In the New Age of Game Development, Gamers Have More Power Than Ever 101
Velcroman1 writes: "In the olden times before high-speed Internet, the game you purchased on day one was what you were still playing months later. Now we live in an era of day-one patches, hotfixes, balance updates, and more. Diablo III, for example, is unrecognizable today compared to the state it was in when it launched back in 2012. Nowadays, savvy gamers go in expecting their experience to change over time — to improve over time. Today, 'Early Access' is both an acknowledgment of the dangers of early adoption (no one likes to be a guinea pig, after all) and an opportunity for enthusiastic consumers to have a say in how the product they've purchased will take shape. In this article, Adam Rosenberg talks with Michael McMain, CEO and founder of Xaviant, and creative director on the indie studio's first project — Lichdom: Battlemage, which embraces the concept like never before."
LOLWUT? (Score:3, Informative)
I've yet to see any DRM that prevents content mods. There are some games that aren't very moddable, their files are all binary and they don't release any tools and such, but I've yet to see one with DRM that stopped mods. The ones that are moddable, well they are more so than ever. Have a look at the Skyrim mods sometime. Even the ones that aren't moddable per se can usually be modded. The new Xcom is a good example. It has no mod tools, and wasn't designed with modding in mind, much like the original Xcom. However enterprising modders have figured out how to bust in to various files and mod the game. Not nearly to the extent as a game with tools, but there was nothing stopping them. The game doesn't have some DRM locking them out.
Moddability has been increasing. For one, there's more interest in it, what with the internet to distribute mods. Also there's the fact that increased CPU power allows for more user accessible files. The original Civ was hard to mod, since everything was binary. You needed to do that for efficiency. Civ 4 and 5 use scripting languages, XML, and SQL for most of their stuff, with only the engine and AI core being in C++, since it takes so little time for a modern computer to parse all that. Finally there's channels to integrate modding in to your game like Steam Workshop, that make it much easier for developers to integrate, and easier for modders to distribute.