I have been playing games since I was a young kid. I’ve always wanted to join a programming company to make computer games. Unfortunately my programming skills are not up to what is required to work in that sector. But many other people have been trying to get into the sector by making altered versions of certain video games. These altered versions are called mods.

There was a time in the early 2000’s when every game had its share of mods. At some point in time most games came with some kind of SDK to facilitate this mark making process. However it seems that most popular games these days do not come with an SDK any more. II think it is such a shame because it adds so much to the value of the games you buy. The game engine can be used to play many kinds of games while you’re only paying for one game. Also there are a lot of creative marks which would not be commercially viable because the development costs would not stand up to the potential revenue you could get from a game as a developer. I can understand that those games would not be published as standalone games. But if you combine that with the trend of not releasing an SDK for a game, you get a much less rich environment of gamepn the PC platform. Something which I regret a lot. I hope this will change in the future, but as the publishing companies become much more aware of their intellectual property, and they try to manage those brands attached to those intellectual properties, they limit the amount of modification they will allow. It’s such a shame.

So my wish for 2012 and onwards is that mods will once again be supported by the developers of the original games like they were a couple of years ago.