The Bachelor’s Thesis was written for the University of Agder in the spring of 2018. The subject of the research is modding in modern video games. Particularly what measures developers take when allowing mods in their game.
This thesis investigates what measures developers take to allow third party modifications in modern video games. Much of the success of many of the most popular games today is directly connected to modding. Video game modding, a word originating from modification, is the act of adding changes to a video game as a third-party developer.
The thesis investigates how the four popular games DotA 2, Minecraft, Cities: Skylines and World of Warcraft are modded and what measures the developers have taken to allow for it. The games were chosen for analysis due to their different approaches to modding. In addition to this, the thesis documents common practices of modding from both a game developer’s and a third-party developer’s standpoint.
An experiment to put the information gathered into practice was conducted by creating a game and adding mod support for it. The thesis documents this process and finds that adding mod support to a game alongside development can be a task without significant effects on the workload.
The games investigated use methods like creating public APIs, allowing for code injection, creating sandbox environments, implementing server side data authentication and creating modding tools to allow for modding. Minecraft, despite being a game with many popular mods, does not support modding, showing that mod communities can arise within games regardless of mod support.
The thesis suggests that mod support seems to be an inexpensive addition to a game compared to its potential benefits if decided upon predevelopment.
Unity 2017.4.0f1
Monodevelop (Included with Unity) / Visual Studio / JetBrains Rider
- Anders Ghouchbar
- Bao Vien Ngo
- Kristoffer André Kalseth Myhren