Last issue, TechNews published an article that discussed home-brewing, a practice in gaming culture where games are modified by the consumers, rather than the developers. This article, titled “Blood on the Clocktower: Okay, we need to talk about home-brew” is a great article by all means, and I highly recommend reading it. Most of the article is a review about the titular game, “Blood on the Clocktower.” However, the end of the article goes more into a broader discussion of home-brewing (which from here forward I shall call “modding”), and there’s a particular statement that caught my eye that I’d like to provide an alternative viewpoint for.
“I’m concerned about the long-term viability of any game that is reliant on home-brew to create interest – not just one where home-brew exists, and players enjoy it,” reads a quote from the article. If we are truly including any game, regardless of medium, I have to respectfully disagree. I believe there are a variety of PC games in particular that not only prove to be long-term viable thanks to a reliance on modding, but may have maintained long-term relevance thanks primarily to a reliance on modding.
There is perhaps no better example of this than Valve. Valve is one of the most influential gaming companies there is, not only because they own the largest video game distribution platforms for the PC market, but also because they have created genre defining classics. Their flagship game, “Half-Life (1998)” and its sequel “Half-Life 2 (2004)” exists as heavily modified versions of id Software’s “Quake.” Likely in large part to these roots, Valve intentionally developed their engines and games to be easily modifiable. Especially concerning its sequel, Valve published tools and created the infrastructure for their games to be easily modifiable. Numerous fan campaigns (one could say, home-brews) of both games help extend the single-player lives of these games dramatically, and modded player-hosted servers have ensured small but dedicated fanbases for both games to this day.
If it were just that, I’d already say that Valve has succeeded in proving the long-term viability of modding. However, this pales in comparison to the true scale of modding in the Valve scene. Thanks to the intention ease of modding in Valve titles, entire new games have spawned from “Half-Life” and “Half-Life 2.” The “Team Fortress,’ “Portal,” “Counter-Strike,” “Dota,” and “Left 4 Dead” series all started as mods of games, before being picked up by Valve to be fleshed out further, though often still maintaining much of the code of the original games. Most of these games have not only gone on to outshine their roots, but also boost the popularity of the original games, as new fans learn of their new favorite game’s origins. “Garry’s Mod” and “The Stanley Parable” are two more games that, while never officially picked up by Valve studios, succeeded in part thanks to a considerable amount of modding support from Valve. These games, like the previous list, have boosted the popularity of its roots. Even a phenomenon as recent as generation alpha’s “Skibidi Toilet” exists due to “Garry’s Mod,” which uses assets from Valve’s “Half-Life 2,” created about 15 years before generation alpha was even born.
Not only has modding spawned new independent creations, but modding has helped these independent creations thrive on their own. In particular, “Team Fortress 2” and “Garry’s Mod” are key examples of games maintaining relevance today almost solely thanks to a heavy reliance on community-made content and modding. The former, released in 2007, is supported almost solely by content created by the community nowadays, with a sizeable chunk of the player-base that has split from initial matchmaking, and instead playing on player-hosted servers which are often modded. The latter only exists thanks to a reliance on modding. “Garry’s Mod” out of the box is intentionally bland, a sandbox with access to some decent tools, but hardly a game by itself. Instead, “Garry’s Mod” is almost exclusively played with player-made code, home-brewed rules, and community-made content, and still sees tens of thousands of players daily.
Valve is hardly the only company to notice the strength of allowing home-brewing and modifications to their games. Two other games which take different but openly accepting approaches to modifications are “Minecraft” and “Roblox,” both of which are now top earners and cultural juggernauts. Both games are already sandboxes out of the box, similar to “Garry’s Mod.” “Minecraft” doesn’t place a focus on modding per se, but does actively cultivate it and continues to build support for mod makers. Players have created home-brew campaigns through custom maps, and mods/plugins have allowed players to play the game through entirely new rules. Resource packs allow players to change the way their game looks and sounds, and there is a whole active community dedicated solely to creating this content. “Roblox” goes a step further, with the whole game experience created by players. “Roblox” used to have a sandbox mode out of the box, but as far as I can tell, they have phased this out entirely at some point, with the only method of play being player-made experiences. The game is famous for its ease of modding, with some developers getting in before they even understand algebra. “Minecraft” might still exist today if it never had its modding scene, though I believe it’s fair to say it may have not reached the number one selling game of all time (according to Guinness World Records), but “Roblox” certainly would not have existed at all without player-created content.
While I have been focusing on PC games, this hardly is exclusive to that medium. For example, commercially sold card games and board games are almost ubiquitous with minor home-brews. Anyone who has played “Uno” or “Monopoly” with friends for the first time certainly knows the arguments that arise from clashing house rules. Whether its being able to play a +4 on another +4 in the former, or ditching the rules about auctioning property or gaining money when landing on the free parking space in the latter, these are home-brews that players have adopted into their games because they make the games more fun and exciting, which in turn extend their lives. While these games aren’t reliant on these home-brew rules from any official standpoint, they are reliant on it nonetheless, to the point where these home-brews, as stated a few sentences prior, are almost ubiquitous with the experience.
To the original author’s credit, home-brewing/modding isn’t all good. As they wrote in their original article, an over-reliance/unstructured support of home-brewing can detract from the experience. Many of the games I mentioned previously are great games out-of-the-box and rely on modding for extended longevity. And of the games that aren’t, their home-brewed experiences aren’t sold in atomized chunks to be put together by the player-base, its easily distributed. “Garry’s Mod” is a standalone $10 purchase, with every other experience free to be downloaded or joined. “Roblox” is straight-up free, with money made through cosmetic purchases or for passes in player-made experiences. Both have robust home-brewing creation and an easy-to-share medium. Modding is the integral core of these games and both have flourished for almost two decades at this point. The author suggests that “Blood on the Clocktower” may not be the best game out-of-the-box, and without the benefit of digital proliferation of home-brewed experiences, loses out on the ease of access of home-brewing. While I have never played the game myself, I have no reason to doubt these claims, but I don’t believe they should reflect on home-brewing/modding as a whole.