Why do you make mods?

[Guest endgameaddiction]

Well the very first game I ever modded was FFXI as I was apparently "too young" according to my older brother to be allowed to play Morrowind. (in reality he's just a giant douche and hated the fact he had a baby sister). I didn't like how my Elvaan looked or the what color the armor wore was. And since I played a bard mainly, all the "best" armor looked REALLY stupid. Back then NA players didn't like bards so most of my parties were later at night with the japanese players. Ended up making friends with them, and they showed me the mods. Ended up editing my own in a software that was barely translated at the time. After that was texture changes in WoW. Eventually somehow I ended up in Skyrim after not modding for a few years.

 

Which drives me nuts because I used to use blender to port stuff from Oblivion/Skyrim into DAO/DA2. But now can I figure out how to port things into Skyrim and have them work? NOPE. Nor do I remember how to use blender at all. Pretty sure most of the colorful language my toddler has learned has been from listening to mommy yell at her computer.

 

I miss bard. I used to chain pull Bard back in the days. My biggest chain was 200 before the party wanted to split. I do miss XI at times. The good days at least before Abyssea when you actually had to work your way up. Started to dislike how newbies got all jobs to 90+ and earned a free ticket to events over me and then bragged about their armor and thought they were gods. That's life of MMO though. Gulkeeva was a cool guy. Never hung around him on my server as we were on different linkshells, but I've seen him from time to time. Now Stanislav? Loved when he was paying me to be redmage for his static during the ToAU launch with the new jobs back then. Good times...

[Bromm83]

Simple. I used a mod that I wanted to improve on. At first I only made t for myself, but then the modder stopped working on it and made it free to use for the community (nexus actually) (and the mod in question was wsex tryout). Then I met Loogie that also were working on the dialogues there, while I was working on all the other stuff. He lured me over here and we made it a LL project. Then Sexout was made and we figured we should port it to Sexout since we could actually request features there and had some help learning all the scripting. After a while I just let Loogie go on with it since I was sick of working on that mod and moved on to other stuff.

 

Sexout Sex I actually just made as a way to view all the different sexstyles ingame so I could make dialogue that fit with what was happening. Never intended it for release..

Sexout Hookups was really made because someone asked me to and wrote most of the dialogue ready for me. 

 

Also I started making armor and clothes (never been released since they are all crap) just because I wanted to learn how to do it. I stopped making those once I found out how much work texturing is... 

 

I have also made two animations! Just to see how it is done. They were also crap, but at least I got to try it. 

 

But really; for me modding is a way of creating the skyrim I want to play. And at the same time a nice way of learning something new. The fun part is that once I start modding I stop playing since there is always just one more thing I want to change... 

 

 

[gerra6]

As someone who benefits from all the user generated content on the internet, I am completely baffled (and extremely grateful) as to the 'why?' people do all this stuff with seemingly nothing to gain. All this stuff you make, from mods to forums to youtube videos, why do you do it?

For the most part, I have more fun coding slightly insane tools than I would playing games.

 

It's like playing an incredibly challenging puzzle game, except that when I'm done I've actually accomplished something tangible.

[mojodajojo]

I'm OCD. I can't stand it when the game doesn't do what I want it to do.  I'm constantly torn between playing/enjoying a game and trying to enforce my will on it.  Right not I want to make a mod to impress Kendo2 for some damn reason, but it's a New Vegas mod and I'm also obssessed with some horribly obscene private shit I'm doing with with SexLab for Skyrim.  I swear; even my hobbies stress me out.  I should have a morphine drip 24/7.

 

Edit: Now working on an RCOTs mod, too.  I might actually finish this one as it's actually pretty game enhancing. or I might go buy some crack rock and try to accidentally/purposefully find Rick Roll vids.

[BoozeJunky]

As someone who benefits from all the user generated content on the internet, I am completely baffled (and extremely grateful) as to the 'why?' people do all this stuff with seemingly nothing to gain. All this stuff you make, from mods to forums to youtube videos, why do you do it? 

 

I haven't really made much in the way of mods, and what I have made was nothing impressive. The largest being housing mod for FO3. For me, it's because there's a tweak or a feature or something that I want in my game, which nobody else has made... so I make it myself, and then just put it out there for other people in case they're interested. Though I admit, when I was building my nuclear missile silo, the experience in building it was pretty fun. Almost more fun than the actual games in a strange way. It's like playing with Legos as a kid... or I guess Minecraft now... just the building experience is in itself interesting... and if other find what you did enjoyable, then all the better.

[ratrace]

I make mods when I feel the game needs certain changes or is lacking content which I think should be in it.

[Shadowhawk827]

OK, so I skipped over most of the replies, so I don't know who's said what as to reasons.

 

Reading descriptions of mods and conversations about specific mods on various sites, I think most people do it for one of three reasons

 

1) They see something in the game that they can't stand

 

2) The sense of satisfaction in creating something new

 

3) The challenge of trying to do something they new and unique for the game.

 

Needless to say there's a combination of those motives involved for many modders.  Let's also not forget the quest for recognition.  For some of us, a pat on the back is appreciated.  For the extreme other end of it, there's the neurotic need for constant positive feedback to counter insecurity.

 

For me with Dawnguard Sentries, it was a combination of the last two things I listed.  I wanted to improve myself and see if I could do it.  I also enjoy seeing a finished project up and running.