Question Of The Week [May 21st 2024]

Q: Are mods for games worth the hassle?

A: One of the best parts of PC gaming is being able to use “Mods”. Modifying a game to either implement new characters or weapons, or even locations and levels. Mods are a big part of being a PC gamer. I personally rarely ever use most mods in games, mostly because they require so much external time outside of the game. Getting them downloaded, setup with possible changes in .ini files and then testing it in game to see if it works or not. It’s kinda more of a pain to deal with in most cases.

While I might seem negative on them, I do think that Mods are actually good. Especially when they go and do "unofficial" fixes or implement a much needed "Quality Of Life" type of upgrade. A Simple menu option to enable or disable something, or even give proper cheats. There are plenty of armchair developers that can at least create some quick mods to patch a game to fix something at or near launch to help others.

There are just too many mods, with the majority of them being about as pathetic as you can imagine. Thousands of mods that remove girls' clothes or make their boobs quadruple the size of their head. These mods make me ashamed to even browse the lists of some of my favorite games. But once you cut through the massive amount of trashy NSFW mods, you can find the real genuine good stuff. Either mods that patch the game, or allow for more customization, or the ones that add more varied content, almost along the lines of DLC.
One way I can see mods be elevated to a more "official" standards is to let the devs basically vet the mods. Rely on the community to fix some glaring issues that they can't put in for whatever reason. If the mod receives enough attention/upvotoes/recommendations/downloads, then it should be able to be implemented into an official patch. Either the mod creator gives permission or maybe the Developer could reach out and say "we'd like to use this, you'll get a credit in patch notes/game credits depending on the contribution".

Now, I know this probably wouldn't happen because of "legal" reasons. Acknowledging the game needs outside help, or even just using non-company code can be a huge liability. But honestly there is a great easy way for Mods to become part of the game permanently. Because the modding scene is both stupid and needs to change.

Games require too much at this point to work properly and mods fix those huge launch issues most of the time. Instead of waiting for an official patch that may show up a month after launch, you’ll get patches to fix certain things in a game a couple hours on release day. It’s just “a mod” or “unofficial”. But when it does fix something, who really cares, right?

However, going to an older game is insanely hard to dive into mods depending on the game. The code can change, an update can break the game or render certain mods, or even saves corrupt and broken. Potentially losing hundreds of hours in a game save. Making the modding scene more official and implementing them  is a great way to officially fix these continually broken games.