[mathnode]

While I definitely advocate for Ross Scott's effort behind https://www.stopkillinggames.com, there are still many titles I think that really don't qualify for the level of effort to keep them preserved. I am too old for Roblox, I have tried some Fortnite, but in my day shakes stick, new ideas were expressed through some kind of mod. DOTA and CS are exceptional examples of this.

Not every idea has the automatic inertia it needs to be the next big hit.

I also speak as fan of games like Deceive Inc and First Class Trouble, I applaud Garry's effort in this case. The game engines and distribution platforms make it a lot easier to push your idea as a product instead of being just that, an idea.

[orf]

> new ideas were expressed through some kind of mod

Roblox and Minecraft have exceptional modding scenes, eclipsing most previous generations by far?

A Roblox modder created lethal company, a game that outsold call of duty. Minecraft modders are building literal computers inside the game.

If we take modding as a pathway to learning engineering and programming, not only to producing games, then these are highly successful.

[mathnode]

Yes sorry perhaps a little more context helps for others that don't understand what we are talking about. Roblox and Fortnite are creative platforms as well as gaming platforms that rival if not excel the older modding tools because they make distribution so easy; good ideas flourish in these spaces. Lethal Company is a great example of a Roblox game mode(?) that excelled beyond the Roblox boundaries. I don't have the evidence at hand, but for anyone spending an afternoon in any modern game engine (UE, Unity, Godot) with their built in asset marketplaces and game templates, will see just how many games out there are just asset flips and not worthy of preservation.

Assets and templates don't make a game. Ingenuity does, and folks...the fledgling game designers are using platforms like Roblox and Fortnite as their jumping off point.

[cschep]

It kinda feels like unreal engine and unity are the new baseline "games" -- but not games -- and the games are mods on top of all that existing machinery?

Making a game used to mean writing an engine too and that just isn't true anymore it seems.

[Hikikomori]

Before Unreal there was RenderWare. Usually you choose between making an engine and making a game. And why not if its covers most of your use cases. But games like this are still being made, see Animal Well.

[jamesfinlayson]

Yeah games being made on custom engines is still done, but probably hasn't been what the majority of companies at the AAA level have done since... the mid to late 1990s probably.

[Hikikomori]

I'd say custom is fairly common for AAA studios still as they have the manpower to do it.

[pwatsonwailes]

Building an engine at the moment. 2 years in. Launching the game with it end of the year.

Still a thing.

[upghost]

Steam page that I can wishlist yet?

God speed.

[pwatsonwailes]

Not yet. Keeping it fairly quiet until summer. Don't worry - I'll announce it here when it's ready for it.

[mathnode]

Yes there are far too many asset flips and game templates that are just sold a individual games.

[offpath]

> I am too old for Roblox

Roblox is a gaming platform. Popular among kids, yes, but that's like saying you're too old for Youtube. You can absolutely find a game with like-minded and older players.

[mathnode]

I would definitely appreciate the Roblox crowd making a play for older gamers, who can also code.

[cobertos]

Wish it wasn't so rare to get good modding tools. From your examples, Valves commitment to their SDKs (for CS) and Warcraft's WorldEdit (DotA) are both nice ecosystems to work in.

[ToucanLoucan]

No point in making them. Almost all big games now feature some multiplayer, if it isn't the primary focus entirely, and most games are designed from go to resist any and all modification lest people get in and ruin the fun for everyone else.

It's tremendously sad. Modding scenes in various games were huge on-ramps to development, game and otherwise, for lots of big industry figures today. Where's that coming from for the next generation's when every product is locked down from factory to where DRM regularly cripples peoples PCs?

I'm certainly no huge name in industry, but my first experience with anything even resembling code was when I discovered you could edit the scenario files in Driver (1999) on the PC to give your car all kinds of weird abilities, change how the game ran, give yourself god mode, disable time limits, all kinds of stuff, just by changing the text in the files. And like, obviously that's not software development, but I was a little kid and that was my first experience of "if you change the files inside the program, it does different things!" and that was tremendously exciting for me at the time.

[cobertos]

The modding scene still seems pretty healthy to me? R2modman's plethora of mods and games as one example. People seem to be very willing to make ways to mod games that don't come with official support, at least from some of my more recent modding experiences. It doesn't seem like the knowledge gets socialized as much as it used to though, or it's hidden from the public web more than it was (e.g. it's in Discord groups and DMs). Those who might tinker with files still seem to get by by installing other people's mods and then messing and remixing those which is kind of cool. But for most games it's _all_ community driven.

It's still rare to get modding tools from the developer though. Only a couple recent games I've played do that I've seen. Like Teardown for example

[Hikikomori]

Plenty of games still being modded, even multiplayer, have you looked? And is no problem even in multiplayer as long as server enforces which mods are enabled.

GTA 5 RP mod is big, Arma series are very bare bone games where modders created scenarios and game types. Both pubg and dayz comes from arma 2 mods.

Steam Workshop has made it easier than ever before, no need to run 3rd party launchers or visit a number of sketch websites to get your mods.

[Hikikomori]

Blizzard killed modding after Valve "stole" Dota.

[spencerflem]

didn't league of legends do that first?

[Hikikomori]

Game concepts are copied all the time. Blizzard sued valve over the name and tried to claim ownership, but they settled and valve got the Dota 2 name.

[BlueTemplar]

Companies shouldn't be forced to support their games for long. Only for the duration of the copyright. (/s, but consider the now aligned incentives for sensible copyright duration limits !)