Everything You Need to Know Before Modding Your First PC Game

howtogeek.com:

PC gaming is often framed as being about specs and power, but there's so much more to gaming on PC than frame rates. Modding is an ancient PC tradition, and it's one key pillars of the experience.

There Are Many Types of Mods

When you hear the term "mod" in the context of PC games, you're probably thinking of the sorts of mods that get the most traction in memes and social media. For example, the infamous Skyrim mod that replaces the dragons with terrifying Thomas the Tank Engine models. The truth, however, is that mods come in every shape and form.

Any third-party modification to a game is a "mod", and so the range of things you can do range from small, practical improvements to games all the way to the ridiculous, or complete overhauls of the title. Some mods fix bugs in games that developers have long abandoned, or have gone out of business. The excellent cult classic Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was a shambles when it was released, and its developer was not long for the world. Yet despite this being a game that came out 20 years ago, as of this writing, the latest version of the unofficial community patch was August 2023.

Some mods offer subtle improvements to game balance, others add in content that was cut from the original release. Almost literally anything you can think of that can be done to a game exists in mod form for some game out there.

Not All Mods Are Free

Mods are usually created by passionate fans who happen to have the technical skills required to make new content or modify existing games in interesting ways. However, it still takes time to do this work, and time is money. In some cases, mods are not free, and are sold by their creators. Sometimes this happens with the blessing of the original developers.

For example, the Half-Life remake Black Mesa started life as a project by volunteers, and was eventually approved for commercial sale by the original developers of Half-Life, Valve. Likewise, some publishers such as Bethesda have