The Modding Generation - If You Don't Love It, Change It!

Not too long ago, I overheard a conversation between two co-workers that really has had me thinking. They were exploring the idea of types of creativity and had settled on two distinct types. They felt that some people and circumstances lend them to have inventive creativity - a state where you can create something new and innovative out of scratch (or at least nearly-so). Yet there is another type of creativity - one that springboards off of a previous idea in order to create something new. While we tend to pair the ability to be creative with the ability to be wholly original, I think that there is something to be said about taking someone's idea and modifying it. Truly, if we look at the digital culture we live in, we are surrounded by the springboard creative types - that's pretty much what the Internet is used for. It seems no wonder, therefore, that the world of gaming has taken to showcasing this type of talent as well in the form of game modification. And thus, the game modding generation is born.

Game modding, in a nutshell, is a culture of people who alter already established games to create unique add-ons or entirely new games. This concept has been explored in past iterations of game development, some say starting in the 1980's with such games as Castle Wolfenstein, but the ability to do this was left to those with a true penchant for computer programming. Over time, the concept of modding began to take hold as small changes were made to popular games such as the present characters or settings of the game. However, mods such as these were not something that was celebrated by the creators of the original content. Like covering a song without permission, modding an established game was looked at as something to generally keep on the DL.

Over time though, companies, such as Valve, started to see the mod-culture as an inevitability as well as something to support and celebrate. As such, the culture shifted away from thwarting creativity to, instead, allowing users to change already made games into something totally new. One of the best examples of this is Garry's Mod, a mod of Half-Life 2 delivered through Valve's content server, Steam. While the popularity of Half-Life 2 is undeniable, the boom of Garry's Mod was incredible. The mod morphed the experience into an open world physics engine where users were given tools with which to do what they liked. Produced by Facepunch Studios, a relatively unsuccessful game development company up until their release of the mod, the game now live in its own right in the Steam collective. The open-endedness of this game paired with familiar aspects of the Half-Life experience make it a really rich and fun gaming experience.

Today, I wouldn't be surprised if you picked up a game or heard about a game that is actually a mod of a different game. Their wild popularity is leading the market in all sorts of new directions. If you've ever played on an XBox, you know that the communities of indie games are incredibly popular and are populated with new content all the time. Another example of modding has gotten my entire office to spend many of their lunch hours playing - a zombie game called DayZ which is a mod of Arma 2 (a shooting simulator). Modding has even extended itself to entire platforms. The video game console to-be, Ouya, will be centered on creating an open source market where users can contribute unique and modified games for a community to play. And there are many more examples. Ultimately, I think that this mod culture has given a huge group of people a form of creative expression they may not have been able to find in earlier days. Even more so than that, these people have opportunities to be celebrated for their creative feats on hugely popular platforms they may not have been able to reach before.

Furthermore, I think there is a lot of educational opportunity in giving modding capabilities to kids as part of a learning experience. Just as an entire generation of adults learned that they too could be creative without creating an entire game from scratch, so would kids benefit from the confidence boost of a borrowing culture. Just look at the success of Scratch, a thriving visual programming community based on sharing. Not only is creativity explored in such communities, but media literacy and the importance of an "open-source" attitude. Ultimately, I see this generation as being chock-full of sprinboarding creative types who look at games not as a stagnant digital object, but rather, an opportunity to improve upon and make something totally new.

Mod-on! 

A silly mod, but a mod nonetheless, take a look at Skyrim with My Little Pony dragons