No More Game Over: The Rise of On-Chain Modding

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Games Are A Medium of Expression

As a game designer, creating games is a way of articulating oneself in a way that isn't possible through any other form such as writing poetries or novels.

Today's gaming landscape is dominated by gaming giants. However, most of their game productions are moving away from being used as expressive art forms. Instead, they are over-commoditizing the online experience, and game designs and content are gradually becoming more fungible with each other. "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

So, what's the problem? The issue is not that game designers themselves don't understand how to design games. In fact, many of them do. The problem is that as the size of the game companies increases, they become less willing to take risks, instead, they focus on generating safe and predictable revenue streams. For instance, if the cost of making a AAA game exceeds $200m, the company may choose to create a game similar to existing successful ones with minor tweaks, believing that this approach will ensure at least equivalent financial success. But what if the production team tries a different path? They would have to risk all $200m for only a small chance of making maybe $2b. On the opposite side, the Indie scene is more willing to take the risk due to lower production costs, enabling the discovery of elements previously unseen. It's like opening a random door; you never know what lies behind it.

The Indie Scene and The Modding Scene

Self-publishing game developers are those who develop games solo or with smaller groups, in contrast to large AAA studios, they have more freedom of expression. They usually participate in neither indie nor modding scenes. The indie scene refers to the independent games that build from scratch, often more straightforward in arts but more creative in game design. The modding scene is the process of alternating the official existing game content. Most modding is free and has a feel akin to the open-source community. Modding, compared to indie development, is more fun and easier - you don't feel pressure from publishing games and don't need to build from source. However, modding is harder and more complicated than it might appear, leading to a high burnout rate for two main reasons.

Two Reasons Why Mods Burnout

First, the costs of modding lack a way of being compensated, rendering them economically NOT sustainable.

Modders are not paid by corporations or organizations. No matter how popular the mods are, they are created by avid fans without economic benefits. But maintaining mods requires a long-term commitment of effort and time, particularly as you start to accumulate large communities. If lucky enough, a few may receive some financial support from donations through the platforms like Patreon. While the donation-based model might work for smaller mods, for larger mods, donations are not capable of compensating for all costs. Then, the argument arises when these larger mod developers want to get more from it - they are benefiting from much of the previous development made by the "official developers". Unfortunately, it is illegal to accept any form of payment except for donations. Most of the games they build on are protected by the company's intellectual property and licensing agreement, where modders will encounter legitimacy consequences if they profit from it. Therefore, it is sad to see that most modders are in an awkward position of not being fully recognized for the independence and ownership of their contributions.

Second, changes in the base game's rules can cause disruptions, thereby creating additional work for modders who must re-write the mod with the game mechanism change every time.

As Tslat , the lead of AdventOfAscension (one of the largest Minecraft mods) development team, explains, a change in the base game can lead to an exponential increase in rework for large mods in contrast to small mods.

when something does break, it takes us even longer to fix than an equivalent small mod because of the scale of the content and the additional boilerplate (see pre-emptive technical debt above), and you can see just how much more impactful this is on large mods.

Modders often find themselves in a passive position, having to adapt unconditionally to every update of the base games. Since these games are not designed with modding in mind, developers seldom consider preserving compatibility with each update. Every time the game developers implement a major change to the source code, and there are mods burnout due to incompatibility. This occurs even in mod-friendly games like Stardew Valley and Minecraft, which have attempted to standardize the modding process with APIs - SMAPI and Forge - built atop the source code. Despite these efforts, mod burnouts still occur.

SMAPI compatibility - Stardew Valley - A chart showing SMAPI mod compatibility over time, based on Modding: Mod compatibility

So, what is the possible way out?

Transitioning into the realm of on-chain games, onchain communities encourage experimental modding with broader content. Simultaneously, they provide an economically sustainable and persistent environment for the modding scene in a trustless manner. In a permissionless setting, the modders emerge not merely as participants, but as strong game influencers and changers. Such is the power of permissionless innovation; modders become indispensable forces in co-creating the onchain ecosystem, all while sustaining themselves from fully onchain in many different ways.

First, modders have a more flexible approach to profit distribution.

They now possess the governance power to autonomously decide the profit margins. Open-source, on-chain projects are not safeguarded by licensing. Instead, their protection arises from liquidity, which acts as a moat. The mods can profit based on the amount of on-chain activities as outlined by their smart contracts. They can make their creations into public goods and achieve a positive sum through staking and liquidity. The volume of liquidity they captured helped them avoid unnecessary forks. Consequently, only innovative and helpful creations have the ability to profit onchain.

Second, onchain games are immutable, which transforms mods from being mere extensions to integral components that live within the games and progressively become part of the game's fabric.

Moders will no longer worry about being de-platformed or burnt out from the constant updates to the base game. Due to the inherent immutability, modders can build their mods with respect to the underlining physics without the burden of maintenance concerns. Once they are deployed, they require no future upkeep. Most importantly, public live data onchain opens the possibility of a new type of game - the "meta-meta game," as Ronan describes - a mod game that operates based on the live data of another infinite game. In this context, the stacked mods mechanism can be imagined as more than a prediction market, where a tactical game mod operates under the live data of existing games/mods. This in turn, further enriches the ecosystem.

Conclusion

Once the modding scene becomes economically viable and permanent through blockchain, we foresee an influx of rich, expansive modding content crafted from initial game releases, transforming the onchain gaming ecosystem into a hyperstructured realm . However, we still have a considerable journey ahead to witness massive modding and co-creation within the onchain ecosystem. Nevertheless, we stand ready and excited to foster open-sourced public goods that transcend technological and design obstacles on this adventurous path.

I appreciate the contributors who have shaped my thought process:

• Ronan Standford (@wighawag)

• David Amor (@damor_eth)

• Neeraj (@Zomglings)

• Richard Bartle