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Should user-generated content be a key game discovery focus?
We talk to Mod.io's Scott Reismanis on the promise of the market.
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
Greetings, kind game discovery adventurers. We appear to be venturing fearlessly into what we hear some people call ‘the middle of the week’. So that’s why I’m back by your side, offering malformed sensei-like tips on the video game world as we know it.
Ah, music album of the week: apparently everyone I know got this YouTube rec. at the same time, but vaporwave all-star Macroblank has some very smooth ‘jazzsample’ albums currently being up-algorithmed by ‘The Toob’. (Please enjoy.)
The UGC boon: chatting to Mod.io on modding ftw!
Good news: the fourth episode of our Tales From GameDiscoveryLand podcast is here. (Reminder: you can easily listen in-browser via our official podcast page, and also via Apple Podcasts, Spotify & more. If you need it, here’s our podcast RSS feed.)
In this episode - recorded just after GDC 2022 - we talk to Scott Reismanis, founder of platform-agnostic game mod host/platform Mod.io about the evolution of UGC (user-generated content), the impact of this content in games, and the future of the space.
Scott was also the founder of ModDB and IndieDB, and has been involved in the mod scene for more than 20 years. His new VC-backed company, which helps run cross-platform mods for games like Snowrunner, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, Deep Rock Galactic & Skater XL - is doing some interesting work to make mods available multi-platform.
We’ve done a full, lightly edited text transcript of this podcast alongside the audio, with plenty more specifics. But we wanted to highlight some interesting angles here:
Modding is a ‘broad church’ nowadays, in terms of output
Scott notes: “Historically, when I got started in modding with ModDB back in 2002, mods were all total conversions. There really was no such thing as cosmetic mods back then. Fast forward to the last… 10 years. Modding's become, I would say, much more accessible, somewhat more cosmetic.”
In part, it’s because you needed do a bunch of fiddling around with directories and files to get mods to work - and it was a bother to do that, just for tiny game changes. But the rise of Steam Workshop - and now third-party services like Mod.io - make it way easier for players to just press a button to install a mod.
In addition, some games - like Space Engineers, or Besiege, deliberately make user-generated content a core, easy-to-access part of the gameplay: “you build your own machine and you share it.” (Scott says: “We've got a lot of truck and bus and car related games on the service”, and notes that games like TABS have a ridiculous amount of mods of in-game fighting units.)
But maybe it’s worth enabling modding in your game, even if you haven’t built the tools to make it easy and it’s not a core gameplay consideration. Scott says: “In the case of Snowrunner, I think there's like a 40 to 50 page PDF document on how to make levels and vehicles. That’s what the community started with - a deeply technical guide that involves a lot of different skill sets.”
“And at first glance for someone, it is daunting - there's a lot to it. And yet there's been, I think at this point, over 1500 vehicles submitted. So that's a classic example of ‘never underestimate the power and talent and the resourcefulness of your creative community’, because with very little they can figure out a lot.”
Console games can still have mods - if handled differently!
Game modding on console is something that definitely happens. But the console platform holders are naturally nervous about allowing users to mod, uhh, anything they want in there. So how do you approach this?
Reismanis notes of safer possibilities via Mod.io: “There is the option for full curation if [devs] want it - and then they can be in complete control of that. They can also release more simplified creation tools that don't allow people to bring outside assets into their game.”
But the best current approach seems to be curating ‘drops’ of modded content regularly on console: “Some of the rules that the console systems apply actually appear to be almost beneficial. On PC, in some of those titles, they allow all mods. So any mod that gets submitted is instantly available for all players. On consoles, they curate every week or month… on to those platforms.”
“As a result of that curation, where they validate that the mods work and then approve them for the console device - it almost becomes an event that players look forward to. They know that every week, Snowrunner has its mod drop on Xbox and PlayStation… That then drives a lot of engagement for that game.” Neat.