Modding: the basic instint of gamers (John Whang's opinion)

By John Whang

Looking at today's game industry, the key point that the game industry is focusing on is the "interactivity" between the game, users, and the producers. I believe that is why online games such as MMORPGs are having a dominant place within the game industry. Even video game consoles such as Play Station 3 and Xbox put a great importance in providing online gaming experience. I think "modding" can be looked as an outcome of the need and want of "interactivity" from users and producers. There is always a room for an improvement in anything. As a game user/player, I always wished if I can change some aspects within the game. And unlike other media forms such as films, books, or even media devices like ipod, a game is a great target/content to fulfill this element because it is a medium that doesn't have to be created from a scratch. For me, I don't have a knowledge to create a new game or even make a new mod for certain game, but I participate in similar ways. For example, on the game that I enjoy the most, Pro Evolution Soccer, I frequently use the edit mode within the game to update/fix current squad of club and national teams. This edited file can be easily shared with many other PES players. In a way, this can be looked as a participatory culture similar to "modding". I believe this desire of creating/editing the game as we want can be found in almost all game users.

I used to play a game called RPG Maker (Japan) back in 1997. It is simply a 2D RPG making tool that is really easy to use. This tells that even more than a decade ago, game users' wanting of creating their own games (even without techonology/knowledge) led to release the game that serves as a game making tool. In this sense, providing of an easy, game editing tools that enabled users to create new mods can be viewed as a marketing tool used by the game production companies.

By providing modding tools, more users can get interests in the original game and the producers can open up a participatory culture of that original game, which can be directly related to the boost of side financial income other than the game sales. According to the reading, few reasons why people participate in "modding" is because "modding acts as a bridge to online community and also provides the opportunity to produce the characters, narratives, contents that the users always dreamed of. As the quote, "participation is part of big business" suggests, by making "modders" the author of a new game, the game companies can use them as passionate free labors that can bring benefits to the company in reputation and financially.