The design team behind Firaxis' turn-based, alien-themed combat tactics
game "
XCOM 2" recently did something that might surprise most people.
When the designers, led by creative director Jake Solomon, noticed that
fans were making their own post-release changes to previous titles in
the series, the team not only embraced the trend, it actually decided to
rewrite the code of the game from the ground up to encourage it.
It
was a first for the 22-year-old franchise. And fans have responded. More
than 1,000 have published their own changes to the game, ranging from a
fan redesign that completely changes how relationships between
characters work in the game, to a popular one that lets you change your
gun into a corgi. (Because, why not?)
(Also see: XCOM 2 Review)
It's not, of course, new to
have games that support this activity, which is called modding. But
Solomon looks at it as a way to both extend the life of his game and to
build a better relationship with its fans. "Mods have been this
interesting middle ground between developer and audience," he said. "It
keeps the game fresh, and gives your audience something to talk about"
while developers spend their time making new official content for the
game.
Mods aren't always greeted with open arms. Take-Two
Interactive, the publisher of XCOM 2, asked one group of independent
developers to stop work on a multiplayer mod for "Grand Theft Auto V,"
saying that it had code that could facilitate piracy. Other mods have
been removed, particularly for multiplayer modes, because they could
allow certain members of the community to cheat. But, on the whole,
they're being embraced by players and studios alike.
Even before
Firaxis made its game mod-friendly, players were finding ways to alter
the title in significant ways. One particularly prominent mod is called
The Long War, which significantly extended, revamped and rebalanced both
"XCOM: Enemy Unknown" and "XCOM: Enemy Within." Solomon once even told
IGN his team of official designers essentially made a "20-hour tutorial
for the Long War" and that was just fine by him.
The mod gave the
game a different feel and focused on a smaller audience that a
commercial title perhaps couldn't afford to. "I still don't know how
they did it," Solomon told The Post. "They went in there and rewrote a
lot of the code, and made something that a small but sizeable portion of
the audience really enjoyed."
Rather than see mods as criticism of
the work his team put into the game, Solomon sees it as a labour of love
from its biggest fans.
"That's not my personality as a designer,"
he said. "After all, somebody has to do a bunch of work for free. They
have to be so passionate about the game to do this, whether they add
something silly or something really, really impressive."
While he
said the team discussed whether it was wise to hand everything they'd
worked on as a proprietary team - code, art assets, sounds, etc. -
over to the public, they ultimately decided that the positives outweigh
whatever possible negatives may come up. "When mods are involved, it's
less an issue of ownership; it transitions from being a game to a
platform for audience creativity."
Besides, he said, he has enough
confidence in his own team to know that the core game they release will
be able to stand on its own, against whatever variation the fans may
come up with.
"It really pushes you as a studio," he said. "People
are doing amazing stuff, and because there are more than 1,000
post-release packs that are out there for free, you have to find way to
add value as a developer that your modders don't."
And while he
said he would never take an idea from a mod, he does look at the mods
for overarching indications about what fans may want to see in the next
game, or what may be not be working that well in the current one. "We're
more curators at this point; it would be foolish to make those
decisions without strongly considering what players value," he said.
Giving
players the opportunity to remix the game and put their own mark on it
makes Solomon happy. Plus, he said, he's certainly not going to run out
of ideas himself any time soon.
"I have about 400 ideas for games
that I'd like to do, and I won't be able to get to them before I croak,"
Solomon said. "So if people do take it as a platform, that, to me,
would be really exciting."
© 2016 The Washington Post
Nvidia Releases Project G-Assist AI Gaming Assistant That Runs on GeForce RTX GPUs27 March 2025
Search
![[Sponsored] 10 Reasons to Buy Samsung Galaxy Book5 Series Laptops](https://c.ndtvimg.com/2025-03/6gg1i738_samsung-laptops_160x120_28_March_25.jpg?downsize=180:*)
![Gadgets 360 With Technical Guruji: Ask TG [ March 22, 2025]](https://c.ndtvimg.com/2024-12/5s52e4k_-ask-tg_640x480_14_December_24.jpg?downsize=180:*)
