Building the perfect game – an empirical study of game modifications

Lee, Daniel; Lin, Dayi; Bezemer, Cor‐Paul; Hassan, Ahmed E.

doi:10.1007/s10664-019-09783-w

Cited by 29 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…In extreme cases, the modder removes almost the entire original content of the game and creates a completely new one. This action is known as 'total conversion modding' [38,39].…”

Section: Game Modding As a Form Of Customers' Value Co-creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Mod or Not to Mod—An Empirical Study on Game Modding as Customer Value Co-Creation

2020

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A spiking interest in customer’s value co-creation may be observed lately, especially in the gaming industry. The general purpose of this study is to identify the customers’ inclination to perform game modding as a manner of value co-creation which benefits both companies and other game users. The current knowledge regarding the factors determining this behaviour is, relatively speaking, weak. The authors conducted qualitative research in the forms of in-depth interviews and focus groups with Polish game players (including mod users and mod creators). This study provides evidence for the peculiar motives of the customers performing different levels of engagement: mod users are driven by game enjoyment, focusing on the motives and social affiliation of multiplayer groups, while mod creators are mainly motivated by the enjoyment of creation, pride, creativity, and epistemic curiosity; engagement and social affiliation are received by mod creators with unique talents. The paper provides tentative evidence for specific customers’ motivations to co-create, which benefits both companies (game developers) and other game users. The players are perceived as an inseparable part of the gaming industry, who deliver extra value to the market through game modding activities. The paper provides useful, executable guidance on how to encourage and support players to engage in value co-creation in virtual words. The study may enrich our understanding of customers’ inclinations on both theoretical and empirical levels, showing some of the motivations both to use and create mods. In comparison to previous research, mod creators and mod users were researched separately in this study, and thus a distinction of their different sets of motives was enabled. Both practitioners and researchers may find what is uncovered in the paper engrossing.

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“…In extreme cases, the modder removes almost the entire original content of the game and creates a completely new one. This action is known as 'total conversion modding' [38,39].…”

Section: Game Modding As a Form Of Customers' Value Co-creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Mod or Not to Mod—An Empirical Study on Game Modding as Customer Value Co-Creation

2020

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“…Modding occurs more often in single-player games than multiplayer, possibly because game producers wish to safeguard the gaming experience of their paying customers and take greater steps to prevent modding in games where it would affect players other than the modder (Lee et al, 2020). Regardless of the motivation to mod, whether game expansion or alteration, cheating or griefing, many consider modding multiplayer games to be of benefit to nobody (Kretschmar and Stanfill, 2019).…”

Section: Main Theme 4: Modding In Self-defencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Modding can be defined as the act of editing an existing video game or gaming console to change elements or produce new material and capabilities and, thus, presents great diversity in potential modifications (e.g. Lee, Lin, Bezemer & Hassan, 2020). Modifications can be benevolent, such as fixing bugs, changing environments, producing game content (such as new maps), avatar skins and creative changes to the game itself.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Heroes and Hooligans: The Heterogeneity of Video Game Modders

2021

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Video games are hugely popular, generating more than twice the revenue of global movie and music industries combined. Whilst technically illegal and often carrying negative connotations, modding constitutes a moral grey area that is commonly accepted, often encouraged by proprietary owners and forum-centred gaming communities. Literature reflects a disparity between outsider and insider perceptions of modding, with a paucity of studies reflecting insider perspectives. Using Reddit forum data, this study contributes insight into perceptions of modding held by gamers and ‘modders’, as described in their words and their territory. Thematic analysis revealed four main themes relating to unfairness in the vendor community, modders as antagonists, differences between modders and modding as forms of self-defence. Conclusions include that modding appears to have both pro- and antisocial applications, but many people and organisations demonise modders as a homogeneous group, which may encourage antisocial behaviours.

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“…Several prior studies studied the modding community to identify and analyze the relationship between mod developers and the game industry, yielding insights on collaborative practices and strategies, as well as capturing the value of mods (Arakji and Lang 2007;Jeppesen 2004;Nieborg and Van der Graaf 2008). A few prior studies mined data from the Nexus Mods distribution platform to quantitatively study the motivation behind mod developers based on the users' expectations, and to understand how to build and maintain an active modding community (Dey et al 2016;Lee et al 2018). Particularly, Dey et al (2016) study the meta data available for popular and unpopular mods of six famous PC games across several popular online mod distribution platforms to investigate the motivations of mod developers.…”

Section: Empirical Studies Of Game Modsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are two key components of an active modding community of a game: the active development of mods, and the active adoption of mods by gamers. In our prior work, we looked at how game developers can help maintain the active development of mods, and observed that games from developers with a consistent modding support within the same or different game franchises, were associated with faster releases of mods (Lee et al 2018). In this paper, we identify the characteristics that distinguish popular mods from unpopular ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An empirical study of the characteristics of popular Minecraft mods

et al. 2020

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It is becoming increasingly difficult for game developers to manage the cost of developing a game, while meeting the high expectations of gamers. One way to balance the increasing gamer expectation and development stress is to build an active modding community around the game. There exist several examples of games with an extremely active and successful modding community, with the Minecraft game being one of the most notable ones.This paper reports on an empirical study of 1,114 popular and 1,114 unpopular Minecraft mods from the CurseForge mod distribution platform, one of the largest distribution platforms for Minecraft mods. We analyzed the relationship between 33 features across 5 dimensions of mod characteristics and the popularity of mods (i.e., mod category, mod documentation, environmental context of the mod, remuneration for the mod, and community contribution for the mod), to understand the characteristics of popular Minecraft mods. We firstly verify that the studied dimensions have significant explanatory power in distinguishing the popularity of the studied mods. Then we evaluated the contribution of each of the 33 features across the 5 dimensions. We observed that popular mods tend to have a high quality description and promote community contribution.

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Building the perfect game – an empirical study of game modifications

Cited by 29 publications

References 47 publications

To Mod or Not to Mod—An Empirical Study on Game Modding as Customer Value Co-Creation

To Mod or Not to Mod—An Empirical Study on Game Modding as Customer Value Co-Creation

Heroes and Hooligans: The Heterogeneity of Video Game Modders

An empirical study of the characteristics of popular Minecraft mods

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