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 allows for a change of a gun into a corgi.
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 you 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 said 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 said. "They went in there and rewrote a lot of the code, and made something that a small but sizable 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 labor 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 a 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 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."
SundayMonday Business on 04/18/2016