[paczki]

Videogames largely moving away from mapping/modding in general has been such a disappointing thing to me for many years now. I'm still playing Doom and Quake mods to this day and some of the content people put out is incredible. Recently an episode 2 for the Quake mod DWELL released and is of unbelievable quality that we couldn't have even imagined playing back in the 90s.

Community servers on the other hand.. those have almost all but vanished completely. It's pretty much just Valve games as far as AAA goes, and even they do their best to hide their server browsers now.

Unfortunately, it just seems like you can't aggressively monetize free content so the industry in general has moved away from allowing it.

[somenameforme]

I think the world you're describing (and GP as well) is largely relegated to consoles. PC gaming has never been more moddable on average. In many cases, this even includes the exact same titles! For instance Bethesda titles on console range from zero to minimal modding, while on PC those exact same games allow complete and unlimited modding, alongside first party tooling support, to the point that you have entire overhauls of the game that scarcely resemble the original available, for free. Some, like Enderal, even get their own big releases. [1]

Basically gaming splintered, hard. So you end up with people, both living and playing games during the exact same time period, having radically different perspectives on the state of gaming. It's really interesting if you draw parallels between this and the state of bubbles within society in general.

[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/933480/Enderal_Forgotten_...

[hobs]

It's true that gaming is split, but its not something that happened recently.

Mapping and modding was never generally available to console gamers, and they've traditionally made up the vast majority of game consumers because high end PCs were much more expensive since PC gaming was a thing.

The only stuff you could genuinely expect a home gamer to do is something like cracking your system protection in the ps2+ era or going ham on the GAMESHARK.

[usrusr]

Has it ever been "un-splintered" though? PC and consoles have always been wildly different. The difference is that these days more IP is launched at both markets.

[jack_pp]

Well let's go by https://steamcharts.com/

CS:GO : allows both custom maps and community servers

Dota : allows custom maps, some of which have created and radically changed existing popular games like auto chess did to Hearthstone.

These two games which are in the top 2 have more hours played than the next 8 games in that ranking.

[paczki]

Yeah and it's fantastic that those games still exist and allow things like modding and mapping, however both of those games are a decade old. It does feel somewhat like the trend has died down significantly for newer games, no?

I certainly love them though! I'm still holding out hope for Source 2 SDK and Hammer 2 to actually become a usable tool outside of VR or Dota 2.

Facepunch [0] (Makers of Garry's Mod) are utilizing Source 2 with Valves permission and everything they're working on looks pretty promising, with great potential for a new era of modding.

[0] https://sbox.facepunch.com/news

[grogenaut]

Heck both of those games ARE mods of other games originally... They also both spawned off massive mods and copies themelves. Anyone remember the autochess craze of '18?

[axlee]

It still exists, for example Trackmania lives and breathes by its editor and user-made maps. I believe Minecraft (probably the most popular video game in the world) also has a thriving modding culture, but I have never interacted with it.

[smrtinsert]

The absolute best gaming I've ever done has been on custom servers with highly invested well run admin culture. It is sad to see that gone. This generation has much better single player experiences though, in a insane variety of aesthetics, so maybe that trade off is acceptable.

[taskforcegemini]

> This generation has much better single player experiences though, in a insane variety of aesthetics, so maybe that trade off is acceptable.

I wouldn't generalize it like that

[jroes]

Not sure the industry is moving away from mods universally. You or your kids ever play Roblox?

[darreninthenet]

A mate and I played for hours on a DukeNukem 3D arena map we found somewhere... I still remember the ballache of getting our modems to dial each other and become connected so the games would see each other

[jackmott42]

Video games have also moved away from AAA, the bulk of interesting stuff in indie games, where modding is still normal.