Why Mods are Simultaneously the Best and Worst Part of PC Gaming

The PC gaming modding and tinkering scene is a thing of beauty. They come up with the most amazing things; 4K mods for games from 1996, AI enhancements, but there is an element missing. Making amazing things is great, and making them available to the public is fantastic, but you know what’s even better than that? Better than creating obscure instructions the user has to spend an hour following, that might not even yield the correct results? A simple installer or an automated script, that does the heavy lifting for the user, rather than expecting them to do the work.

You might say that it’s asking a lot to demand these developers, after spending hundreds or thousands of hours making all of this free content, that they spend even more time making it more accessible. To that, I say this: If you spent hundreds or thousands of hours making a piece of content, wouldn’t you want as many people to enjoy it as possible?

No Automatic Updates?

periodically, there is a new version of the PlayStation 2 emulator PCSX2 with a bunch of improvements that (I imagine) should improve the emulation experience for a lot of games. Thing is though, why do I need to download the new version manually? Why doesn’t PCSX2 have an auto-update function? VLC has auto-update function, so why not this? What’s so mega-ultra-complicated about PCSX2 that they can’t make it automatically update when a new version drops?? This is the problem with the pc tinkering scene; they do these amazing things, but then they make it annoying to implement what they’ve done.

PCSX2 can be updated, but there is no automatic updates. Emulated games are stable and playable on modern hardware, but every game requires a different emulator configuration which the user has to figure out themselves. Mods breathe new life into a game and let you play the way that you want, but the bigger mods have to be installed manually with a sometimes hour-long installation process. Getting your game exactly how you like it is great, but migrating your modded game from one machine to the next is a major pain, and load orders mean that even a properly-installed mod can break your game with no obvious cause.

Related: You shouldn’t have to “fix it with mods”

Installation (extra frustration)

I was looking at this Elder Scrolls (don’t recall which, probably Oblivion) mod, thinking “airght this looks keen let’s give it a go”. Took a look at the install instructions expecting like “chuck this into that folder” or “let the mod manager do it”. Instead, the instructions come in the form of an hour-long YouTube video. The video is just a screencap of a man (presumably the mod author) installing the mod from start to finish, which the user follows along. Well, fair enough, but, first off, who has a whole hour in their lives to devote to installing one mod?

Secondly, the video is made by someone experienced with the mod, how it works, and how to install it efficiently. In reality, you can expect that time allocation to double or more. Then, punch yourself in the face when, 32 minutes into the video (so an hour or more into the process), the instructor does something that you just can’t replicate - like check a settings box that’s greyed out on your pc but isn’t on his cos Windows is unpredictable trash like that. No mod is worth that.

In a nutshell

Here’s the problem with the modding and tinkering scene in a nutshell: They get the stuff to work, and it’s amazing, but you have to follow the same steps as them. You have to do the R&D and the execution. Excuse me, but isn’t that what they just did? Why do I have to do the thing when they already did it? If you’re a tinkerer who figured out a complicated 1-hour process to get your thing working, then why not go the extra step and make an automated script for that shit?

You did all this work, probably weeks and weeks worth, to build your thing, and you’re gonna virtually guarantee that only a handful of people are gonna enjoy it? Why do that to yourself? Why not make it easy for everyone to enjoy your creation? Does Toyota make a car and then just sell you the instructions so you can do it yourself? No, they just sell you the damn car!

I don’t get it. The modding and tinkering scene is easily the most infuriating part of pc gaming. Amazing things are achieved, but instead of making it easy for the average person to enjoy their fruits of the authors’ labour, it’s locked behind time-consuming and enigmatic instructions that dissuade people from getting involved in something that would otherwise be amazingly fun and enjoyable for everyone. It’s a great scene, but man, it’s also fucking cancer.