if you don't have mod support, it still helps development and makes the work developers less of a pain.
Yeah comments and putting every code segment in it's own method / function is very important
You are not a good programmer if you don't do that
Exactly. I take a block-coding approach with every little section that does something getting its own comment. Sometimes my comments are just as long as that block of code.
saxdude01 Well comments should be easily understandable so shorter ones are much more useful here.
But I of course don't know what you are working on...
I mean for the really technical stuff that someone not that experienced in code code understand what I am doing. I mean basic stuff like checking if the command line arguments are right would be short. So if I was writing code for a game that will support mods, the harder to understand parts if would have much more detailed comments. For short stuff like gun stats, it would be more like:
AK-47 stats. Damage, accuracy, range
So it does depend on what the code looks like and who your audience is.
saxdude01 What language are you coding in?
Mount and Blade:Warband with the Floris modpack, STALKER Call of Pripyat with the Misery mod, Minecraft with TerraFirmaCraft mod, Skyrim with the Brutal Skyrim mod list (survival, basic needs, hypothermia, more challenging combat and economy) along with a huge texture, atmosphere, and animation mod pack I forget the name of, and Fallout 3 with the Wanderer's Edition (along with a few others). Some of my favorite and most expansive mods I've ever used. If anyone likes any of these games, consider checking them out. Some of them, as the names suggest (Misery/Brutal) make the games pretty challenging so read up on the stuff first see if you're into it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who played as Sweden in Empire: Total War
I played Skyrim for 6 years straight for Christ’s sake
It's ironic that you start with GTA V since when it was released on PC rockstar started banning modders. I'm pretty sure they recently banned the guys making GTAVMP, which is a huge scumbag move.
And this is why Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis / Resistance is still alive after over 10 years. Insane modding capabilities.
8years later. There are many many people who will pay that 2 dollars.
I found a mod for Red Faction Gurilla that took the reconstructor weapon from multiplayer and put it in single player. That alone elevated it from a good game to a great game for me. It's way too fun tearing down the massive bridge just to rebuild it and knock it down again.
I subscribed after watching this. I like SR4 a lot, but mods would be a great addition. Loved the total conversion of Oblivion, Nehrim.
Please continue talking about interesting stuff.
The Steam version of the original Fallout comes preloaded with a graphics enhancement mod, which can be disabled but is enabled by default.
I just bought Skyrim aa few weeks ago and it's the first game which I started unleashing mods on. Holy hell, this video really does hit the nail on the head.
8:57 Fallout 4 has an inbuilt mod browser on both Xbox AND PS4 (although the PS4 mods aren't as good due to limitations.)
as i rewatch stuff years later while idly playing BOTW, this is really applicable to the old Petz games versus new Petz games. you can see exactly how that series went from cult classic to now, well, a sad nintendogs ripoff. and the main thing was... the loss of it being easy to mod. a large part of the player base was into "hexxing". for many there, it was their first taste of computer programming, and uniquely so with a playerbase that was predominantly female. there's some interesting articles already written out there on Medium about women who followed that interest in STEM pointing directly to hexxing new petz dog breeds as how they got their start down that road to computer programming or engineering or any matter of things. and bizarrely, this is still going! people are still trucking along doing that in modern day - just like how people are still out there modding Jedi Academy. but the petz games that switched to a nintendogs style play, with modding impossible or at least highly improbable? yeah, nobody's playing those anymore.
it's the same thesis, proven in a really interesting sphere that was - and still is - predominantly female. and that's kinda neat to me, and probably to you too as well, if you ever get the time to poke your nose in and have a look around.
note: i might be showing a little too much that my Perfect Super Bunnyhop Video would be an examination of the AI life/pet sim boom that there was, and how much like point-and-click adventure games, it seems to have straight-up died due to shifting market forces, and hearing George examine both what those market forces were... as well as the interesting unintended repercussions of that boom (ex. hi my name is Calamity Janine and i went and got me a biology degree in part 'cos i grew up playing the Creatures games and being able to see the simulated hard science behind the cute critters, so it didn't seem overwhelming or beyond me or unimportant to me, because i'd been introduced to it in that way).
Minecraft is a great example of the importance of modding :P
VERY surprised you didn't mention it.
X COM 2 Mods made the replayablility go through the roof. I'm on my 4th play through, so good.
This makes me want to dig up my old Oblivion copy and start modding the hell out of it again.
I think I've found my new favourite channel ^^
I totally agree though. Games like The Sims, Half Life, Skyrim etc live and die by their mods. I've put hundreds of hours in to each of those due to their mods.
I would like to mention Dawn of War: Ultimate Apocalypse as an excellent example of a mod that has kept people playing Dawn of War: Soulstorm 8 years after launch. It essentially compiled a lot of mods created by numerous groups and added additional content to essentially allow players to play any army they wanted if it was found in Warhammer 40K. Tyranids, all 4 Chaos greater demons, titans, etc were available when Relic couldn't add them to the game in the first place. A much better experience than DoW2, and I hope those guys were hired to help with DoW3.
One example I'm surprised no one mentioned is Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Most people would probably agree that it was pretty crappy on its release, mainly for its limitations, less-challenging campaigns and even its art style (which personally wasn't an issue for me). Then somebody came along and created a program that allows someone to import models from sketch-up or blender into the game to create custom scenery, and there would later be programs made to do the same for custom rides. Now the game has maintained some level of popularity with the community, as its vanilla content becomes more irrelevant.
Then again, this is mostly from an idealistic perspective that's centered around making a fantasy possible, not actual park management and handling finances, like it was in the first 2 games. RCT2 has its own batch of user-made content too, but I personally dont think it has the same appeal, since you don't feel the need to add fine details to your creations in an isometric game, and RCT2 didn't really need a saving grace like RCT3 did.
What was that one FPS game with the cell phone in your video? It first appears at around 3:44
That's "Cry of Fear"
Thanks for the response.
I actually may have heard of this game. It had some creepy enemies in it. Floating beds, and the like.
Speaking of mods, I've been wondering what mods I should be using for GTA 4. For instance, is there a mod for setting in-mission checkpoints? I already know people have modded GTA 5's radial menus into the game, as well as the most recent graphical overhaul.
Creepy enemy = floating bed.
I need to see this.
GBA Pokémon. Rom Hacks and Mods are some of the biggest reasons why GEN 3 is my favorite part of the Pokémon series.
(waves at Bunnyhop from a dark alley, whispers to him) "Total conversions almost as good as proper releases, ey ?" (pulls something out of his coat and grins) "Here, The Dark Mod. You'll love it, kiddo. ;-)"
Great video man. because of mods I'm having lots of fun again with Fallout 3.
Shout outs to Project M for bringing my Smash Bros Brawl disk out of the attic. Breathed new life into that game.
Eh, I don't like how you end on the note that the lack of modding is all about greed. As a business, frankly that's how the decision should be approached. You can't just take shareholder's money and waste it.
I think what would be more interesting is identifying when it makes good business sense for a game to be moddable and when it doesn't.
For example, does it make sense for the Call of Duty series to be moddable (I have no idea if it is BTW, since I'm a console gamer and never even played CoD)? The optimal strategy seems to be to get their fans to get to the next iteration as soon as possible (and develop the games on a timely manner too).
So you have a downward pressure on revenue and upward pressure on cost.
The counter argument is that there will be an INCREMENTAL increase in buyers of CoD, which I just don't see given how much CoD gobbled up marketshare. Another counter argument is that modding would increase the shelf life of the series, and while that might be true, if you do the calculations the profits gained by not modding is probably higher than the profits gained by modding.
On the other hand, a game like Saints Row might have more to gain in terms of profit relative to GTA from being moddable. I don't know, but to me that's the more interesting and relevant question. Because for most people game development is ultimately a business, not a hobby like modding.
Yet one of your favourite games is a game that doesn't allow mods, MGS3. It could be that either it is only available for console or it could be something that the game includes features that would have been in mods like food, cure and camouflage (both in gameplay and appearance) or maybe it's just that there is something that is taking away the need for mods (like quality of the game or its 'open-ended' feel and play).
A mod scene for consoles actually does exist, but not in the form you're thinking of. They're mostly centered around romhacks for older games where the security of the underlying platform has long since been cracked. But mods on consoles are totally doable, it's just a matter of platform holders not wanting to let the community do what it wants with their hardware.
Plenty of Japanese games that never came to the west have gotten English language releases thanks to fan translation mods, something I rarely if ever actually see on the PC side where such things are actually far easier to build. Everything from random NES games to most of the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem games to freaking MOTHER 3 are only playable for non-Japanese speakers if you use a ROM dump, a patch, and a system emulator.
Before he was sweeping 2015 GOTY awards with UNDERTALE, Toby Fox had made a partial-conversion EarthBound horror mod some time ago called EarthBound Halloween. It added an original follow-up story featuring a new character and even added custom music to the game, something which was considered ridiculously difficult even now. (EarthBound's fanmade mod tools at the time were notorious for turning an in-progress mod into a corrupt, glitchy mess)
Super Mario Maker is actually one of the rare examples of a console game that encourages some kind of player modification. I mean, it's obvious to more people than just me that things like the music box item were added to that game specifically to encourage it's use in recreating 2007-era Automatic Mario videos, right? I refuse to believe Nintendo employees weren't looking at what Mario mods looked like when they decided the set of features available in Super Mario Maker. Nothing else could explain why we had a music box and no checkpoints.
I'm a console gamer, but I am buying a gaming PC sometime early 2014 because of mods. I see myself becoming a PC gamer more so than console in the future.
Question: how well does an Xbox 360 controller work with PC gaming?
Very well! Most modern PC games that don't have a super-complicated control scheme suppport it right off the bat, even exclusives.
Sweet!! Thank you for answering.. Can't wait to play fallout new vegas without the horrid glitches that are in the PS3 version.
You know all those multiplatform games that are on consoles as well as PC?. Well they all work with a 360 controller exactly like 360. You don't need to download drivers or mess with settings as it just works. I have my PC hooked up to my TV in the living room as it's 3D and I play nearly all my games with a 360 controller.
In fact there is even indie games that are not on consoles that support controller. There is some PC games like say Amnesia that only work with mouse and keyboard or older PC games but for 95% of all my PC gaming is done with a 360 pad.
Also about 4 years ago I decided to try PC gaming and am very happy with it. Before I got my PC I knew nothing about them and had no one to help me but by the end of the first day I was playing Crysis and downloading emulators for old consoles and arcades and playing retro games.
I think you will enjoy PC gaming mate
Extra effort to introduce mod support? It's only extra effort if you already built your game with a piss-poor half-assed design that would barely work to begin with. Which makes sense when you look at BF4's current state.
+An Ordinator golden piss.
Actually Volition (the developers of Saints Row) do support modding, and are trying to release as many of their development tools as they can. They just didn't until mid-2013 because THQ didn't let them before they were bought by Deep Silver.
I've always found it nerve wracking to ever mess with the code of a video game, even for mods that everyone says makes a game more playable. I'm always worried that I will delete something or replace an x with a y in the wrong place and competly ruin the game I was mildy enjoying already.
Love the video man.
I 100% agree with your taste in Elder Scrolls mods, and your opinions on mods in general. However you did the entire video about PC game modding without mentioning Minecraft. It basically went from an indie hit into a AAA title on every console of the last couple generations. It's grown into such a huge cultural phenomenon because the community was very free expand on the source code and build a custom experience. I would love to see other games be able to have pre-built modpacks.
That's so true. Modding is the biggest reason i prefer pc gaming over console games. And because of mods it's still fun for me to play really old games like Half life
Greetings from 2017, you will be happy to know that there are some really big games adding mods now such as: Call of duty Black ops 3, hearts of iron 4, Fallout 4 and many more. Also in the latest battlefield they have introduced community game modes where the community can create new game modes.
MuchMemesGaming775 and OpenIV for GTA has been shut down :( by Take Two.
I've noticed that the games that usually get modded really aren't good until someone mods them and fix them. The most recent example I tried out was Project M for Smash Bros. Brawl. And in someway this could actually hurt sales of Smash 4 since brawl has left a lot of people skeptical to the point where they might just stick with Project M. Or when WiiU gets emulated people might just move on and fix smash 4 aswell who knows.
I've noticed that you're wrong, because Quake, DOOM, Half-Life, Unreal and Thief are some of the best games ever made, period.
retractingblinds
That's a nice opinion you have there. You don't seem like the kind of person who tolerates people disagreeing with you though.
retractingblinds those games you listed may be very good, but you haven't completely refuted their point. some games rely too heavily on their modding community to bring their standard up to par. see: bethesda games, or as the reviewer stated in his video, gta4.
Disshock GTA 4 wasn't poor. Sure in terms of the PC port it was shite, but the overall game wasn't.
"You can't have mods on consoles."
Super Smash Bros. Brawl clearly defies that.
That requires one to mod the system, And i'm pretty sure Nintendo isn't exactly okay with it like devs on PC are.
Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3 is probably the only game ever to have proper built-in mod support on a console. Yeah it was limited in what it can do but it really was a step forward - it's silly how nobody else caught onto the idea.
It does not require console mods but it does require a very strange loophole in the games code
patriotai I still don't think Nintendo would appreciate that. Not to say it shouldn't be done, but it's not as openly accepted as modding is on PC.
TankBus yeah I agree with your overall point I was just saying
I'm a bit surprised this video didn't manage ROMhacking, which serves a similar purpose to modding, but with (mostly) retro console games reverse-engineered by hackers. PC gaming may lend itself to modding easier, but ROMhacking has given an amazingly long life to games like Super Mario World and Super Metroid in pretty much the exact same way moddng does.
I picked up Half-Life in 1998 on release and I STILL play it to this day because of mods.
Great vid. Yay for critique of corporate greed! :)