Game mods for everyone
August 12, 2007
Game construction sets like the one included with The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion can be used to modify the game in any number of ways. Currently Elder Scrolls Source is home to no less than 7994 different mods for the game, ranging from buildings and dungeons to gameplay effects to hair and face models. Clearly, a player who has installed a bunch of these mods on his/her PC is playing a substantively different game than the so-called identical version released by Bethesda for the Xbox 360. The fact that Bethesda enables and supports the mod community in this way is enormously encouraging to those of us who believe that fixed meaning and gameplay experience can be framed, but never really controlled by game designers.
So what else can we do with these construction sets? How about design cities? This week's issue of The Escapist highlights a project by architects to render a 3D model of London using the Oblivion construction set. Very cool.