One of the more bolt statements I made about underground gaming is that modding is somewhat under attack by the gaming industry.
I have received different reactions to this: Some agree, stating that modding is incompatible with the modern, usually centralized server structure of multimedia player games, agreed that my idea that the orientation towards professional competitive gaming lead to a stronger orientation towards standardization, or added that modding is incompatible to micro-transactions for skins or similar visual features.
Others told me that the modding scene is still active, but more restricted to specialized titles. Another reply that I received is that there is less a need for total conversion mods as there are more different games available, reducing the need to play “improvised” games.
Checking on ModDB, I noticed that there are few games among the popular or recent mods that are from after 2020; most of the popular targets for modding seem to be ancient for video game standards - I see this as evidence towards my point.
Would you agree that modding is declining within the modern gaming scene? I would be especially interested in hearing active modders about this, and what they would wish regarding their activity.
Hm, I don’t know. 2020 is still pretty recent! I imagine a game has to be around for a bit of a while before a modding scene can appear. And the game has to be popular enough to for there to be a “scene”, but the long tail keeps getting longer, which makes it harder.
I remember reading somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that more complex games are by their nature less friendly to modding, and companies that used to facilitate it don’t bother doing it anymore.
One could maybe suspect corporate fuckery, but that could easily go in the other direction (“oh yes make mods, but first sign this little contract, don’t read much into it…”).