For a lot of gamers, it is enough to just play a game as it is given to them out of the box. Others, aren’t satisfied until they can tweak it into something better. “Modding” is a practice almost as old as videogames themselves, and today, is so prevalent that the line between a “game” and a “mod” is becoming blurred every day.

David Crook, a junior in computer science and a member of the Videogame Development Club at N.C. State, is a strong proponent of the mod community.

“[Modding] is how Mario started,” Crook said. “He was a character introduced by Shigeru Miyamoto who was given a few broken arcade versions of Donkey Kong to basically rebuild and reprogram and he sort of came up with Mario. Modding is by no means anything new.”

Mods come in many different forms and to several different degrees, but the reason for them is normally the same.

“Essentially people mod so that they can create a game more custom fit to what they want to play.” Crook said.

Acording to Crook, mods are typically broken down into 3 categories: “Mutation,” or simple alteration of the rules or characteristics of certain things, such as objects; “Partial Conversion,” which essentially just adds new characters or items or perhaps a new set of rules and characters to what is essentially the same game; and “Complete Conversion,” which is taking the engine and building a completely different game with all new assets, rules and game logic.

Complete conversions are where the line between a standalone game and a modification of another become extremely blurred. In fact, many popular complete conversions have since become standalone games. For example, Counterstrike and Team Fortress, both of which started their life spans as popular mods for the original Half-Life computer game and were later fleshed out further by Valve, Half-Life‘s developer.

There are really no limits on how much a game can be modified. When asked to what extent a mod could go, Asa Price, sophomore in computer science and another member of the Videogame Development Club, was quick to respond.

“To any extent.” Price said. “You can patch it, you can put in your own models, you can change the physics, but there’s a point at which you don’t want to mod. You could just make your own game if you’re going to change it that much.”

In fact, many up and coming game developers get their start in the modding community. Some of the team from the phenomenally popular mod for WarCraft 3, Defense of the Ancients (DotA), have since gone on to found new development studios and make their own games, like League of Legends, a popular online game in a similar vein to the original DotA.

Games by Blizzard Entertainment are of particular note in the modding community, if only for the sheer number and diversity of mods available for their games and the way they have welcomed the modding community. Entire genres of games have been created through mods to StarCraft and WarCraft, from tower-defense to the “strategy RPG” style of DotA, which has a standalone sequel Dota 2, currently in development by Valve.

For Asa Price, however, the fun is in just messing around and making games do things they originally didn’t.

“I experiment with them,” Price said. “[Super Smash Brothers:] Brawl is where I have most of my experience, just because there are so many mods out there and I like playing with the physics and changing damage and that stuff. I actually participated in a mod [project] called Shadows of Lylat which was a Starfox modification for a game called Freespace 2. It was an open source project where we would all submit changes to a repository online and they would take the best changes and put them in a game. That’s how most people do it.”

As Price explained, the collaborative and social aspect of modding is extremely important to the community, which becomes larger all the time, partially with help from developers offering more support to modders.

“The increased power of computers and better tools and support by developers are making modding easier,” Crook said. “Back in the Donkey Kong/Mario days, you had to be half electrical engineer, half computer scientist and half genius to mod anything. The evolution in modding is more in the support out there for it and the willingness of game publishers/developers to allow people to mod there game as well as making code, tools, etc that makes it easy.”

Crook also pointed out that the games themselves have become more conducive to modding in recent years.

“Games nowadays are typically built from an engine which allows for the rapid development of new levels and ease of inserting new assets,” Crook said. “The game logic is typically exposed to modders by the original developer and most of the level building tools, with this you can pretty much do anything you want.”

Crook even sees the techniques of modders being applied in major studios.

“Why do you think it took such a short amount of time to pop out the newest Call of Duty?” Crook said.  “It’s essentially just a mod of the previous one.”

If the current state of things means anything, the mod community will continue on for some time, especially with all the support they are getting from the developers. And as the line between original games and mods of previous titles becomes thinner, gamers only reap the rewards. Mods breathe new life into games, and serve as the lifeblood for a highly creative and motivated group of amateur programmers who are destined to become the professional game designers of tomorrow.