Why Do Game Developers Ignore The Modding Scene? | The Outer Worlds Problem

Modding has become more and more relevant in the modern gaming industry and a strong modding scene for a game means that it essentially gets better and better as time goes on. Developers like Bethesda have, in the past, garnered incredible goodwill and fostered a passionate community by encouraging mods and making available a suite of tools to make it easier for almost anybody to tweak the game to their liking. So why on earth are most video game developers outright ignoring the modding scene? 

I have been asking this question for years but recently, with the build-up to the release of The Outer Worlds, it came back into the forefront of my mind. With Bethesda essentially becoming a complete shit show, Obsidian Entertainment was primed to stand above them in every single area. All they had to do was look at what people wanted out of that kind of game and build systems from the ground up to accommodate that. Out of the gate, things are looking pretty sweet for The Outer Worlds, it's had very few criticisms levelled against it, but in terms of remaining relevant long term, it’s pretty obvious what role-playing game fans are looking for: mods. 

Take a look at the Outer Worlds Nexus page, undoubtedly the go-to place for talented modders and eager players looking to tweak the game and fix its issues (issues that we’ll get to in a moment.) Whereas recent Fallout and Elder Scrolls games were having mods put out multiple times a day at this point and often still do, The Outer Worlds has had merely a drizzle of mods and none of them particularly exciting. Essentially, you can change the colour palette of the game via a reshade, you can change the avatar of ADA to one of a selection of anime waifus and….nope, that’s it really.  

Obsidian may make modding tools for The Outer Worlds available in the future (though having been made in Unreal Engine it’s doubtful) but the problem extends further than that. One thing that modern game developers seem to be failing on massively is actually looking at other games, whatever they may be, and incorporating features that people like or even outright feel essential. Scalable UI has been a big one for me as someone who plays PC games on a TV as opposed to a monitor. The Outer Worlds has text in its menus that is impossible to read without standing up and walking across the room. You would 100% assume this issue would be patched, it’s something that’s being talked about in forums, it seems an easy thing to fix and indeed has been fixed in certain games with the help of mods. But as an example, Civilization: Beyond Earth and Civilization VI still remain without a UI scaling function. For me personally, I may simply never play these games and that’s a huge shame. 

The earliest example of this I can think of is Grand Theft Auto V which had its immersive smartphone pop-ups as part of its UI, I couldn’t read a word and this was on PS3. What’s the reason behind this? It’s something that plays into many other problems of this nature, that the developers were probably working on computer monitors their eyes were inches away from. The idea that someone would not be able to see this minuscule text never entered their mind. Game developers are too much in a bubble of their own game, without stepping back and (quite literally) looking at the bigger picture. Likewise, features that are needed or requested play second fiddle to features that the developer or publisher believes will better sell the game to eager customers. 

For instance, The Outer Worlds had to have a “hardcore” mode, didn’t it? It just had to. New Vegas had one...No! Seriously, Supernova mode is a perfect example of a tacked-on difficulty level that does not take into account the balance of the whole game. Who in their right mind would enjoy playing with companions that cannot last longer than 10 seconds in combat without permanently dying? Especially when developing sophisticated AI has once again been low on the list of priorities here, companions often stand out of cover and mindlessly wander in the general direction of enemies. Again, AI in moddable games is often something that gets vastly improved by the work of one person such as with SkyTest in Skyrim. Why can't these huge companies spend a bit more time on such a massive, integral part of the game. 

The biggest blunder with supernova, one that is constantly discussed as a negative amongst fans of RPGs like The Outer Worlds, is the decision to simply make enemies do more damage and have more health. Way to go Obsidian because for me personally, and I’m sure many others that play on higher difficulties, that simply killed the game. 

How about only being able to save the game at one single place, forcing you to retread the same ground constantly and discouraging shorter play sessions, penalising people with less free time? Needless to say, mods that fixed these pointless restrictions were some first to appear on the nexus. Shadow of the Tomb Raider did a similar thing with its “hardcore” difficulty which did not allow you to save unless at a campfire. Where did the developers place the first campfire? Oh only about an hour into the game after the prologue with several extended climbing and combat sections that you must execute perfectly to continue on to the main game on this mode. People don’t want restrictive hardcore difficulty modes, people want options. They want to be able to choose whether a companion will die permanently or when to save their game.  

These missed opportunities extend way beyond simply making it easier for players to create mods. Game developers should be familiar with all of the most popular mods out there and take inspiration from them to vastly improve their games. There's a reason people still play with survival mods rather than Bethesda's own survival mode. Let's look at some of the top endorsed mods for Skyrim, firstly immersive armours, people wanted freedom to mix and match more armours, that was clear to see, so what did Bethesda do with Fallout 4? Restricted the types of armour you can wear over others, resulting in armoursmith extended being one of the most endorsed mods for Fallout 4. Alternate Start: Live Another Life is also one of Skyrim’s top mods, Bethesda went the complete opposite direction with Fallout 4 giving the characters a set backstory and making the equivalent mod for this game harder to implement because of the direction of dialogue. Again, taking the role playing elements out of the game where people clearly wanted them, as evidenced by the millions of downloads just these two mods have delivered. 

There's another incredible tool that when used effectively, can boost a games' replayability to extreme levels. This feature is a level editor and it’s something that barely any game does nowadays despite every game with this feature being fondly remembered in no small part due to the feature itself. Hours upon hours spent in Tenchu 2 creating bizarre cave systems and maze like pagodas, in Tony Hawk’s creating my own skate park, and in Warcraft III trying to create an entire RTS campaign of my own (though never quite having the know-how to finish it, it was still insanely fun.) In the case of Warcraft III an entire new game, Defence of the Ancients, was borne from modding which has become a mind bogglingly successful franchise. Take a look at what people have created in Far Cry 2 or 3’s map editor for instance and you can see the unbounded potential tools like this have for player engagement with a game. Entire games have even been built around this concept such as we’ve seen with Little Big Planet. Fans of the recent Battlefront games have been disappointed with EA not delivering levels they want to see from their favourite Star Wars scenes. If EA had simply used their assets to create a map editor tool, they could have a bottomless well of the exact type of content the fans are craving. 

I’ll close off by giving some praise to a game I think has delivered massively in all the areas I’ve touched on. Factorio is an early access game that defies all misconceptions of the label. It has been in a very enjoyable state for a long time now and has an incredibly active modding scene. The developers Wube Software are very open about the progress of the game, give regular updates and very detailed and technical notes, often specifically aimed at modders, so they can easily update for the newest versions of the game. They have recently done a huge overhaul of enemy AI and pathfinding. The game has had several visual overhauls as well as recent tweaks to sound effects. Some updates have even in turn made mods obsolete such as when they added glow maps to laser beams. It seems Wube and the dedicated community of players are almost in collaboration, that’s what forms a strong community around a game and it’s what has made Factorio outright the best PC game I’ve ever played!  Also, whaddya know, Factorio has UI scaling.