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Video game mods are wildly popular — and it's easier than ever for modders to turn their hobby into a career
Video game mods are wildly popular — and it's easier than ever for modders to turn their hobby into a career

Business Insider

time7 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Business Insider

Video game mods are wildly popular — and it's easier than ever for modders to turn their hobby into a career

Ironically, the more popular a video game is, the more effort fans invest in changing it. The International Trade Administration valued the video game industry at $184 billion globally in 2023. As it continues to grow, user-created game modifications — more often called mods — are rising in popularity, too. Mods are files or code inserted into a game to add new features, alter the graphics, or improve performance. Nexus Mods, one of the web's most popular mod-sharing platforms, told Business Insider that the website has added about 40 million users since 2020, and now hosts mods for nearly 4,000 different games. While mods are traditionally released for free and created solely out of passion, many players use their modding projects and skills to get jobs in the video gaming industry. And with the rise of the creator economy — a $250 billion industry based around independent creators who deliver content directly to their audiences — a growing number of modders are turning their hobby from a career starting point into a lucrative stand-alone business as well. Modding can build skills for game development jobs Modding requires skills, like coding and project management, that can be vital for professional programming and game design jobs. Liam Esler, managing director and cofounder of Summerfall Studios, started modding the simulation game "Creatures" when he was 10 years old, creating new biomes with unique plants and animals. By age 15, he was managing modding teams across the world. Modding taught Esler how to code and let him practice skills, such as 3D modeling, art, and sound design. "It was a really incredible introduction to the world of making video games," he said. Around this time, he also began modding the role-playing game "Baldur's Gate II," which later led him to apply for a volunteer quality assurance role helping to test the 2012 remaster of the original "Baldur's Gate" before release. He then turned this gig into a full-time developer job for the sequel, "Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition." Modding "Baldur's Gate II" helped Esler master the Infinity Engine scripting language, which the "Baldur's Gate" games were built with. It was a niche skill, but one that paid off. "I basically sent them an email saying, 'Look, I'm an expert in these things. I suspect you're going to need those skill sets.' And they sent me a contract two days later. I had the skills and all of that thanks to modding." Several of his employees at Summerfall Studios are former modders as well. "A lot of them have seen 'behind the curtain' as gamers," he said. "I find, as someone who hires, it's such a critically underappreciated skillset." For modders applying to game studios, he recommended building a varied portfolio of both mods and short games, and emphasizing to hiring managers "that you can learn new engines, you can learn new skills, and you can practice all the things you've learned in a different context. That's the thing that's going to get you hired." Websites like Patreon let modders monetize their work Some modders prefer to be their own boss, and monetization platforms like Patreon have given them ways to accept donations directly from players to support their craft. In return, modders can offer their patrons perks, including early access to new mods. Asking for donations instead of mandatory payments lets modders profit without violating most games' end-user license agreements, giving them the freedom to focus on the hobby they love. Ilja Jusupov, the third biggest creator on Patreon, started out by modding the shooting game "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl," adding texture packs and menus to configure other mods. He already had some programming experience, but modding is what turned it into a career. A few years later, after he started making mods for the racing game "Assetto Corsa," he put his projects on Patreon, where he's since found success. Jusupov's Patreon brings in nearly $50,000 a month, which he attributes to the passionate fan base for "Assetto Corsa" and the consistency of his work. Jusupov said the most challenging parts of running a successful Patreon as a modder are consistently preparing new updates to satisfy subscribers and responding to the feedback those subscribers give without sacrificing independence. "We wouldn't want to create an impression that we're not addressing our patrons' demands, but also still want to pursue new horizons and bring something new on a semi-regular basis," he said. For other modders looking to find independent success, he recommended targeting "niche" games and taking on projects that you're passionate about. "A modification for 'GTA 5' would guarantee a large user base, but I imagine something smaller could have a lot more unsolved demands users would love to find a solution to." Viktor "NSGolova" Radulov, a Ukrainian modder for the virtual reality rhythm game "Beat Saber," similarly said creators should "focus on helping players first and monetize later. If people are happy with your mods, they'll be happy to donate." Radulov's Patreon projects, which include mods to add cosmetics and a leaderboard to the game, earn him over $4,500 a month. He began his programming career developing add-ons for Mac and iOS, and his interest in "Beat Saber" led him to take on modding as a hobby. While modding is currently a side hustle for him, he hopes to eventually turn modding into his sole career. Other monetization platforms include Ko-fi and Nexus Mods. The latter lets modders earn "Donation Points" that can be redeemed for gifts or cash. Nexus Mods told BI that it has paid out over $12 million to its top creators since 2018. Some modders, like Dream and DougDoug, create content as well, using platforms like YouTube and Twitch to upload videos showcasing their mods, which can also earn them money. "Modding forces you to learn a huge variety of skill sets, but the most important of these is 'just work it out,'" Esler said. "You don't have the virtue of an engineering team who can make new features or update existing ones, so you have to work out how to work within the confines of what's already there to make something new."

Revenge of the Savage Planet Guide: 'Making A Splash' Walkthrough
Revenge of the Savage Planet Guide: 'Making A Splash' Walkthrough

The Review Geek

time08-05-2025

  • Entertainment
  • The Review Geek

Revenge of the Savage Planet Guide: 'Making A Splash' Walkthrough

Area List (Tap to jump down the page!) Making A Splash Making a Splash is one of the sub-missions as part of That Has My Name On It, and it involves obtaining the Spritzer Power Hose to progress. If you'd rather read the full guide for the entire mission, you can do so by clicking HERE! Making a Splash Back to top ↑ To begin with, follow your map marker all the way over to a crate. Along the way, there will be plenty to scan, along with interesting locales and enemies to fight. As you progress through the game, you'll also find Teleporters which serve as Fast Travel spots across the map (pictured below). Finding every single one from out in the world will also unlock the Mission: World Traveller, which will require you to unlock every teleporter from the 4 main planets we'll be visiting. Approach the side of this teleporter and hit Square (X) to interact with it and open a fast travel spot. Furthermore, tapping Triangle (Y) will immediately jump you back to base while on the fast-travel screen. Along the way, you'll find one of the creatures, a Fecal Beetle, with strange blue growths on its back, a variation to the standard beetles found in the world. If you can scan this creature, you'll also unlock the mission My First Rodeo, which we'll jump to later on in this guide. For now, keep following the route toward the crate, hopping over the mushrooms and shooting through the pink crystals (pictured below) to make it to the crate's location. In order to actually get the crate though, destroy the flying bugs that show up from their nests. There's quite a few of them so be sure to keep moving around and aim down your sights for better control over your shooting. Once all the bugs are killed, press Square (X) by the crate to open it up and grab the Printer Slurry. These items are found all over the world in crates just like this one, usually with a light puzzle or a bunch of enemies to kill in order to open them. Printer Slurries are also a necessary component for unlocking upgrades, so it's worth grabbing these along the way As soon as you grab the first, you'll unlock the mission Raw Potential. This is another collectathon mission, requiring you to grab every single Printer Slurry from out in the world. Although you don't need 100% of Printer Slurrys for all the upgrades, you will need a fair amount to gain the Achievements: Tool and Power Tool, which require you to acquire 50% and 100% of total upgrades respectively. For now, head back to base and craft the Power Hose. There's a fair amount of resources needed for this, so be sure to explore the world and destroy any of the coloured rocks if you need to. Specifically, we need: Carbon: 250 Silicon: 300 Aluminium: 200 1 Printer Slurry Once you've done that, head back to Base and select Power Hose on the menu, then craft the Spritzer Power Hose. With the Hose now acquired, head over to the radar dish back at the Habitat and spray that bad boy down. Hit left or right on the directional pad to switch out your current equipped item. You can actually change both of your load-out options here if you wish, and this becomes very useful later on in the game. For now, make sure your Hose is chosen as your primary tool and clean down the radar dish. Once it's completely clean, a new video message will show up on your computer inside the Habitat, but the mission will also require you to grab our next item: the Whip and Lasso!

Born out of tragedy, Calgary-American band Jolie Laide release sophomore record
Born out of tragedy, Calgary-American band Jolie Laide release sophomore record

Calgary Herald

time01-05-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Calgary Herald

Born out of tragedy, Calgary-American band Jolie Laide release sophomore record

Article content It was nearly 20 years ago when Nina Nastasia and Clinton St. John showcased their vocal chemistry around campfires in the U.S. Article content Article content This was long before the Calgary-American band, Jolie Laide, officially formed, but it was a pivotal moment in determining their future sound. Article content At the time, St. John was performing as part of Calgary trio The Cape May alongside Jeff MacLeod and Matt Flegel. The act had recorded their 2006 sophomore album, Glass Mountain Roads, in Chicago with producer Steve Albini, best known for producing records by Nirvana and the Pixies. One of the reasons the band was so determined to have Albini at the helm was the work he had done with Nastasia, an American singer-songwriter with a devoted cult following that included Laura Marling, the late BBC DJ and journalist John Peel and Albini. Members of The Cape May had become particularly obsessed with her 2002 sophomore record, The Blackened Air. Article content As luck would have it, she was scheduled to enter the studio to work on another record with Albini after The Cape May's sessions were over. So the producer asked them to stick around. A friendship blossomed, which led to the trio becoming both Nastasia's opening act and her backup band for a lengthy North American and European tour. On part of the American leg, they stayed at campsites rather than hotels and spent many evenings singing around the fire where the voices of St. John and Natasia would seamlessly blend. Article content Article content Article content 'I have a video, actually, because I took a lot of video on that American tour,' says MacLeod. 'Nina and Clinton would sing songs around the campfire for the nights we camped and I just remember clocking how good their voices linked up together.' Article content Article content It is a deceptively wholesome anecdote, because the full origin story of how Jolie Laide became a band is actually a dark, stranger-than-fiction tale about tragedy, trauma and renewal. It involves a devastating suicide, a creative rebirth for Nastasia after a decade-long exile from music and the enduring friendship between Canadian and American musicians. Earlier this week, the band – whose name is a French phrase that translates to 'pretty ugly' – released its sophomore album, Creatures, which focuses on that early vocal interplay between St. John and Nastasia. Every song on Creatures is a duet between the two singers. Article content But originally, Jolie Laide was born out of tragedy. In 2020, just months before the world would shut down due to COVID-19, Nastasia's partner and longtime musical collaborator Kennan Gudjonsson took his life. It happened one day after Nastasia left him after a 25-year relationship, which had been so marked by conflict and abuse t hat it had kept her away from music for nearly a decade. Article content Article content 'It was one of those things where I couldn't continue music anymore the way we were doing it,' she says. 'I couldn't do it without Kennan, because that would have been a huge betrayal, and I couldn't do it with him anymore because it was just so absolutely unfun. So I quit for a long time.' Article content Kennan's death was obviously hard on Nastasia but also for MacLeod, whose friendship with the couple had deepened over the years. Gudjonsson had become one of his best friends, and the two were working on a screenplay idea that MacLeod had spontaneously pitched to comedian Norm Macdonald after meeting him at the Laugh Shop in Calgary. MacLeod wanted Gudjonsson, whom he describes as Chris Farley meets Christopher Hitchens, to co-write it. So he would make frequent trips to the couple's apartment in New York City. Article content 'I was so in their lives at that point,' MacLeod says. 'Me and Nina were always friends but at that point super close because I was going to New York to stay with them a bunch. One day we were just talking on the phone about Kennan and everything and she said, 'I haven't played music in so long, I would love to just do anything. Send me anything. Do you have any riffs?' Because it was COVID, this would have been March, I had been playing guitar a lot and experimenting with this desert-y spaghetti western kind of thing that I had never done before. I just started firing them off to Nina and, without an hour going by, she sent them back and they were more or less the songs you heard on our first record.'

The Makers Of Pokémon Are About To Break A 15-Year Cycle
The Makers Of Pokémon Are About To Break A 15-Year Cycle

Yahoo

time27-02-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Yahoo

The Makers Of Pokémon Are About To Break A 15-Year Cycle

Today's Pokémon Presents was more notable for what it didn't include than for what it did. While news of Legends: Z-A was very welcome, what was not mentioned—nor ever rumored to be mentioned—was Pokémon's next mainline entry. And yet, based on the pattern of the last decade-and-a-half, this should have been the day we learned of a new core title in the world's most popular franchise, and got our first few hints about a whole new generation of pocket monsters. On February 27, 2022, the Pokémon Day special video surprised audiences with the reveal of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and the introduction of the three starter Pokémon who would be appearing in the game. It was the start of nine months of nonstop reveals of the 120 new creatures being added to the Pokédex, alongside excitement about the Nintendo Switch's second mainline entry, following 2019's Sword and Shield. And while it was a surprise announcement in the sense that Nintendo had kept it under wraps until that point, it was also expected that a new game would be announced, because there's a new game every three years, right? That's actually only been true since 2010, following the launch of Black and White. By 2013 we had X and Y (as well as the bonus of the first and only sequels, Black 2 and White 2 in 2012). Then, like clockwork, 2016 gave us Sun and Moon, before 2019's Sword and Shield, and 2022's S&V. That's five mainline entries in a row, each three years apart, rather giving the impression that this was to be the norm. And it almost is; aside from 2006's Diamond and Pearl and 2010's Black and White, each coming out four years after the previous, it's always been three years. Seemingly, 2025 is to be another of those exceptions. What's so odd is the complete quiet about it all. No one seems to have noticed? As an observer, it really rather looked like Game Freak had little choice but to get a mainline game out every third year—to the point where the clearly unpolished Scarlet and Violet would surely have been given more time under any other circumstances. But there's a vast industry built around those games, and missing its release date would have knocked over a row of dominos that could have cost Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures and The Pokémon Company (a confusing collection of companies who all overlap in the middle) billions. Think about the Pokémon TCG. Every three years for the last 15, a new era of cards is launched, themed around the name and region of the most recent game, and highlighting the Pokémon introduced in the new generation. Those cards have to be in production long before the game's even released, given—for instance—Japan's first set of Scarlet & Violet era TCG cards were released in January 2023, just two months after the game came out. The artwork alone would have been commissioned months ahead, and the intricacies of the game design based on all the new monsters worked out well in advance, too. If the game slipped, the cards would either have to be enormously expensively delayed, or come out ahead of the game and ruin twists and surprises, and in turn knock down the next domino: merchandise. So to shift to a four-year development cycle (and let's be clear, they absolutely should, or even a longer one, because Game Freak employees deserve the time and space to avoid crunch and make the best game possible) has enormous implications. Ones that must be planned for, presumably years in advance. Nintendo, Game Freak, et al, are all so notoriously tight-lipped about everything, and it's wildly unlikely they'd ever tell anyone such intentions, so we're left to just guess. And my guess would be that the reaction to Scarlet and Violet's dubious (and ongoing) technical state caused decisions to be made within to do two different things: 1) Take longer to make an open-world game that isn't cracking at the seams 2) Make it for the Switch 2 only That latter one would have been very difficult to get away with in 2025. Sure, it'd have been an amazing way to sell Switch 2s over the 2025 holiday season, but the console would still be six months old at most, and most people would expect a game announced today to work on the console they own today. But next year? It's an easier sell. In fact, it's pretty much bog-standard for a new Pokémon game to release a year or two after the latest Nintendo hardware. The implications are still interesting, however. The PTCG is going to need to run SV for an extra year, and it's already looking a bit worn out. The ex era is being revamped later this year with the addition of mega evolution cards, but while that'll change up the meta a bit and obviously give them a chance to take advantage of the current ludicrous boom in sales to sell a gazillion Mega Charizard-themed boxes, it still leaves 2026 and the first half of 2027 to fill with Generation IX. That explains 2025's year-long release of Prismatic Evolution special sets, a year earlier than you'd have expected given how the Sword & Shield era ended with a full year of Crown Zenith sets—it's clearly a mid-point thing, rather than an ending. We can expect some sort of ex-celebrating bonanza next year, maybe? Anyway, there you go. Just in case you too were thinking how weird it is that no one's talking about this. Unless of course they go and surprise-announce it in the April Nintendo Direct, and make me look like a complete fool. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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