I can’t seem to get you outta my head
Modding and changing the game & art style
No lie, I like the way you make me feel
Completely redone, the game now makes me smile
You’re the modder on my mind
You’re the modder on my miiiind
My apologies to the half-dozen songs I butchered writing that doggerel, but I was trying to keep up with a Discord conversation and my brain flatlined into looping that imaginary chorus on repeat. After writing (but not sending) a small novel, I ended up here asking:
Is modding the saving grace of gaming? The slow erosion of it? Or — like touching grass — best experienced in moderation?
Modding is incredible — but at what point does it stop being about improving a game and start being about rewriting it? And what does that say about how we treat the games we play?
My Position:
I’m not against modding, personally. I don’t tend to use them much, but they’re the stars of my game life in both World of Warcraft and DayZ. In WoW, it’s all about functionality. I used bag and bar mods until Blizzard finally implemented native options, and I still run with things like DBM or Clique to smooth out gameplay.
In DayZ, I stick with minimal changes — mostly mods that add more survival flavor. Extra items to handcraft, more clothing and bag options, and stuff that supports immersion. (Rip BoomLay’s mods, abandoned but never forgotten–and even working still, somewhat.)
To me, neither game is fundamentally changed by the (well, the mods’) changes.
My Gripe:
Where’s the line between tweaking a few things to smooth gameplay… and rewriting the entire fucking game?
Take 7 Days to Die — a game I enjoy! — but look at major overhaul mods like Darkness Falls or Undead Legacy. These aren’t tweaks. They completely rewrite the experience: new skill trees, new quests, new crafting systems, new loot balance, and entirely new rules about what the game even is.
(Full disclosure: never used them. But I have a friend who’s an amazing creator/resource for 7D2D mods.)
But!
At what point is it no longer the game the developer made?
Maybe it’s the writer in me. (Or the control freak.) But I can’t help feeling weird about the moment modding stops being “what if” and starts becoming “actually, here’s how this should’ve gone.”
I think about how wild it would be to say that to an author or director:
“Great work — but I made some tweaks. The hero’s a villain now, it’s set in space, I removed the redemption arc, and I cut the dialogue because it was too wordy.”
That’s not editing. That’s rewriting. (Or maybe fanfic — which is fine )
But I can’t help but wonder – and yes, that’s an intentional Carrie Bradshaw nod and now I understand why she does it because it’s fucking useful–
if the only way you can enjoy a game is to gut it and rebuild it from the inside out…
was it really the original game that won you over?
The Counterpoint! (Or, things said by folks in my Discord.)
Sometimes that’s exactly what a game needs.
Some early access titles (7 Days included) survive in part because modders fixed or expanded things the devs didn’t have time — or the tools or ABILITY — to handle.
Sims is heavily supported by modders. (And streamers, but that’s another article.) Mods can be lifelines. They can turn janky, half-finished messes into cult favorites.
That’s valid. I’m not knocking the effort or creativity involved.
Second Counterpoint — The Replay Argument ( tiny paragraph, promise):
Someone pro-modding mentioned they enjoy going back and replaying a game modded after finishing it vanilla. Maybe this idea, and modding, don’t click with me because my gun-to-my-head-tell-the-truth entertainment medium is books. And books are very open and shut. (Literally.)
Sure, sometimes I’ll finish one and go, “I can’t believe the author did X,” but that’s where it ends. I don’t rewrite it. It’s an experience. I either move on, or I revisit it for nostalgia. ( I reread Clan of the Cave Bear every couple of months.)
Which, honestly, is how I treat 7 Days. It bores me faster these days, but I’ll still hop in for the nostalgia and that early-game ramp-up fun.
No mods needed.
Shutting Up Now
Maybe modding isn’t the problem. Maybe how we approach it — and how we treat the original work — kind of is.
I will say, you should always play a game to either completion or for at least a dozen hours before modding it UNLESS it’s a mod that makes the game a completely different game
Ideally, yeah, play a game through before modding it. If it launches as half-baked garbage or is some soulless early access husk, I can understand the desire to mod it into something actually worth playing.
(Some games don’t earn the courtesy of a vanilla run.)
Modding for me has always been a way to extend a games re-playability. The dev vision of the game is what made us buy it and play it. I dont understand how buying a game and modding it prior to even playing it fully, when you cant know what you will like or dislike if you never even experience it.
Lets go back 30 ish years, Unreal tournament – Modding gave us new game modes, new maps, new weapons, new power ups, new enemies. Sims – we got all new decorations, things to interact with, more options to design a home for artificial life forms and then help or hinder them, torture or watch them live life. Mods become games like counter-strike. just a small sample of taking what was seen and experienced and brought something new to the game. For me thats what mods should be for, expanding the base game smooth out something that was a bit grindy or mechanically clunky. Giving a game a new life extending it from a one and done to hey i liked the game but if i toss in harder creatures maybe i will have to try a new strategy to beat it again.
As to the 7d2d overhauls i dont feel they completely made a new game over the existing as it still keeps the base game concept you still struggle at first to get resources and skills, you get to go to poi to loot and fight zombies, and the quests are still go kill, go collect, etc however i do find overhauls ontop of a game that has had performance issues and clunky fighting mechanics and dropping larger and more even more creatures into these new pois the overhauls were just more clunky and brought different issues on top of vanilla ones.
I would argue that outside of putting shit on something redic tilted- like Nightmare- there’s incredibly little struggle in that game. Tedium, yes, struggle- have yet to see it. 💩
Modding it ASAP – before experiencing it fully- is probably done by the “5 stars and I’m .02 minutes in” and the “Amazon 5 Star Review though I haven’t used the product” people.