Like Hitler's invasion of Poland or the first floor of the Empire State Building, Counter-Strike was always going to be the start of something big. Its release, in 1999, marked the bona fide birth of the modding scene, spurring bedroom developers to craft new adventures out of official titles.
Modding had already been around for a while, spawning popular ditties like Team Fortress, but Counter-Strike was the first of its kind to encourage people to buy the original game, in this case Half-Life.
After CS, "game companies opened up their titles to modders, and modding went mainstream, more prolific," says Scott Reismanis, founder of the Mod Database (moddb.com).
"These days you can look at any game development house and some of their employees started out as modders. Universities even have three-month and six-month final year mod projects as a way to give their students real-world experience."
But, somewhere along the way, mods lost their mojo. Despite the occasional blast of genius, like 2006's Tremulous mod for Quake III Arena, there's cause for argument that the originality and quality of the early scene petered out.
Stephen Gaffney, business development manager for Splash Damage (a mod team that went commercial with titles like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars), reckons today's modders are much less prolific. "There are fewer mods today than in 1999 when Half-Life was big," he says.
"I would say that the first Half-Life game alone probably had more mods than all contemporary PC titles combined, so there's definitely been a decline."
Gaffney points out a shift from total conversions towards smaller, more technical mods. This could be due to a change within the community. Once, the modding scene was a cottage industry, full of creative boffins that worked for months to ensure that their spin-offs would match the visual/design standards of the original titles. Counter-Strike, for example, went through six betas before its first incarnation.
"The mod community changed," says Luke Parkes-Haskell, a modern modder who works with the Unreal Engine. "There are fewer dedicated hackers. People expect to make their dream game and hit the stumbling block of not having a clue how games are developed, let alone how to make small changes of their own."
MODDER'S EVEREST Placing the blame of the decline in mods solely on muppets within the community is unfair. The sheer size and complexity of today's games makes the challenge insurmountable. "The scale and expectation has changed, just as it has done for the base games," says Alan Wilson, Vice President of Tripwire Interactive (modders-turned-developers who made Red Orchestra for UT2003).
Asset production time has increased tenfold since Half-Life, and the amount of detail in modern game worlds is staggering. "Add in the fact that the software gets more expensive and complex," continues Wilson. "I'm not saying earlier modders weren't talented, it's just that the skill expectations matched the games of the period. Just as the games become ever more complex and expensive to create, so do the mods."
As modders changed, so too have the audience. Parkes-Haskell elaborates: "There was a time when gamers forgave animations popping from one to another or subtitles rather than voice acting, because professionals did the same.
"You could create a mod that made use of the skills you were good at, and use quick tricks like text subtitles or crude animation to fill in the areas you weren't so good at. You could be a one-man team, and release something that had enough polish to impress. Now people expect that polish across every aspect."
The decline in mods might also be attributed to the industry itself. When the modding scene flourished, developers snapped up the talent. Legions of former modders now work in the industry: from Kaos Studios, creators of the Desert Combat mod for BF1942, who went on to make Frontlines: Fuel of War; to Blue Omega, whose UT2003 Damnation mod is set for commerical release.
Wilson recalls how TripWire started off as "just another mod team", working on the Red Orchestra mod for UT2004. The team funded a retail version of their game after winning NVIDIA's Make Something Unreal contest. Splash Damage, according to Gaffney, "ran the team exactly like a professional development studio. The difference was that we were spread all across the planet and no one got paid."
MODDING FROM WITHIN As Reismanis points out, modders have a living CV in the form of a game you can view and play. This makes them incredibly valuable to companies - it's also why so many get snapped up mid-way though projects. "A lot of the best modders already have jobs in the game industry, and mod by night to either learn the trade, or exercise their creativity within in it," he adds.
Some say that developers should do more to encourage talent in the modding community. Splash Damage, for example, have an Editing Wiki on their site (splashdamage.com), containing all their editing documentation and tutorials.
Meanwhile, the new Make Something Unreal (makesomethingunreal.com) contest should kickstart the currently underwhelming Unreal Engine 3 modding scene.
But, ultimately, ask yourself what you want from the mod scene. These days, you want blockbusters. You want them now and you often want them for free. And if it's not Crysis, it's probably not good enough.
"I have to wonder where modders will stand in another five years time," ponders Parkes-Haskell. "Will they just die out from a lack of appreciation?" Forget Hamlet or Macbeth - the death of mods would be truly tragic.
Yes todays games will need a very dedicated mod team and most probably quite a bit of cash as well(for covering the amount of time needed to fully develop the mod). Shame as in the past mods have given a whole host of games a new lease of life.
I think the other main issue for the lack of mods is that some of them are simply too ambitious. There's titles like Epidemic (for HL2) which sound amazing but promise so much content that it's taking forever to get anything. Add to that they've actually CALLED it Part One, meaning they're expecting more parts to follow. During the years of development, some of the team gets bored and moves on, making it take even longer.
If you check out sites like moddb.com you can see some impressive-sounding mods. Some of them are just re-skinned versions of CS:S or HLDM (which I think is pointless without any new features), but there's some decent total conversions there. Mario Kart Source, for example, looks amazing.
what the f**k is wrong with this s**tty website. I had a long rant typed about the author and article but I guess this website won't let me post something huge so f**k it. s**tty article is s**tty.
what the f**k is wrong with this s**tty website. I had a long rant typed about the author and article but I guess this website won't let me post something huge so f**k it. s**tty article is s**tty.
Modding died when halflife 2 was released. But I mostly blame Steam Cause when steam was released it suddenly was a pain in the ass the install and play mods, and you had to have the original game which most people didnt have before that.
I think it's simply indicative of a wider problem that affects professionals as well as modders - the tools are too inefficient, bloated and are generally not user friendly.
You'll hear a lot of people in the industry moaning about the spiralling costs etc, well I think this is mostly down to the fact that you now need 10 people to do something 1 person could have done 10 years ago. They need to focus on building better tools - especially if they hope to keep the mod scene alive & significant. I've had experience trying to make character models for games and maps and it's a f**king joke how much s**t you have to learn & how much time it takes to do the simplest of things.
Simply put, it's a completely inefficient process atm. It's a bit like painting a wall mural with an eyelash.
death of mods? Eh, believe what you will, it seems the truely great mods are focusing on gameplay rather than time wasting "total conversions", look at garrys mod, most servers use barely 1% unique assets, yet each is different.
Project reality uses most of the same models and statics, yet the gameplay, bullet deviation, vehicle controlling and damage and supply models are different, all this is near invisible to the newer players.
Mods that change useless crap are dead, long live the mods that go for the jugular?
Still, much love for those who make total conversions (see project stealth) even if they sell out (alien swarm) .
Great article, and as a former modder it's a pretty near and dear subject.
I'll somewhat sheepishly mention the fact that we actually covered this subject way back in episodes 7 and 8 of our podcast, Tango Down - The Tactical Gaming Podcast. They can be found on iTunes HERE, and our website is HERE. Let us know what you think.
I remember the days, when you used to see servers hosting the BF42 mod Desert Combat full to the rafters of gamers looking for something new and exciting, a break from the norm. Now, Desert Combat is a fading memory.
Gamers demand more from there games and it takes more and more time for modders to come up with a suitable product, something which the gaming public would recognise and like. I used to be part of the Desert Conflict mod testing team and I remember the amount of work the guys used to take, just to release a little bit of map, or a skin or a weapon.
Mods as we used to know and love, are soon to become extinct.
I think modding will never die as the possiblity to create something new will always be fascinating. Maybe Counterstrike gave modding a boost, but it was big before already. I can't even say how many custom Doom or Dark Forces maps I played, how many Heroes of Might & Magic 2 maps - there were so many of them. People won't stop creating their own content because for many of us it's more fun than just playing a game.
But I agree that modding will become increasingly difficult. All the new technical aspects make it really hard. While you could get away with a blocky building made of 100 polygons a few years ago now you have to model every detail which takes 10x the amount of time. Then you have normal maps, highres textures, havok collision, speedtrees and many other things to think about, depending on the game. Some of which can't be done unless you swim in money. How am I supposed to get Speedtree or ZBrush without spending all my money (even Crazybump isn't free anymore)? And it will get even worse.
Another problem might be the drastic increase of so called 'casual gamers'. Consoles sell way better than PCs - and on consoles there is no modding. Why release mod tools when 95% of the money is made on consoles anyway? Why answer questions, set up Wikis and the like? From a commercial point of view it probably doesn't make much sense. Game development is a huge business now and not controlled by enthusiastic game developers. It's about deadlines and profit. As soon as there is no money gained from mods anymore (indirectly of course) the companies will simply stop supporting it. Without tools it's impossible to mod.
When I tell my 360 owning, Oblivion loving friends about the mods you can get for it for the PC version, their eyes pop out. That modding community alone and the tools the Bethesda released for it are enough for me to disagree with this article. I read a recent interview with Pete Hines of Bethesda, I think it was, who mentioned that they might be looking into a way to get PC made user content onto the 360 for Oblivion. I told my friends about this and they were extremely excited. They still play Oblivion.
This is the way to go, clearly; getting mods onto consoles. This will rejuvenate the scene. More and more games are going to span across consoles and the PC, see Mass Effect, Fallout 3, etc etc, so the cross platform gaming community will be there to support it.
Bethesda charged for their plugins. I can see a model emerging like the Apple app store, in which PC modders upload their mods to XBOX live and users buy them, splitting the profits. So modders can make money, which will improve mods as they can dedicate more time to them, whilst at the same time retaining independence.
This revenue stream should also make it possible to improve the modding tools and make them free.
Funny how a PC Zone journalist has written this largely ridiculous article about the decline of modders just after another PC Zone journalist gave one of the most pathetically unprofessional reviews I've ever seen (and there are a lot of crappy reviews out there) slamming Mount&Blade, a game with one of the most active and creative modding communities around. And no, he did not mention the mods. In fact, he barely mentioned anything about the game, as so much of the article was entirely fictitious that I imagine he probably closed it after two minutes of playing once he realised it wasn't an Oblivion clone. Something which did not stop him from pretending that it was trying to be Oblivion in his review.
I've always had a problem with the standard of games journalism, as many journalists seem to actively encourage generic games with no real innovation or creativity as fervently as publishers, but until recently I had considered PC Zone to be one of the better magazines out there.
Anyway, point is, if you think about it for more than two seconds it doesn't make sense that modding would decline, because it's entirely independant and unorganised, and there are more people with the skills required to make mods with every passing year. You just have tunnel vision, and are staring blankly at the same franchises whose mods you loved ten years ago.
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Cause when steam was released it suddenly was a pain in the ass the install and play mods, and you had to have the original game which most people didnt have before that.
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)? And it will get even worse. 
