Video game modding facts for kids

Video game modding (short for "modification") is when players or fans change parts of a video game. This can be how the game looks or how it plays. Mods can be small changes, like a new outfit for a character, or huge changes that make the game feel completely new. They can make games more fun and interesting, and help you play them for much longer!

Sometimes, "modding a game" also means finding and installing these changes into your game. But just changing settings that are already in the game isn't really modding.

Mods have become very important for how popular some games are. They add more to the original game. Creating mods can be a way for people to show their creativity. Playing mods can be a lot of fun too!

People can become big fans of specific mods, not just the game itself. They might even ask mod creators for new features. If a mod is super popular, players might need to say they are playing the "vanilla" game. This means they are playing the original game without any mods. For example, "vanilla Minecraft" means the original Minecraft game.

Since the 1980s, some video game mods have been made just to create art. This can mean recording gameplay like a movie, or building real-life places inside a game. These art mods might not even be about playing the game. This led to things like artistic video game modification and machinima (movies made in games).

Popular games can have thousands of mods! Websites like Nexus Mods, Mod DB, and Steam Workshop are great places to find and share mods.

How Mods Are Made

Custom characters like Kratos, Carl Johnson, and Snow White in Guitar Hero World Tour are popular mods. They let fans create funny fictional crossovers!

Many mods are not shared with everyone by their creators. Some mods are very small, like just changing a loading screen. Others are "total conversions" that change almost everything in the game. A few mods become so popular that they turn into their own official games! Sometimes, the creators of the original game even buy the rights to these mods.

Making a mod often needs both technical skills and teamwork. A group of mod creators might work together as a "mod team."

Doom (1993) was one of the first games with a huge modding community. The game creators, id Software, made it easy for people to create mods. They also made sure mods only worked with the full game, which helped Doom sell more copies. The rise of the Internet also helped modding communities grow. Mods for Quake (1996), like "Capture the Flag" and "Team Fortress," became standard features in later shooting games. While shooting games are popular for modding, games like Petz (1995) and Creatures (1996) encouraged younger modders, especially girls.

Tools for Modding

Mod-making tools are special programs that help you create mods for a game. Early tools included the Boulder Dash Construction Kit (1986). This allowed players to design their own game levels. Another popular early tool was Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures (1992). It let users build games based on the Pool of Radiance world.

By the mid-1990s, many PC games came with modding tools. If a game didn't have modding tools in the early 2000s, it was often mentioned in reviews. Maxis even released modding tools for The Sims (2000) before the game came out. This meant many fan-made mods were ready when the game launched! The advertising for Neverwinter Nights (2002) focused on its included Aurora toolset. The World Editor for Warcraft III (2002) let players create many custom maps. Famous examples include tower defense and multiplayer online battle arena maps, like Defense of the Ancients. Game companies still show they support modding by providing these tools. Fans can also use open-source software tools to make mods.

There are also free tools that make playing mods easier. They help you download, update, and install mods. This helps people who aren't super tech-savvy enjoy mods. For example, Steam's "Workshop" lets users easily download and install mods for games that support it.

Game Support for Mods

How much a game can be changed by players varies a lot. But this doesn't always affect how many or how good the mods for that game are.

Games that are easy to mod often keep their gameplay rules in simple text files. For example, in the Civilization series, you could change how fast units move on roads. Also, they use common image formats like bitmaps for graphics. Game publishers can also make modding easier by keeping important files separate. Doom kept its art separate from the main program, so it was easy to share and change.

Game publishers support mods in different ways. Some games need expensive professional software to make advanced mods. For example, Homeworld 2 needed Maya to build new game objects. However, there are free versions of Maya and other advanced modeling software. Also, free and open-source programs like Blender can be used.

For very complex mods, like "total conversions" such as Desert Combat, you need advanced modeling and texturing software. Making these mods can be as much work as making parts of the original game! So, other things like a game's popularity are more important for how many mods are made for it.

A game that allows modding is called "moddable." The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and its older games, Morrowind and Oblivion, are great examples of highly moddable games. They even have an official editor you can download. Supreme Commander was designed to be super customizable. It had a mod manager that let players use several mods at once.

The game industry is still figuring out how much to support players who create new content. Some companies really encourage modding communities. Others protect their games with strict copyright rules. They might even shut down websites they think are breaking their ownership rules.

Risks of Modding

In 2015, some players of Grand Theft Auto V found that certain mods were spreading harmful software. These mods could try to steal account information. The mods were removed, and players were told to change their passwords and clean their computers.

The National Crime Agency in the UK has suggested that modding could sometimes lead people towards cybercrime.

Why Modders Create Mods

The Internet makes it easy and cheap to share user created content like mods. This is part of what's called Web 2.0. Video game modding is like "remixing" games. It's similar to the playful hacker culture that made the first video games.

Mods can be helpful for players and a way for people to express themselves. There are three main reasons why fans create mods:

• To fix problems in the game.
• To express their creativity.
• To try and get a job in the video game industry.

It's been noted that modders often have a strong sense of community. Older modders, who might already have jobs, are less likely to be modding just to become professionals.

History of Modding

One of the first games that let users easily make changes was Lode Runner (1983). It came with a level editor. This let players create and save their own levels to share with others on the same computer.

id Software's Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was an early first-person shooter. It wasn't made for modding, but players found ways to change its files. They created their own levels and graphics. Because of this, when id Software made their next game, Doom, they designed it differently. They kept the game engine separate from the levels and graphics. These were put into a "WAD" file, which stands for "Where's All the Data?" This made it much easier for modders to change the game by just changing the WAD file. This led to many Doom modding efforts. Id Software's idea of separating game data from the main program became very important for future video game modding.

Official Support for Mods

Mods can make games stay popular for much longer. For example, Half-Life (1998) kept selling well for three years because of its mods. Usually, a game's popularity lasts about 12 to 18 months. In 2012, the DayZ mod for ARMA 2 made the three-year-old game incredibly popular again. It became a top seller for months! Sometimes, modders who don't like piracy even create mods that only work with a legal copy of the game.

Half-Life even had an annual mod expo run by Valve, starting in 1999. It showed off new games made using the Half-Life engine.

Because mods have become so popular and well-made, some game developers, like Firaxis, have included fan-made mods in official expansion packs. Valve even hired the lead designer of Defense of the Ancients, IceFrog, to help develop Dota 2.

For example, many fan-made maps and mods were included in Civilization II and Civilization III expansion packs. In Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, two existing mods, Rhye's and Fall of Civilization and Fall from Heaven, were included. Sid Meier, who once didn't want to support mods in Civilization II, later said that "the strength of the modding community is ... the very reason the series survived."

Legal Side of Mods

The laws about copyright for video games and mods are still changing and can be complicated. It's not always clear who owns the copyright for mods: the company that made the game, the player who created the mod, or the creators of individual parts of the mod. Video games are protected by copyright law. In the United States, the ways modders change game code might go against laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Most game agreements (EULAs) say modders can't sell their mods. Companies also worry about mods using copyrighted material from other companies. For example, a Quake mod called "Aliens vs. Predator" had legal issues with 20th Century Fox. Some companies, like Nintendo, try to stop modding with strict rules.

Some people think that fans using copyrighted material in mods is part of a "moral economy." They believe in sharing mods and code freely. It has been argued that very big mods (total conversions) might be allowed under "fair use" in the United States.

Modding can be compared to the open-source-software movement, where software is shared freely.

In 2006, Second Life became popular partly because user-made content (mods) was a main part of the game. The creators of the content kept their intellectual property rights. This led to a market where players could sell their creations.

Types of Mods

Total Conversion Mods

A total conversion mod changes almost all the art and sometimes the main gameplay of an existing game. Total conversions can make a game feel like a completely different genre.

The Half-Life modding community split into different groups, each focusing on a specific total conversion. Famous examples include Counter-Strike (1999), whose creators were hired by Valve to make it a commercial game. Another is Defense of the Ancients (2003), which was the first MOBA game to have sponsored tournaments. Garry's Mod (2006) is another, where fans created thousands of game modes over many years.

Many popular total conversions later become standalone games. They replace any remaining original parts so they can be sold without copyright infringement. Some are even approved for sale even if they use the original game's ideas, like Black Mesa.

Overhaul Mods

An overhaul mod makes big changes to a game's graphics and gameplay. The goal is usually to make the original game better, but not to make it a completely different experience. This can also include new dialogue and music.

Examples include Deus Ex: Revision. The publisher, Square Enix, allowed it to be released on Steam alongside the original game. Another is GTA 5 Redux. It improves the game's textures, adds a new weather system, and changes how the wanted system and vehicles work.

Randomizer Mods

Randomizers are mods that keep the main gameplay but mix up elements of the game. They are often used for older games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. The goal is to make the game more challenging. Randomizers became popular with the speedrunning community. One of the first was for The Legend of Zelda around 2015. In this randomizer, the mod moved dungeons, changed their layouts, and moved enemies randomly. This made speedrunners have to figure out new ways to play. Their popularity grew because randomizer playthroughs were fun to watch on streaming sites. Some games now offer official randomizer modes as downloadable content.

Add-on Mods

An add-on or addon is usually a small mod that adds new content to a game. Most add-ons add one specific thing. This could be a new weapon in a shooting game, a new unit or map in a strategy game, or new items in games like Minecraft or Terraria. For example, ComputerCraft is a Minecraft mod that adds programmable computers and robots. This lets players automate tasks in the game. Add-ons usually don't change the original game's content.

However, some add-ons might have to replace existing game content. This happens if the game engine doesn't allow adding new things easily. For example, in games where you can't choose your character, modders might replace the old character model with a new one. The Grand Theft Auto series has many mods like this. The Left 4 Dead series also has add-ons that players can choose to turn on or off.

Unofficial Patch Mods

An unofficial patch is a mod that fixes bugs that the official game developers haven't fixed. It can also unlock content that is in the game files but can't be accessed normally. Fans usually create these patches when the original developers can't or won't fix things officially. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 has an unofficial patch that adds and fixes many features. These mods can also reveal hidden or partly deleted content.

Art Mods

An art mod is a mod made for artistic reasons. Art mods are often linked to video game art. They are usually designed to change the original game experience in an artistic way. One example is the Velvet-Strike mod for Counter Strike. Players would spray-paint anti-violence messages in multiplayer games as a form of performance art. Another example is Robert Nideffer's Tomb Raider I and II patches. These changed Lara Croft's sexual orientation. The first art mod is thought to be Iimura Takahiko's 1993 AIUEOUNN Six Features, which changed Sony's "System G."

Mods for Continued Support

After EA stopped supporting MVP Baseball 2005, the game's modding community kept it alive. They released updated player lists and graphics every year. They even created new baseball leagues within the game.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, released in 2011, had many bugs. Modders fixed the game over time and even got access to the game's code. This led to an official re-release called IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover BLITZ Edition.

User Interface Mods

A user interface mod changes how players interact with the game. Often, these mods show information that the player or modder thinks is helpful for playing.

Mod Packs

Mod packs are groups of mods put together into one download. They often come with an installer to make it easy for players to set up many mods at once. Mod packs can be made to make a game easier for new players or harder for experienced ones.

See also

In Spanish: Mod (videojuegos) para niños