The idea of user-generated content has always been something that fasincated me in gaming. Whether it be mods like Counter-Strike and Dota, or open-ended games like Minecraft or Terraria. The ability for a game to sustain itself beyond what is made by the developer is very interesting. Sometimes it may even lead to an entire new genre being developed, such as with MOBA’s with Dota and autobattlers with Auto Chess.

One of the ideas that James Newman harps on about in his HTPVG chapter “Minecraft: User Generated Content” is how difficult it is to identify exactly what Minecraft is because of how many different forms it takes. Between the game itself having dramatically different games in Creative and Survival, there is also all the fan-made game modes that are included. When someone says, “I play Minecraft,” there are so many different styles and different things that it means that it’s very hard to define it. I, for example, almost entirely play the game (back when I played it consistently) in creative, except for the few times I had played in a private survival server with friends.

This is one of the most fascinating aspects of multiplayer gaming in general. While the communities can be harsh, unwelcoming, and perhaps even gatekeeping, there is something beautiful about it as well. The fact that fans themselves are able to come up with new things to give old games multiple new leases on life over the years is incredible. I’ve always believed that the best games are the ones that are able to sustain themselves over a long period of time purely due to the fanbases love of the game.  All of this is amplified further by the addition of things such as opening the source code for modding (credit to John Carmack for being the main pioneer of this idea), and this leads to games often becoming sustainable for far longer than we have seen in the past. Some modern multiplayer games, such as Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch, even opened up a mode where you could modify server settings and mess with physics and the like just for people to try and create their own game modes within the existing engine.

Newman also invokes the concept of watching “Let’s Players” playing game modes that they either create themselves, or are sent in by fans. This is a brilliant way to increase “shelf life (a metaphorical term in this digital age)”. It increases the longevity of the game even further, since if a certain content creator gets popular enough, then that can lead to fans of them wanting to play the mods that the creator is playing, and it theoretically creates a self-sustaining circle (which will, of course, inevitably end at some point).

I love the topic of modding in games, especially since the games most important to me were originally mods themselves.

Newman, James. “Minecraft: User-Generated Content.” How to Play Video Games, by Matthew Thomas Payne and Nina Huntemann, New York University Press, 2019, pp. 277–284.