An open letter to PC game coders and designers:

[Numbnumb]

I enjoy PC games, I love playing them and owning them. The ones I truly enjoy are the ones that allow the fantastic Mod Creators at Nexus to create items and objects to allow me to personalize my experience in a PC game. These are the people who enhance the games those Gaming Companies sell.

I have played games where the code was such that most of the Mod creators have been unable or severely restricted in what they do. Those are the games in which I tire most quickly. Those are also the games that I avoid buying the next time. To give you an example of what I mean; Tomb Raider is restrictive in what can be successfully coded while Skyrim has an abundance of mods that can be applied, deleted or changed making the next play through as enjoyable as the very first one.

Here are some personal stats for your consideration:

Hours Played:

Skyrim 2722 hours

Fallout 3 217 hours

Fallout NV 478 hours

Fallout 4 304 hours

Tomb Raider 16 hours

As you can see the more mod-able a game the more I play it and the more likely I am to buy another from the same Game Creators.

It is going to be a very long time before I buy the next game “Rise of Tomb Raider”. So other manufactures above who gave me the ability to play longer with changes I could make with player generated modifications extended my enjoyment of the game a lot longer and will, as you can see from the Fallout Series, generate more interest in future purchases.

So let this be a note to the Wise. Sure strong coding can help to avoid piracy (which I abhor) but will also restrict the amount of dollars I will be willing to part with for the next game from the same companies.

Sincerely,

Numb7numb

[brokenergy]

People buy CoD and BF series in their thousands and that is not as moddable as beth games because they are mainly multiplayer focused games. Your stats doesn't determine how popular a game is when it comes to piracy as there are plenty of people who download Fallout and the TES series illegally, with every intention of modding and playing those games without paying a cent to the developers. I know they exists, there are people out there that do it. Your playstyle also doesn't determine how popular a game can be, otherwise games like FIFA, PES and Madden series wouldn't be popular stables for publishers who need a stable source of income to please their investors. Also there are not a lot of developers that would read your post in this website, and even if they did not a lot of developers would put modding on the highest list because their main concern is to ship a functional game. Modding is nice to have but it's not the be all and end all of video games, plus there are many games out there that don't need mods to make it better as they are already good.

[Ethreon]

And why do those companies care? Also, NV and FO3 are quite moddable themselves, yet you barely played them compared to skyrim. I'd say your issue here is more of a "I love this game and don't like these games" rather than them being moddable.

[Vagrant0]

Generalizing here... But from what I've seen, based on a large number of gamers, youtubers, streamers, people I've chatted to over the years...

 

Group 1 = "I want this game because I'm super hyped about it and it will be the greatest thing ever because all the pre-order trailers look awesome!"

Group 2 = "I want as much playtime as possible from this game because it is probably the only game I will be able to get for awhile due to budget or someone else buying games for me."

Group 3 = "I just want a game that remains interesting, which I can crack out on for a few weeks, and feel like I got a good value from it."

Group 4 = "I don't have much time to play games, I want something to distract me, be full of interesting content and little padding (grind). Money isn't much of an issue, but I still want to have it feel worthwhile."

Group 5 = "I own many games that I don't actually play because the reality is that even if a game might be good, I don't have time to play them all and will often just keep going back to what is familiar."

Group 6 = "I don't play games any more. I just collect them, let them run to get trading cards, maybe work on achievements, because I enjoy the meta more than the content."

Group 7 = "I only play games because it gets me views, or is popular among my friends. If it isn't hype, or I can't make funny faces and heavily edit the footage to be entertaining, or discuss it with my friends, it isn't for me."

 

Almost everyone fits into one of those groups. But I imagine you might be able to guess which group ends up buying more games when they come out, and subsequently earning the companies making these games the most money... Sales figures and Steam playtimes for titles show that things are heavily in favor of titles that are at about $2.50 - 4.00 per hour value than games with more content or at a lower price. Sales over the years because of an active community are nice, and are good for certain companies. But generally companies produce a product, enjoy the wealth, budget for the next project, and not look back.

[HyBrasil]

Well, here is a kind of a reply from an industry guy.

 

The company I work for now, Tripwire, started as a group of modders. They won some cash in an Unreal contest and started their own indie company. The founders were all from different cities and had only worked on the internet. They finally met, got an office, their mod content became a game (Red Orchestra) and the are still going 10 years later. Every game they put out has a public SDK so anyone can develop content, mutators or mods. The owners are still modders at heart.

 

A couple of years ago a group of modders approached them about a full conversion of their European theater war game into a Pacific theater game. They said, "go ahead, knock yourself out". After the team showed real potential, the owners committed some of our in-house resources and a chunk of cash to help get the conversion finished and handle marketing and publishing. That version (Rising Storm) did great and so, those modders got funds to start their own company, AntiMatter Games UK.

 

That said, the customers are our lifeblood. We love the modders and the community, but they are less than 1% of the player base. We want you to be free and creative, but we can't let you harm the majority of people in the game that are just wanting to have fun. Keep your mods tidy and tested, don't rip other game's assets, violate copyrights or get obscene and we'll all have a good time.