Modding Communities

[Triscuitable]

I recently bought The Elder Scrolls IV and downloaded roughly fifty mods for it. Then I realized, "Why are so many games on the PC no longer being supported by modding communities, or no mods are availble, period?"

I was curious on your opinions, as the only new games I am aware of being moddable nowadays are RPGs... *Cough* (http://dragonage.bioware.com/)

My point is, games developersthese days need to include more modification support. (I'm looking at YOU, Infinity Ward!) And need to stop boasting that they have it, to slap IW a new one. (DICE, that one is for YOU.)

What do you think about modifications?

[warty goblin]

I wouldn't say that RPGS are the only PC games with mod communities. There's a sizable community around the Unreal 3 engine, quite a lot still being done with the various versions of Source, and even a fair amount with Cry 2 engine.

I agree though that mods seem to be getting less attention than they used to be. I wonder if part of the reason (ignoring the console shaped elephant in the room) isn't that digital distribution is making it much easier for really dedicated teams to produce actual for-sale indie roducts instead of mods. Tripwire is, I think, case in point, since all of their products originally were mods that they cleaned up enough for real for-sale release. Given the quality of their games, I totally support this.

[factotum]

X3: Reunion and X3: TC both have active modding communities, and they're space combat/trading sims. In fact, one mod for X3R so impressed the developers that they got the team who developed it to help out on X3TC, the next game in the series!

[Triaxx]

Supreme Commander did the same thing. Sorian, who wrote an AI (a vastly superior one at that), for the first game, was hired by Gas Powered Games to work on the SupCom 2 AI.

And Sup Com had a vibrant modding community even without any official tools. Oblivion and Fallout 3 both had (relatively) easy to use modding tools and so became popular to mod. Same with Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2.

RPG's are popular to mod, because they're hard to mod, but the devs know it and release the tools they used to make it, so it's easier.

RTS's are easier because there's no dialogue to worry about.

Shooters are less popular because of the legions of screaming online users, who denounce mods as cheating.

[Smiling Knight]

Civilization 4 has a large and active modding community, including a total conversion to a fantasy game.

[Thane of Fife]

Paradox Interactive's games are made to be easily moddable (at least, their strategy games are - I don't know about the others).

[RationalGoblin]

Paradox Interactive's games are made to be easily moddable (at least, their strategy games are - I don't know about the others).

Mount and Blade, while not a strategy game, is also easily moddable.

I believe that Paradox encourages the modders, because the modders generally bring more people who buy the game, thus giving Paradox more money.

[The Orange Zergling]

StarCraft and WarCraft 3 (I never played WC2 online, so I don't know how big the modding community was there) both have thriving modding communities to this day and plenty of people credit the continued success of both to this factor.

Fallout 3 has a pretty large number of mods for it as well, though I've never tried any of them.

And then there are also Valve games, which come with an SDK that has a steep learning curve but has produced some incredibly popular stuff, from what I've heard.

[Triscuitable]

(Is everyone going to try and prove me wrong?)

I was referring to modern modding communities, such as releases from 2008- Present. I was curious why those were seemingly gone.

[RationalGoblin]

(Is everyone going to try and prove me wrong?)

Yes. As for the modern modding communities, sure they're still there, you just have to look harder now.

[factotum]

I was referring to modern modding communities, such as releases from 2008- Present. I was curious why those were seemingly gone.

X3TC was released in October 2008, so I think my point still stands...

[Triaxx]

Too many companies adding multiplayer then getting pissy about people messing with their games.

It doesn't stop anyone, just makes it a bit harder to deal with.

[Jackel]

(Is everyone going to try and prove me wrong?)

I was referring to modern modding communities, such as releases from 2008- Present. I was curious why those were seemingly gone.

You're both wrong and right. There are plenty of modern modding communities but they tend to be based around games which are easily moddable. Additionally, many of the best mods only appear at least a year after the original game releases.

You're simply looking in the wrong places when it comes to mods. For upcoming titles I suggest you keep your eyes on Starcraft 2, which will likely surpass previous Blizzard games when it comes to mod success.

Don't point at modern games which lack mod support and use them as evidence that mod communities are disappearing. If a game doesn't have a mod community it means that game is either a) not good for modding and/or b) doesn't interest talented modders enough.

[Phase]

(Is everyone going to try and prove me wrong?)

I'm only deeply aware of Source modders, and they're still going forward at top speed. Black Mesa is a prominent mod, larger than most games and in development six years. Mods are just more like indies games, it's unlikely that you'll hear of them until it's too late.

Just go to ModDB. Lots of stuff there