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You know what I like about video game consoles? The ease of access, the intuitive controllers, playing on my living room HDTV.
You know what I like about gaming on PCs? The superior graphics, the ubiquity of PC versions of popular games, but most of all, the mods.
I repaired my desktop PC last week and ever since, my mind has been occupied with modding (modifying, or installing modifications) Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, two of my favorite games of the century. I started off playing each on my PlayStation 3; I was late to join the Fallout 3 party, but I started New Vegas the day it came out. Then, a couple of years ago, after having beaten New Vegas two and a half times, I discovered the Nexus modding community. I was blown away. Player-created mods offered improved graphics, altered gameplay, and all kinds of new content. The possibilities seemed endless! In a lot of ways, they are. Modding is a curious gamer’s paradise, whether you’re downloading the creations of brilliant modders or crafting your own. It gives every gamer the opportunity to be a game designer by choosing what changes they want to make to their game. I mean, come on, how many times have you heard a friend or a reviewer say, “If only it wasn’t for *insert complaint here* this game would be great”? I’ve certainly heard statements like that about the Fallout series, and for almost every complaint there’s a mod to fix it. If there’s not, all it takes is determination and creativity to make a mod that fixes it yourself.
Another benefit of moddable games is that creating mods gives aspiring game developers exposure. It’s a cost-free, low-barrier method of establishing a great portfolio for anyone from artists to writers to level designers to programmers. If you’re doubtful about how much exposure a mod creator can really achieve, look no farther than Alexander J. Velicky’s Falskaar, a massive mod which adds 25 hours of excellent content to TES:Skyrim. Velicky created the mod because he wants a job at Bethesda, and it received widespread media coverage by major outlets such as pcgamer.com and forbes.com. By the way, Velicky is only 19 years old. Pretty promising start to a career? I think so.
Th reason I’m writing so much about mods is that they may soon become much more prevalent. Last week, Valve announced a major bid to get Steam Machines running SteamOS into living rooms around the world, starting next year. I don’t know anything about the workings of SteamOS, but Valve is promising that the core idea behind it is “openness.” And whenever openness meets a popular game, such as Bethesda Softworks allowing and encouraging free modification of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, mods will follow. I think it’s very likely that SteamOS will be able to play modded games. If it doesn’t, the Steam Machines will just as easily run Windows or Linux. If Valve’s gambit is successful, and I’ll admit that it’s a big if, it would involve console gamers switching over to more flexible and often more powerful Steam Machines in ever-increasing numbers. Basically, millions of gamers who wouldn’t play on a traditional desktop PC would now be playing PC versions of popular games on their televisions. Several of these popular PC games would allow mods and would have active modder communities.
Everyone would benefit from widespread access to video game mods. Gamers who would have been restricted by a less open console would now have free access to tons of new content and improvements for their games. Modders would have an exponentially growing platform to show off their skills. Creativity would flourish. The ideas of some mods might even be adopted by developers and improve the quality of future games; it happened with Fallout: New Vegas’ hardcore mode (FO3 Wanderers Edition by Mezmorki & team) and weapon upgrades (Weapon Mod Kits by Joseph Lollback).
Personally, I think it would be fantastic to run a modded Skyrim or Civilization V game on my TV in the living room, regardless of the console. SteamOS just seems like the most likely candidate to get there first. Maybe even the modest success of Steam Machines, or even the threat of the success of Steam Machines, will prompt the big three (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) to make their consoles with similarly open operating systems. Here’s hoping.
