MOD is an abbreviation for Modification, transliterated as "mod", and refers to a game modification program made by mod enthusiasts using various editing tools. Game mods make changes to the props, weapons, characters, maps, storyline, etc. in the game, or make and add new props and things to enrich the player's game experience. As we all know, mod enthusiasts have formed a unique mod culture in the process of practice.
The release of Doom by id Software in 1997 became a sign of the maturity of mod culture, and the subsequent release of Quake further satisfied the player's mod creation needs. Valve Corporation, the game production company of Quake II, built the Steam game platform (Steam) in 2002 after the success of the modded spin-off game Counter-Strike, which is committed to providing the release, updating platform and providing anti-cheat support for its games such as Counter-Strike. Steam's "Workshop" launched in 2011 strengthened the connection between the mod community and the game industry and strengthened the role of the big platform for mod production, while also introducing a new stage of platform-based mod exchange and production. It is not difficult to see that game producers pay close attention to the special power of mod enthusiasts in the development of mods, and intend to integrate, absorb, control and eventually use it by providing a larger platform.
Quake II
MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) game DOTA2 was developed by Welw and landed on Steam on July 9, 2013. Dota2's predecessor, DotA (Defense of the Ancients), is only a map-based mod for Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. In the gradual development, a team of multiple module authors continues to use modules to enrich and improve the DotA series maps in terms of sound, light and shadow, etc., so that DotA is gradually perfected and becomes a large-scale module derivative product. Based on DotA, DOTA2 was successfully developed by IceFrog's team and landed on Steam as an indie game.
With the help of the "Workshop" mod products, DOTA2 continues to enrich the game content, providing a broad space for game mod enthusiasts in terms of character skin, map creation, and gameplay innovation. As one of the earliest games to enter the mod creation since the establishment of the "Workshop", DOTA2 has a huge number of online games and enduring popularity. Earlier in DotA, game modders made game mods in the form of private communities, and their main group showed team and professionalism. With dota 2 landing on Steam and creating workshops, more players are producing high-quality game modules based on their own strength on the basis of communication and selection. At the same time, the creation of groups shows the characteristics of individualization and fragmentation. Time-focused team operations have shifted to decentralized individualized operations, and the concept of specialization and teaming has gradually faded out of people's vision. A series of production method changes show that more module enthusiasts and their production and production forms are absorbed, integrated and integrated by the platform, which also lays the foundation for more hidden and diversified exploitation.
A large number of game companies, such as Wielw Company, FacePunch Studio, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, Saber Interactive, etc., have chosen to give the power of the game's secondary creation to players or even completely, reflecting that mod fans gradually gain greater voice rights and influence in game culture, and their re-creation products have also become an important part of the game itself. On the surface, the entire group showed a booming trend. However, although there have been many important changes in the production methods of mods and the group characteristics of mod enthusiasts in the context of the new large platform media, some of the crux of the problems proposed by Julian Kucklich as early as the early 2000s – such as the exploitation of "unpaid labor" by game capital – not only still exist, but also evolve into a more complex situation, showing deeper contradictions and dilemmas.
One. The production-consumption model of a "cross-media database"
After entering the era of media convergence, dota2 players' self-made mods break the limitations of the game itself, and the creative content it covers is no longer limited to DOTA2, or even limited to the single theme of the game. Outside of the Steam Workshop, many player-made mods are added to the game by modifying the game catalog: it contains not only the re-creation or refinement of the existing skins of DOTA2, but also many cross-media derivatives: Tokizaki Crazy Three in the drama "Dating Wars", and Rin Tosaka in the Fate series.
Back in Steam's workshop, another game, Garry's mod, shows the same traits: as a half-life 2 mod made with the Source engine, it evolved into a highly open indie game in the process of development, and its workshop mod products not only broke away from the gameplay elements of Half-Life 2 and covered elements of other games (such as Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, etc.), but also covered a large number of non-game media elements themselves. Such as the character elements in the drama "Devil's Blade" and "JoJo's Wonderful Adventure", as well as the Marvel Universe system, the characters and instruments of the film "Resident Evil" series. Steam's Workshop even sets up separate sections for these cross-media artifacts to make it easier for players to find.
Half-Life 2
Some players become mod makers by playing games to cross the threshold of mod production, and then have a strong interactive relationship with the game. Under this relationship, mod fans use their own interpretation to produce a new system parallel to the game itself, in DOTA2, player-made maps and game modes are parallel to each other to form a rich and perfect "multiverse", while in "Garry's mod" it is embodied in each different game room, which can be a "new world" with completely different game mechanics and elements.
For the characteristics of this kind of cross-media interaction, Henry Jenkins once proposed the term "transmedia storytelling" to describe the new form of content creativity and entertainment experience faced by cultural consumers in the era of media integration. Under the further interpretation of Lin Pin, the "cross-media database" may be more suitable for describing the behavior of the mod enthusiast group in the era of the big platform: combining different media derivatives, and interacting with the game itself, that is, the consumer object, the product elements of other media are applied to the media of video games through their own creative processing. At the same time, "database" also has the double meaning of creativity and technology: on the one hand, when making game modules, mod enthusiasts do not stick to the game itself, but integrate various media derivatives they are exposed to in the game elements, and reprocess the derivatives and ultimately apply them to the game under the premise of ensuring game adaptability; on the other hand, the game mod platform provides technical means for cross-media data retrieval, and mod enthusiasts can communicate with each other with the help of retrieval means to stimulate creativity. The information retrieval function of the Internet also provides a port for each module enthusiast to access a media product at will.
The consumption and use of "cross-media database" enables module enthusiasts to absorb and assimilate in an orderly manner in the face of massive information, thus bursting out endless imagination and creativity, and also laying an information foundation for the production chain of "acquisition-absorption-re-creation".
Two. Visible "concentration" and invisible "differentiation": the group ecology and living space of module enthusiasts in the platform era
DotA's mod enthusiasts and players use the scattered community as a base to gather ideas, committed to improving DotA's game texture and player experience and producing corresponding mod products. Decentralized organizations and communities bring ideas together to the DotA main community (DotA-Allstars.com) managed by Guinsoo and Pendragon to participate in the creation and construction of DotA, a large mod derivative. However, in many disputes and disputes among managers, the DotA main community was eventually closed - which precisely reflects that the mod enthusiast community before the emergence of the big platform presented a production form of "large community leadership, small community participation", the community is scattered and spontaneous, and its final rights belong to the community manager.
In 2011, the creative workshop launched by the Steam platform strengthened the large platform function of Steam itself with a professional and official mod production form, greatly strengthened the connection between the mod community and the game industry, and brought together the mod enthusiast group to a specialized and centralized platform. Dota2, which landed on Steam in 2013, has diluted the role of the mod community with the effect of the big platform, and people's understanding of the game itself has been transformed from DotA's decentralized production of mod derivatives to Dota 2's indie games. In the decentralized community outside the large platform, the importance and necessity of the mod production activity are constantly decreasing: from the original decentralized community is the first productive force of the game, to the management of the large platform is the basis for the operation of the game. The large platform absorbs and integrates the mod enthusiast group and is classified into specialized and centralized control, while using the official exchange community with high player participation to squeeze the living space of the private community (meaning the unofficial decentralized community), and more people are willing to participate in the production of the module to build a perfect large platform rather than the private community that needs to be continuously updated and maintained by private individuals. In the era of large platforms, the changes in the group of module enthusiasts have made the "free" and "voluntary" hidden exploitation of "deregulation" more concentrated and efficient.
The centralized module production form under the blessing of the large platform has certainly improved production efficiency and product quality, and more and more excellent modules have sprung up and contributed a lot of activity to the game industry: on January 4, 2019, the game module "Dota Self-Propelled Chess" landed on the DOTA2 Creative Workshop and won millions of player subscriptions in just half a month, and reached the popularity of 100,000 people online at the same time. The declining DOTA 2 quickly heated up with the help of "Dota Self-Propelled Chess", and once surpassed the popular "PUBG" to occupy the top of the daily activity list. In Steam's Workshop, there are also many games that use mods made by mod fans to gain life outside of the creator's intentions - "Survival Road 2", "ARK: Survival Evolution", "Horseback and Slash"... With the advantages of large platform resource concentration and the production-consumption model of "cross-media database", a well-made "mod world" is built independent of the game itself.
PUBG
Similar to many of today's subcultural things, the vitality of this secondary creation is also largely derived from the "fun community" - a close group of unknown users who gather together through the game platform, frequent interpersonal interactions, and the resulting new emotional connections. In Steam's Workshop, this "Fun Community" is organized with the help of Steam's community features, dominated by mod fans and participated by ordinary players. Community members use a cross-media database to gain imagination and creativity, divide labor and collaborate, and take place "productive consumption" of the game ontology, which in turn produces valuable modded products and empowers the game. But on the other hand, this kind of "fun community" rooted in the big platform just fell into the centralized management of the big platform, although it concentrated creativity and thinking, improved product quality and production efficiency, and more effectively improved the prosperity of the platform and the return on capital, but at the same time invisibly limited the survival and distribution space of the module enthusiast group. In fact, while the platform benefits and player experience level present a superficial prosperity, the centralized module production form of the large platform greatly limits the group of module enthusiasts, so that more diversified production methods and more possible production space collapse and fade.
In addition, borrowing the "text poacher" theory in fan culture research to observe this new change, we will find more problems. The so-called "text poachers" refer to the reader by constantly breaking into the forbidden areas established by the producers of the cultural industry, plundering the content they think is useful to them, and transforming the original text into a cultural text that conforms to its own value and significance, and in rare cases these cultural texts are integrated into the main culture, and more often form a subculture different from the main culture. In Steam's mod culture, we can recognize that the "Fun Community" rooted in the big platform is actually gradually incorporated into the original so-called forbidden area, and the identity of the community members has quietly changed in a sense: they are no longer challengers and poachers in the gray and marginal areas, but like officially recognized "non-staff employees", the best of which can even get a formal contract; and the mod enthusiasts of the private community are still adhering to the "poachers" Identity is blocked from the cultural exclusion zone. So we see that, on the one hand, the original loose mod enthusiast community has been divided by a pair of invisible hands after being centralized; on the other hand, whether it is a mod enthusiast who has entered the centralized management of a large platform, or a sticker in the private community, or a common participant of both parties, most of them are still carrying out "unpaid labor". Although the "forbidden area wall" embodied by the large platform has reclassified the identities of different module communities, it has not changed the basic labor relations and interest distribution principles. Centralized production in more cases only greatly improves the production efficiency and income of the large platform game module industry, but does not enable more module enthusiasts to get rid of the shackles of hidden exploitation.
Three. Module Platform: Complex Acquisition Strategies and Forms of Exploitation
Kukric used the term palybour as early as 2005 to refer to game mod fans. He keenly observed that in the digital age, the increasing blurring of the boundaries between production and consumption, work and leisure is vividly expressed in the "playwrights" represented by game mod enthusiasts. At the same time, he pointed out that mod enthusiasts under the semantics of "playwork" also show many other "instabilities": intellectual property rights are deprived, and the game mod community bears economic and legal risks. At the same time, in Henry Jenkins's elaboration of the cultural identity traits of fans, it can also be clearly seen that the entire mod enthusiast group is in a weak side of an unequal position - "poaching" and "safari" reflects that the cultural industry producers set up cultural forbidden areas for mod lovers and their fun communities, and the groups outside the forbidden area do not have the resources to affect cultural production, and can only constantly struggle with the attributes of the game for their own ideas on the extremely unequal terrain.
Under the new platform medium, mod enthusiasts have shown an unstoppable and vigorous trend, this group has achieved a significant improvement in production efficiency and product quality with the help of the new organizational form of the large platform, while continuously expanding its influence and voice in the game industry in the production of modules, this situation seems to mean that the mod community is gradually getting rid of the marginalized position, close to the core industry of the game, Kukrić proposed as a "playman" of "instability" Status (meaning lack of protection of rights) will change or at least be alleviated. However, the reality is far from being as optimistic as expected. In fact, the contradictory relationship between game capital, which is both the owner of the big platform and the manipulator of the big game industry, and the game mod enthusiasts who are still "proletarians" as a whole have not been fundamentally changed; even, the former shows a more centralized and efficient and more covert control, acquisition and exploitation strategy for the latter in the new historical context, while the latter shows a state of fragmentation and internal tearing on a larger scale.
《DOTA2》
In the workshop of some steam games, we seem to have seen the attempts to compromise and adjust the game capital: Wielw Company provides revenue sharing for mod makers in the game mod community such as "The Elder Scrolls 5", "DOTA2", "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive", "Team Fortress", "Portal 2", etc. Take the hero items of "DOTA2" as an example, the specific implementation form is: Mod fans apply for relevant accounts according to the requirements, participate in the production and submission of works, Works that pass the review can be listed on the game store and receive a 25% share, which is issued to the producer's bound bank card after meeting the $100 quota. However, it is worth noting that, as mentioned above, DOTA2 mod enthusiasts and their mods are actually divided into two groups by the workshop, both within the large platform and outside the large platform, thus constituting a reality: in the player-made skin mod, only a very sophisticated and competitive part of the mod is officially included and participated in the profit, this part of the skin can be seen by all participating players; the rest is through personal abnormal modification of local game files to achieve the purpose of addition, Therefore, the display of the skin is limited to marginalized, small-scale states. The latter reflects that the wider mod enthusiasts and their fun community are blocked from the cultural forbidden areas set up by the large-scale industrial production of games.
The more centralized and specialized communication and production forms of the large platform continue to stimulate the imagination and creativity of mod enthusiasts, and its mod products are constantly enriched and expanded and occupy an extremely considerable position in the game market. Against this backdrop, dota2's workshop is more like a marketing strategy to prevent players from making their own free mods to seize the official game store. This strategy allows a very small number of high-productivity game mod enthusiasts to be officially diverted and divided into formal channels, get rid of the living state of "play workers", serve the official interests and enjoy the benefits, and even gradually transform into the identity of employees; however, the relatively low-input mod enthusiasts under the jurisdiction of the large platform are still in the mod culture in the state of "playing" and contribute to unpaid labor.
It can be seen that from the overall point of view, the essential dilemma faced by game module enthusiasts has not changed with the advent of the era of large platforms; on the contrary, the platform and centralized new module enthusiast ecology has led to the internal division of the module enthusiast group as a whole. Large platforms use a high degree of connection with the player community and a high degree of integration of games and their mods to attract and recruit mod enthusiasts. On the one hand, the identity of elite module producers changes to participate in paid labor and achieve professionalization; on the other hand, the large platform continues to deprive most module enthusiasts of the space and possibility of natural growth, and prepares for further screening elite module producers. Such a "absorption-reserve-screening" chain ensures that the hidden exploitation of unpaid labor is effectively carried out, while drawing more flexible productivity for the main game industry, thereby promoting the further expansion of revenue. The former is open and transparent, while the latter is more stealthy and extensive. The game mod fans who are concentrated and absorbed are in the big platform, and the invisible barriers around them are constantly solidifying at the same time: the attention of the squeezed private community is decreasing, more people are flowing into the centralized and specialized official platform to participate in the production of the module, and the game capital uses the game's own attribute privileges (reflected in the "legitimacy" of the game file modification) and the convenient characteristics of the game modification to build more and more solid barriers to deepen the gap between the big platform and the private community. Another hidden barrier rises between game mod enthusiasts of unpaid labor and professional employees of paid labor, and the division of internal barriers accurately controls the strength of hidden exploitation and paid labor, and further efficiently uses the mechanism of "deregulation" and "freedom", "voluntary" and "non-profit" to promote hidden exploitation.
It can be seen that in the change of module production mode and enthusiast group in the era of large platforms, game mod enthusiasts who are "play workers" are instead deeply involved in the control of "deregulation" and are more implicitly exploited. In the overall context of digital capitalism, the special group of mod enthusiasts still has a long way to go to fight for living space and realize interests in the more complex and sophisticated control, absorption and integration strategies of "game + platform", and even touch some basic logic of game production.
exegesis:
Julian Kukrić, "Unstable Playmakers: Game Modding Enthusiasts and the Digital Game Industry," translated by Yao Jianhua and Annie Ni, Open Times, No. 6, 2018.
Yang Cheng, A Study on the Development of Cross-media Narratives in Chinese Cinema in the Context of Media Convergence, Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2019, pp. 15-16.
Lin Pin, "The Interaction between Digital Indigenous Culture and Cultural and Creative Industries", March 30, 2020, November 13, https://www.sohu.com/a/384355134_790641,2021.
Bu Yuqiang, The Revolution of Consumption, Beijing: Taiwan Straits Publishing House, 2018, pp. 16-17.
Henry Jenkins, Text Poachers: Tv Fans and Participatory Culture, translated by Zheng Xiqing, Beijing: Peking University Press, 2016, pp. 21-24.
Julian Kukrić, "Unstable Playmakers: Game Mod Enthusiasts and the Digital Game Industry," translated by Yao Jianhua and Annie Ni, Open Times, No. 6, 2018, pp. 196-206.