This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a subject that I find both frustrating and interesting. It’s all about Console Mods.

Why frustrating?: Because companies like Bethesda have made an effort to bring mods to consoles, but are doing a terrible job of it. They won’t properly curate the mods for games like Skyrim’s Special Edition and Fallout 4, and this causes many mod authors to have their work stolen by thieves without proper acknowledgement. I know if they did acknowledge it that a lot of mod makers wouldn’t be so upset, but the fact is that Bethesda has done a piss poor job with their efforts to bring mods to consoles. I’m not surprised that Sony won’t allow Bethesda to bring mods with unique assets to the PlayStation 4, they just don’t respect the mod authors that breathed so much life into games on the PC. Skyrim has a thriving mod community, but Bethesda has continuously screwed them over, with paying for mods on Steam and the console mod debacle.

There’s other games and companies that won’t allow mods, like Square Enix with Final Fantasy XIV. However Square Enix actually has a valid reason, FFXIV is an MMORPG and as any MMO gamer will tell you, if a portion of the audience can’t download mods the mods are next to useless. Plus theres the toxicity that comes with mods like Damage Meters, something that can quickly devolve into huge flame wars on forums and chat channels.  I used mods when I played World of Warcraft, and I required all my raiders/guildmates to install them if they wanted to raid. Some were invaluable, like Deadly Boss Mods, while others were just for fun, like Bejeweled. All of them were useful in one way or another, but I don’t regret not having them in FFXIV. I actually enjoy that I don’t need any mods or VoIP programs to succeed in doing the hardest content. Yes it’s helpful, especially the VoIP programs, but they aren’t necessary at all.

Why interesting?: Because I love mods, some of my favorite game modes in games like Warcraft III were mods like the Angel Arena maps. They had custom models and I had great respect for those who made those models. I hope one day we’ll be able to use mods on consoles properly and add fun things like Thomas the Tank Engine to games like Skyrim in the future. But until such mods are properly curated and monitored we won’t be getting them with any amount of frequency if at all.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.