More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods. You have entire platforms like roblox where all the games are more or less mods. How long until the platform itself is community created and managed and the viability of games created by companies dissappears?
Yes they did. id Software, Valve and 3D Realms included their SDKs on the disk. All the way back in the 90’s they gave players the same tools they used to build the game. Any game that descends from Doom, all the way into the Source engine, store their assets in .wad files. We were replacing imps with Simpsons characters and titty chicks back when Clinton was president.
Now, the distinction between a game and a mod, I don’t buy the standard to be it’s own game as “started from scratch.”
Valve licensed the Quake engine from id Software. They changed it so much that the GoldSrc engine is considered it’s own thing; anything from skeletal animations to weapon reloading. They hired a novelist to write the story, they generated a ton of their own textures, models, sound effects and music.
Compare that to the original Counter Strike which was a pack of maps and some logic layered over Half-Life’s deathmatch mode.
Standalone product? Buy and run with no other dependencies? Game.
Officially released product from the same developer and/or publisher and/or rights holder that requires owning the original to function? Expansion pack.
Officially released product from the same publisher/developer/rights holder that does not require owning the original to function? Sequel.
Unofficially released product often a fan work that requires a copy of the original game to function? Mod.
I didn’t have to buy Quake to run my copy of Half-Life GOTY edition back in 1999. Though it came with a copy of TFC, which I think is technically an expansion pack as it required Half-Life to function but was officially released as a showcase of those modding tools I talked about in the beginning.
Those were not the first modded games.
In any case, you’ve already made it clear that you disagree. That’s fine, but it doesn’t make your view the defining one.