I don't like mods/fangames
Aug 04 2024
First of all, hi. It's been a year. Val's is going well, just takes time to get things done. join the discord if you want to catch development updates on a more daily/weekly basis.
Now, you're probably reading the title and think I've suddenly gone off of the deep end. After all I've been making rom hacks since 2011, and have been playing rom hacks since the mid 2000s and I ran the Cave Story Modding Discord from 2017-2020. I have made sure, that modding is as easy as can be with the Coral Engine. So what gives? How can I say such a blanket statement as "I don't like mods/fangames" It's bazzar, and borderline disrespectful to the actions I've taken the last decade and a half.
So let's go; let's hear the crackpot idea I have to offer to everyone now that I've built my online career off the backs of this kind of content.
The truth is really simple actually. It's that mods and fangames simply cannot be as expressive as original games.
Let me explain. Mods are, well, mods of existing games. Mods are created by taking original works and reworking them into something different. New levels new weapons, new characters, but the underlying systems of how the game functions is the same. In fact that's usually the point. You make a mod of Sonic 1 because Sonic 1 has the physics/enemies you want, but you just want some new levels. This is fine, in fact this is great, you have all the work done for you, and you can basically make an entirely new game with less than half the work required. No concept work for physics, interactions, hud, gameflow, gamefeel, basically upwards of 80-90% of the work is done, drop in a converted MIDI into your new levels and you've got a measly 5% of the workload required to make a game. This is to make a fully fledged mod by the way. Even if you write some code, do some sprites, your workload doesn't get anywhere near the size of conceptualizing and developing a full on game.
Now, the problem with this, is that everyone can do this. There are now 10 billion Sonic 1 mods, and they are all competing in the same microspace of gaming for attention, and are to appeal to the superfan of the original game. (seriously, most gamers don't look for mods of old games, most gamers don't even play old games much if at all). Of course this balances out where the superfan is interested in playing all of them usually, they enjoy the original game enough to see it remixed over and over and over again. I was literally a part of this in the Sonic, Mario 64, Cave Story, and Zelda community for many years.
However, this sort of community only allows things to go so far. Mods aren't new games. There is a reason you don't see people do full engine rehauls of games usually, and the only ones that have happened are extremely noteworthy. The missing 80-90% of the game development cycle can greatly change the output of the game. Simply making a game from scratch and choosing specific aspects early on can greatly alter the course of a games design. This is pretty simple to understand, but that is the part that makes games not feel "romhacky" because they are intentionally designed that way from the beginning.
I know, I know. It sounds really simple, but it's important to take this aspect and not overlook it. Building a game from the ground up gives you that real feeling a game has, where as it's developed for it's end product, a developer has full control and simply makes what they are going to make, they can go back and change things to make it more streamlined, modders don't always have this luxury, nor the experience to do so, bringing me to my second point.
Toby Fox couldn't have made his vision of UnderTale be fully realized in the
confines of the earthbound engine.
Modders are, in general, less experienced than game developers. This is true, from both a game design perspective, and a life experience perspective. Modders are usually young, excited gamers that want to start making mods because their idea of what they want is simple (more levels/bosses) and it doesn't look that daunting to make a new level of a new enemy or a new sprite. A game developer's ideas, in general, are more complex. People show their vision of what they want, and the rom hacker/fangame maker will use a template that is 90% already what their vision is. (In the case of the rom hacker, the engine exists, while a famgame maker, the ideas are the only thing that exists.) A game developer has, in general, a much more complex vision of what they want, and they use a game to show that vision, they are mature enough to conjure up more complex ideas, and they execute on those more complex ideas by building an environment that caters to that one or two core idea(s).
Anime is going through a very similar thing as of recent. (though it's much more it's own fault, than a natural consequence that simply happens due to the nature of it's work, like mods/fangames). People with life experience and visions to tell are no longer making anime; anime fans are now making anime. This is why many people are like "older anime is cool" and even people like Miasaki are saying "anime was a mistake" the context for that was that only fanatics are getting involved with the industry, and people who are artists are not.
I want to make clear, mods are a good thing. Fangames are a good thing. They are great for teaching people about game development, and are great for free DLC to your favorite games that you can't get enough of. But this does not change the fact that they are objectively, artistically, less expressive than a fully fledged game. You can bring up exceptions where a game is bad and mods make it good, but that's just fixing issues, not creating something entirely new.
Zelda Parallel Worlds (2008) is one of the greatest ROM hacks of all time
Again, I love mods, I love fangames, (love being the action here, not the feeling, I still don't like them... in a way) but playing the same things remixed, over and over again for the last two decades just isn't something I'm interested in anymore. I want to see full unadulterated visions of game developers. I want to see how they see the world, expressed through video games. The 10,000th Green Hill or Egg Corridor level remix just doesn't have the capabilities to do that. Both because of it's inherent limitations, but also because anyone who does have the capabilities to do so, will find the correct medium to express it.
I wish the various existing modding communities would put more of a focus on this kind of thinking, and way of approaching game development. I don't think everyone needs to "graduate" from modding to gamedev, but the fact that it's rarely a talking point, and that people are very content just making mods and not trying to embrace the entire development cycle, takes the winds out of my sails. People can do SO much more than they think they can, especially when given the freedom that the 80-90% isn't done, and they have space to innovate on it and change it to match their vision.
That's it for now, blog post at the end of this year as a wrapup of this year in Val's Venture. See you then.
Aug 04 2024
First of all, hi. It's been a year. Val's is going well, just takes time to get things done. join the discord if you want to catch development updates on a more daily/weekly basis.
Now, you're probably reading the title and think I've suddenly gone off of the deep end. After all I've been making rom hacks since 2011, and have been playing rom hacks since the mid 2000s and I ran the Cave Story Modding Discord from 2017-2020. I have made sure, that modding is as easy as can be with the Coral Engine. So what gives? How can I say such a blanket statement as "I don't like mods/fangames" It's bazzar, and borderline disrespectful to the actions I've taken the last decade and a half.
So let's go; let's hear the crackpot idea I have to offer to everyone now that I've built my online career off the backs of this kind of content.
The truth is really simple actually. It's that mods and fangames simply cannot be as expressive as original games.
Let me explain. Mods are, well, mods of existing games. Mods are created by taking original works and reworking them into something different. New levels new weapons, new characters, but the underlying systems of how the game functions is the same. In fact that's usually the point. You make a mod of Sonic 1 because Sonic 1 has the physics/enemies you want, but you just want some new levels. This is fine, in fact this is great, you have all the work done for you, and you can basically make an entirely new game with less than half the work required. No concept work for physics, interactions, hud, gameflow, gamefeel, basically upwards of 80-90% of the work is done, drop in a converted MIDI into your new levels and you've got a measly 5% of the workload required to make a game. This is to make a fully fledged mod by the way. Even if you write some code, do some sprites, your workload doesn't get anywhere near the size of conceptualizing and developing a full on game.
Now, the problem with this, is that everyone can do this. There are now 10 billion Sonic 1 mods, and they are all competing in the same microspace of gaming for attention, and are to appeal to the superfan of the original game. (seriously, most gamers don't look for mods of old games, most gamers don't even play old games much if at all). Of course this balances out where the superfan is interested in playing all of them usually, they enjoy the original game enough to see it remixed over and over and over again. I was literally a part of this in the Sonic, Mario 64, Cave Story, and Zelda community for many years.
However, this sort of community only allows things to go so far. Mods aren't new games. There is a reason you don't see people do full engine rehauls of games usually, and the only ones that have happened are extremely noteworthy. The missing 80-90% of the game development cycle can greatly change the output of the game. Simply making a game from scratch and choosing specific aspects early on can greatly alter the course of a games design. This is pretty simple to understand, but that is the part that makes games not feel "romhacky" because they are intentionally designed that way from the beginning.
I know, I know. It sounds really simple, but it's important to take this aspect and not overlook it. Building a game from the ground up gives you that real feeling a game has, where as it's developed for it's end product, a developer has full control and simply makes what they are going to make, they can go back and change things to make it more streamlined, modders don't always have this luxury, nor the experience to do so, bringing me to my second point.
Toby Fox couldn't have made his vision of UnderTale be fully realized in the
confines of the earthbound engine.
Modders are, in general, less experienced than game developers. This is true, from both a game design perspective, and a life experience perspective. Modders are usually young, excited gamers that want to start making mods because their idea of what they want is simple (more levels/bosses) and it doesn't look that daunting to make a new level of a new enemy or a new sprite. A game developer's ideas, in general, are more complex. People show their vision of what they want, and the rom hacker/fangame maker will use a template that is 90% already what their vision is. (In the case of the rom hacker, the engine exists, while a famgame maker, the ideas are the only thing that exists.) A game developer has, in general, a much more complex vision of what they want, and they use a game to show that vision, they are mature enough to conjure up more complex ideas, and they execute on those more complex ideas by building an environment that caters to that one or two core idea(s).
Anime is going through a very similar thing as of recent. (though it's much more it's own fault, than a natural consequence that simply happens due to the nature of it's work, like mods/fangames). People with life experience and visions to tell are no longer making anime; anime fans are now making anime. This is why many people are like "older anime is cool" and even people like Miasaki are saying "anime was a mistake" the context for that was that only fanatics are getting involved with the industry, and people who are artists are not.
I want to make clear, mods are a good thing. Fangames are a good thing. They are great for teaching people about game development, and are great for free DLC to your favorite games that you can't get enough of. But this does not change the fact that they are objectively, artistically, less expressive than a fully fledged game. You can bring up exceptions where a game is bad and mods make it good, but that's just fixing issues, not creating something entirely new.
Zelda Parallel Worlds (2008) is one of the greatest ROM hacks of all time
Again, I love mods, I love fangames, (love being the action here, not the feeling, I still don't like them... in a way) but playing the same things remixed, over and over again for the last two decades just isn't something I'm interested in anymore. I want to see full unadulterated visions of game developers. I want to see how they see the world, expressed through video games. The 10,000th Green Hill or Egg Corridor level remix just doesn't have the capabilities to do that. Both because of it's inherent limitations, but also because anyone who does have the capabilities to do so, will find the correct medium to express it.
I wish the various existing modding communities would put more of a focus on this kind of thinking, and way of approaching game development. I don't think everyone needs to "graduate" from modding to gamedev, but the fact that it's rarely a talking point, and that people are very content just making mods and not trying to embrace the entire development cycle, takes the winds out of my sails. People can do SO much more than they think they can, especially when given the freedom that the 80-90% isn't done, and they have space to innovate on it and change it to match their vision.
That's it for now, blog post at the end of this year as a wrapup of this year in Val's Venture. See you then.