Why do we mod?

[DoomGappy]

I started to ask myself this question. Doom turns 30 this year, and here we are, still playing with it, toying around, making mods and maps and texture packs. I wanted people who have been here longer than I have to tell me why they do what they do. What got you started? What have you learned? Has it been useful for you in any other way, or did you do it just for fun? Do you feel like you will ever stop doing it or is it something that has become part of who you are to a certain extent? I'm curious to read the answers.

[Lucius Wooding]

-Because we like the game

-Because modding is comparatively easy compared to many other games

-It's a fun creative outlet and very satisfying

-We don't get bored of the gameplay, but it's pretty easy to get bored of the maps over time

-We have a strong community of mappers and modders as well as people who stream, review, make demos or just casually enjoy the content, or even just lurk on the forums or look at cool screenshots

-Because the maps some of us want to play don't exist

-Because Romero is taking his sweet time with Sigil II

[DannyMan]

I guess it's because there's this urge to add something in game

[INfront95]

Modding and mapping is a natural evolution of a gamer.

You buy a game, you like it, you play it for a long time, then go for another, then for another, and then you like a genre.
For a while you game, you game, you game, and one day a thought came to you.
I wanna do something like this too.
You start searching for modding and mapping tools, you fall into rabbit hole to the point that you rarely game anymore and focus on creating something new.

The fact that modern gaming became too mainstream with corpos ruining anything, being a modder and a mapper is one of the few joys left in the industry.

Besides its a creative outlet, a desire to create, no matter what, map, weapon, monster, behaviour of said monsters.

When you played games in your early years, everything seemed so...... unmovable. Levels were solid, monster placements were set in stone, but with skills of modding and mapping, you gained abillity to finally shape this solid world as you like it.

Feels good man.

[129thVisplane]

i started Doom modding back in ~2011 when i rediscovered the 90's fps scene and found out the existence of modding tools. long story full of abandoned projects short, these days i mod just for the praise and recognition like the attention slut i shamelessly am the fun* of it. it also kickstarted my interest in modding other games, and familiarizing myself with Doom map editors made me more comfortable in modding tools for full-3D engines like Source. recent events have made me fall out of love for Doom as a concept but my love for the engine as a free-for-all modding playground was unaffected by that.

 

* me and the act of orchestrating engaging gameplay when mapping have a very toxic relationship so "fun" is subjective. i had wanted to stop modding many times, but no matter what i do, UDB always proverbially slides into my DMs. sometimes it's a chill time and sometimes i sit on the floor and cry because i always exhaust my encounter ideas 2 rooms in and my brain won't let me put down any more silly demon bois on the grid and it is very frustrating. rant aside i don't think i'll ever willingly stop being a modder in at least the graphical end of it

[Darkcrafter07]

For the same reasons humanity evolved due - reverse engineering. It's a thing of curiosity. Then there is something like feedback and how proud you feel about work that belongs to you.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Darkcrafter07

[SupremeBioVizier]

SO I CAN DO STUFF THATS SUPER AWESOME

Edited September 14, 2023 by nocisum

[Gougaru]

Classic doom is timeless. That's why

[OpenRift]

54 minutes ago, INfront95 said:

Modding and mapping is a natural evolution of a gamer.

It used to be, once upon a time, but now it seems like most of the industry wants to keep that from happening.

Edited September 13, 2023 by OpenRift

[St. Mildly Annoyed]

3 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

It used to be, once upon a time, but now it seems like most of the industry wants to keep that from happening.

Yeah, while greedy safeguards against it are a thing, a lot of it could just be the ever evolving complexity of modern mainstream games.

[Thomased22]

To change the game. Make it different. Create a variety of gameplay experiences.

We wouldn't have unique shit like hideous that changes the game entirely without the want for variety.

[INfront95]

14 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

It used to be, once upon a time, but now it seems like most of the industry wants to keep that from happening.

Yea, its the only way they can sell you skins, DLC, and microtransactions. Because why whould you buy it if a Joe next door with a passion can draw a better skin for free and tripple AAA studio can't. Hence a lot of communities are focused on Retrogaming. Cause of the tools, easy entry, and overall abundance of tutorials/ simplicity of the engines.

[TheCaneOfTheTophat]

"I think, therefore I mod."
-- René Doomscartes, probably

Serious answer, because modding is a fun creative outlet that allows you to change your favorite game without the trouble of making a game. You have the engine, figure out the rest yourself, dummy. Bonus points if the game was meant to be broken apart, teared down and modified.

[coderamen]

Because doom modding is fun and is a great distraction from the misery of day to day life. The simplicity is a wonderful contribution to this fact because it's not hard to mod doom.

[Murdoch]

Because it's creative. Being creative is fun (albeit sometimes challenging) and emotionally satisfying. 

[DerBlanca]

Because it keeps my OCD at bay. 

[DoomGappy]

1 hour ago, 129thVisplane said:

i started Doom modding back in ~2011 when i rediscovered the 90's fps scene and found out the existence of modding tools. long story full of abandoned projects short, these days i mod just for the praise and recognition like the attention slut i shamelessly am the fun* of it. it also kickstarted my interest in modding other games, and familiarizing myself with Doom map editors made me more comfortable in modding tools for full-3D engines like Source. recent events have made me fall out of love for Doom as a concept but my love for the engine as a free-for-all modding playground was unaffected by that.

 

* me and the act of orchestrating engaging gameplay when mapping have a very toxic relationship so "fun" is subjective. i had wanted to stop modding many times, but no matter what i do, UDB always proverbially slides into my DMs. sometimes it's a chill time and sometimes i sit on the floor and cry because i always exhaust my encounter ideas 2 rooms in and my brain won't let me put down any more silly demon bois on the grid and it is very frustrating. rant aside i don't think i'll ever willingly stop being a modder in at least the graphical end of it

Any place I could get samples of your work?

 

1 hour ago, Gougaru said:

Classic doom is timeless. That's why

Indeed.