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Video game modding

Modification of video games by fans

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People can become fans of specific mods and can involve themselves in the process of mod development and discourse. In cases where modding is popular, players use the term vanilla to describe the unmodified game (e.g. "Vanilla Minecraft").

Mods that extensively transform gameplay are known as total conversions, with some developing into distinct games. As early as the 1980s, video game mods have also been used for the sole purpose of creating art, as opposed to a playable game, leading to the rise of artistic video game modification, as well as machinima and the demoscene.

With tens of thousands of mods created for popular games, the proliferation of video game modding has made it an increasingly important factor in the success of many games. Modding extends the replay value and interest of the game.

History

Spacewar! (1962) and early endeavors

A specific date of origin for video game modding has not been agreed upon by historians, partly due to discussion over what constitutes a mod and partly because of insufficient historical documentation. However, the very first computer games already were being actively modified by the first generation of hackers, and researchers have described modding as an evolution of the hacker culture which pioneered the video game industry.

Widely considered one of the first computer games, the 1962 game Spacewar! was distributed freely as testing software for the PDP-1, an early computer. The game was a result of hardware and software experimentation, supported by the programming culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). On university campuses where the computer was installed, programmers continued to experiment with the game by modifying it heavily, allured by the prospect of fixing a "dire problem [...] as easily as changing a few instructions", as Steven Levy describes. Their efforts resulted in a wave of improvements to Spacewar!, from changing aspects such as gameplay physics to creating new graphics. The final version of the game was ultimately a product of a group effort of hackers, who contributed to the game without pay. In this way, Spacewar! was not only the first video game, but also the first video game to be modded. On the popularity of hacking Spacewar!, Levy reflected:

Like any other program, it was placed in the drawer for anyone to access, look at, and rewrite as they saw fit. The group effort that stage by stage had improved the program could have stood for an argument for the Hacker Ethic: an urge to get inside the workings of the thing and make it better had led to measurable improvement. And of course it was all a huge amount of fun.

Other early video games also released as iterations of collaborative improvements. Colossal Cave Adventure, a text adventure game developed by Will Crowther and released in 1976, was greatly expanded upon by Stanford graduate Don Woods. After receiving the source code to the game from Crowther, Woods increased the game's complexity and released a modified version in 1977 to instant success. The desire to improve software—the "hacker ethic", as described by Levy—became a crucial factor to the emergence of modern modding culture.

Before the development of affordable and more accessible personal computers, the ability to mod games was restricted to where computers at the time were able to be installed, such as university campuses like MIT. With the advent of home computers in the late 1970s to early 1980s, such as the Apple II and the Commodore 64, video games were given a new space to flourish, accompanied by a new generation of modders. The subculture of "cracking" video games—hacking their source code—emerged as a niche endeavor among hobbyists. Cracks added gameplay cheats or removed copyright structures, allowing games to be distributed freely. Using basic file editing software and a program that would dump the contents of files, modders additionally scoured games for their assets through trial and error, with the goal of replacing them with their own levels and graphics. A famous example is Castle Smurfenstein, a modification of the 1981 Apple II game Castle Wolfenstein. Andrew Johnson and Preston Nevins, two high school students, replaced the game's Nazi characters with those from the popular 1980s cartoon The Smurfs. The game is often cited as a pioneering example of modding culture.

id Software, Doom (1993)

As video games grew more sophisticated, hacking them became an increasingly cumbersome task, often requiring modders to effectively write over the original content. While modders created amateur game editing tools out of necessity, they were often buggy, inefficient, and incomplete, ultimately necessitating good programming skills for mod development. New assets were processed through multiple software packages in order to be modded into the game engine. Scott Miller, founder of 3D Realms (formerly Apogee Software), was fascinated by the levels and level editors fans created for Apogee's 1991 game Duke Nukem, reflecting: "We just didn't expect players to take the time and effort to create their own development tools."

Modding continued with the release of Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, published by Apogee and developed by id Software, who had bought the rights to Castle Wolfenstein. Miller and his team at Apogee noted how modding helped extend the life of the game by providing free additional content for players. One such mod swapped the game's music with the theme song from the children's show Barney & Friends and replaced the final boss with Barney the Dinosaur. While some members of id were concerned about copyright infringement, id programmers and co-founders John Carmack and John Romero were delighted by the Barney mod. Carmack was surprised by its sophistication compared to the Apple II cheats he had created for games such as the Ultima series in the 1980s. Intrigued, he made a conscious effort to facilitate custom content creation when designing the company's next game, Doom.

Released in 1993, Doom was the first game to introduce modding to a wider audience due to the degree of depth it allowed its modders. With Wolfenstein 3D, players had to erase game data to replace it; this destructiveness concerned Carmack and Romero. When developing Doom, Carmack purposely separated the game engine files from other assets, including level architecture, graphics, and audio, which were stored in a "WAD" file (an acronym for "where's all the data?"). While the system was also motivated by the game industry's push towards realism that required larger storage, it was specifically intended to make modding easier. With Doom, modders only needed to change which WAD file the game would reference, meaning that custom assets could be modified and distributed without sharing the original game data.

Nearing the official release of Doom, Carmack sent emails to Wolfenstein modders, detailing the game's new modding capabilities. He also uploaded the source code for the game's level editing and utilities programs. Weeks after the release, hackers developed level and map-editing programs to modify existing Doom levels or make other minor adjustments. In 1994, the Doom Editor Utility was created by an international team of modders led by a student at the University of Canterbury, greatly lowering the skill threshold required to make a mod and advertising the ability to create entirely new levels. The DeHackEd from a University of Michigan student was released in the same year, which additionally allowed users to modify the executable file of the game. Later, in 1997, id published Doom as open source, allowing a greater customization of mods with the source code available. The open nature of Doom inspired a flood of creativity, with modding tools promising to "do almost anything to any level". Another factor in the popularity of Doom modding was the increasing popularity of the Internet and the advent of the World Wide Web, which allowed modding communities to form. Using online forums, modders were able to pool their knowledge and findings for the game.

At a time when the video game industry guarded their intellectual property through copyrights and patents, id Software's willingness to share details about their game's files was novel. Companies like Atari had sued modders in the past for copyright infringement, including a pair of MIT students who had sold modded circuitry intended for the Atari arcade game Missile Command. The release of the source code for Doom's editing software caused debate amongst the team at id, with Carmack's actions being supported by Romero. In exchange for the technical foundation for modding, id requested that mods should only work with the retail version of the game and not the shareware version, benefiting the company commercially. Later first-person shooter developers, such as Valve and Epic, consistently include level editing tools with their games, and it is common for role-playing and strategy games to make a level editor available.

By encouraging player-driven content, id created channels for entry into the video game industry for Doom's modding community. Final Doom, released by id in 1996, integrated fan-made levels, with a share of the profits going to the modders involved. In 1995, id hired Tim Willits as the first employee from the Doom modding community, who later became studio director of id's parent company ZeniMax Media.

Valve, Half-Life (1998), Steam

After the success of Doom, id software would release their future games as open source. Mods for id's Quake, such as "Capture the Flag" and "Team Fortress", became standard gamemodes in later games in the shooter genre. In addition to first-person shooters, which are popular games to mod, the virtual pet genre, with games such as Petz and Creatures, fosters younger modders, particularly girls.

Valve used WorldCraft, a fan-produced tool for Quake, to design Half-Life. In addition to its single-player campaign, Half-Life included the rudimentary multiplayer modes deathmatch and team deathmatch, a game mode created by John Romero for Doom. The multiplayer mods Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike became popular, and eventually Valve acquired them, giving them an official release.

With the increase in popularity of the modding scene, video game companies began to capitalize on the appeal of creating user-generated content. By the mid-1990s, PC games were commonly bundled with modding tools, external software which allows users to create mods for their paired games. Games that launched with these tools were noteworthy in review and often contributed to their commercial success; in 2003, eight of the top 10 selling PC video games were bundled with modding tools.

Steam, a video game digital distribution service created by Valve Corporation, was specifically designed for the proliferation of successful, stand-alone mods. The platform offered a US$995 licensing fee plus royalty for modders to distribute their games. With a beta release in 2002, Steam included a retail-version of Day of Defeat, originally a total conversion mod for Valve's Half-Life whose rights were purchased by the company. Gabe Newell, the founder of Valve, noted that his perception of video games shifted from viewing them as entertainment to embracing them as "productivity platforms". Since then, the client has become one of the largest online marketplaces for games. The platform introduced full support for finding and playing mods for Valve's Team Fortress 2, a game that itself originated as a mod for Quake. The Steam Workshop, introduced to the platform in 2012, allows players to mod Steam-hosted games directly within the interface.

In April 2015, Valve introduced paid mods to the Steam Workshop as an update to the free system already in place. Mod authors received a cut of the profits from mods sold through Steam, with the percentage being determined individually by game developers. The first game to utilize the feature was Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, with mod authors receiving 25 percent of profit from their sales while the remainder was split between Valve and Bethesda. Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, expressed that paid mods would "increase the investment in quality modding", while not infringing on the need for freely distributed mods. The Workshop update resulted in backlash from the modding community, with complaints including having to pay for previously free mods; overpriced mods; content that had been published without its creator's consent; and concerns over mods that contained third-party copyrighted content (i.e., material that neither Valve nor the mod creator owned). Paid mod authors were also the target of backlash, with some receiving death threats and harassing comments. A Change.org petition was launched to remove the feature, garnering over 130,000 signatures. A week after the feature's announcement, Valve discontinued it entirely and agreed to refund those who purchased mods through the system. The removal itself was criticized by mod developers.

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