Gaming Modification
By Adam Tzinis
Overview
Gaming Modification is essentially exactly what it sounds like: it is the adaptation and appropriation of gaming code - the driving source, the engine that makes the software work - such that one game is turned into a different game. Before approaching exactly what this means and how it operates within the frames of the gaming media industry we will first look at what doesn't fall under the category of gaming modification and then, with adequate understanding of the base concept of the case study, we'll get stuck into the case study that is Garry Newman and his getting a job with game developer Valve through his illegal modification of their intellectual property.
how this is not machinima
To really appreciate the prosumer interaction with gaming software to produce their own work, it’s important to understand the fundamental differences between what we’re dealing with here and with what we’re dealing with when we talk about machinima.
Machinima is the use of a gaming engine to produce a narrative that reflects what is possible in film. The gaming models are proxy for human actors, for physical sets and for actual environments. Machinima is cinema built in lieu of the traditional tools used to create the cinematic experience, as it were.
The key thing that isolates modding from machinima production is that in one example we’re using the game to build something that is not a game and in the other, this example, we’re using the game to build another game. This is important reading, so if you read only one section and skip the rest to watch videos and look at images of things, read this one that you’re not totally confused.
Machinima is the use of a gaming engine to produce a narrative that reflects what is possible in film. The gaming models are proxy for human actors, for physical sets and for actual environments. Machinima is cinema built in lieu of the traditional tools used to create the cinematic experience, as it were.
The key thing that isolates modding from machinima production is that in one example we’re using the game to build something that is not a game and in the other, this example, we’re using the game to build another game. This is important reading, so if you read only one section and skip the rest to watch videos and look at images of things, read this one that you’re not totally confused.
Production Tools
The tools that we’re dealing with when it comes to gaming modification are essentially only restricted within the boundaries of the prosumer’s imagination. If the prosumer wants to take the code of Pokémon Red and convert it into a farming simulator (as opposed to it being a turn based role playing game), then, so long as its within their intellectual breadth and skillset, there’s nothing really stopping them. There are only, really, a handful of tools that the prosumer needs in these situations:
Maybe moreso than with the other case studies, wherein the prosumer can almost be trusted to pick up a camera, or a pen, and just sort of run through the motions, the modification of gaming code demands a certain degree of preordained knowledge. This prosumer can’t simply be an avid gamer, as the independent film-maker can just be an avid film-watcher. There is an entire language that the game modifier needs to understand and - whether it be in hex or C++ or any of the plethora of programming languages that aren’t obsolete - there’s a lot of customized identifiers, things that are unique to an engine, that the modifier needs to learn.
The physical tools are important, but one might argue that in these scenarios they are less important than fluency in the language of variously different code. Indeed: the code in and of itself is the most predominantly important aspect to the production of a modified game. This is where we start to look at the different types of code at the prosumer’s disposal: open source code and closed source code.
- a game to build a new game on top of
- a machine that can play that game
- a machine that can allow the prosumer to get inside the code and fiddle with it
- the knowledge that this be done
Maybe moreso than with the other case studies, wherein the prosumer can almost be trusted to pick up a camera, or a pen, and just sort of run through the motions, the modification of gaming code demands a certain degree of preordained knowledge. This prosumer can’t simply be an avid gamer, as the independent film-maker can just be an avid film-watcher. There is an entire language that the game modifier needs to understand and - whether it be in hex or C++ or any of the plethora of programming languages that aren’t obsolete - there’s a lot of customized identifiers, things that are unique to an engine, that the modifier needs to learn.
The physical tools are important, but one might argue that in these scenarios they are less important than fluency in the language of variously different code. Indeed: the code in and of itself is the most predominantly important aspect to the production of a modified game. This is where we start to look at the different types of code at the prosumer’s disposal: open source code and closed source code.
A closed source code is generally what we have to deal with when we engage with video game engines. Essentially, the closed source code is as any piece of work protected under any traditional copyright licence: an intellectual property strictly owned by the original holder (read: creator or, as is more often the case in the gaming industry, publisher/distributor) that cannot be used by other producers (or in this case prosumers) without the explicit permission of the original property owner. When a prosumer uses a closed game engine to produce their modification they are, strictly speaking, breaking the law - or at the very least infringing on a large number of copyrights.
Getting into the code is a problem in and of itself. To protect their intellectual property designers and publishers put a lot of hurdles in the path of the amateur developer; there’s a lot in play to stop the user finding access to the source code. The engine is, decidedly, kept under lock and key back at the base. Consider the amount of effort that a user puts into pirating their copy of Windows and then consider inversely the amount of effort that Microsoft put into curbing this behaviour. The same sort of behaviour can be transposed to the gaming community versus the gaming developers. Nintendo, for instance, rage war against the homebrew community for their Wii, with each new update to the firmware trying to make it harder for the amateur programs to produce software for the machine. In this instance: the Wii’s operating firmware, the closed source code, is being hacked into to allow users to generate their own games that will run on the machine. In this situation we’re seeing the production tool itself being modified to allow for further production; illegally.
Getting into the code is a problem in and of itself. To protect their intellectual property designers and publishers put a lot of hurdles in the path of the amateur developer; there’s a lot in play to stop the user finding access to the source code. The engine is, decidedly, kept under lock and key back at the base. Consider the amount of effort that a user puts into pirating their copy of Windows and then consider inversely the amount of effort that Microsoft put into curbing this behaviour. The same sort of behaviour can be transposed to the gaming community versus the gaming developers. Nintendo, for instance, rage war against the homebrew community for their Wii, with each new update to the firmware trying to make it harder for the amateur programs to produce software for the machine. In this instance: the Wii’s operating firmware, the closed source code, is being hacked into to allow users to generate their own games that will run on the machine. In this situation we’re seeing the production tool itself being modified to allow for further production; illegally.
An open source engine, naturally, contradicts this. It is a code that is released, entirely, to the public for their free use. These engines are generally protect under a Creative Commons license: a GNU General Public License. This is a Creative Commons license written specifically for code and software to be distributed freely amongst the public. There is no shortage of applications protected under this license: we have Blender, a free open source 3D Animation App; we have the entirety of the Linux library, an Operating System alternative to Mac OS and Windows and we have, most pertinent to the issues being discussed here, the Quake engine.
Things are a little different when a prosumer builds something in an open source environment. They still need to know the language, and they still need to turn to it all into something different, but they don’t have to deal with the hardships of breaking into a closed code and they don’t need worry that the original IP owners unleash their wrath as soon as their work is made public. The open source code modification community is, generally, encouraged by the code developers - evident, simply, by the fact that the engine is entirely open in the first place.
Things are a little different when a prosumer builds something in an open source environment. They still need to know the language, and they still need to turn to it all into something different, but they don’t have to deal with the hardships of breaking into a closed code and they don’t need worry that the original IP owners unleash their wrath as soon as their work is made public. The open source code modification community is, generally, encouraged by the code developers - evident, simply, by the fact that the engine is entirely open in the first place.
open source software, represents an approach for communities of like-minded participants to develop software system representations that are intended to be shared freely for review, reuse, and modification, rather than offered as closed proprietary products. (pp.2, Scacchi, 2001)
how little big planet doesn't count
Little Big Planet is an extraneous example worth discussing before we get to the case study. It is worth discussing for three reasons:
We need to look at this in comparison to the major engines that we’ll be looking at in the case study: Quake. Quake is an open source game engine - it is code that is totally open to the user to manipulate however they wish. Little Big Planet hides its code from the user entirely and instead offers you the tools and methods to build these games. Building your own game is the game. When you use the Little Big Planet environment to build something that reflects an entirely different game and when you upload it to the game’s servers for other players to play - you’re engaging with the games, well: game. It falls into the same prosumerist category, we think, so we felt the need to address it, but ultimately it’s not the same as modifying a game code. This is simply because it doesn’t involve any modification of any code or, realistically, any game.
It is a fantastic tool for the production of similar things, nonetheless.
- it is a closed source gaming application for the Ps3 used by players to build machinima
- the premise of the game is that you can use its tools to build your own games
- these behaviours are encouraged by the IP owners (Sony)
We need to look at this in comparison to the major engines that we’ll be looking at in the case study: Quake. Quake is an open source game engine - it is code that is totally open to the user to manipulate however they wish. Little Big Planet hides its code from the user entirely and instead offers you the tools and methods to build these games. Building your own game is the game. When you use the Little Big Planet environment to build something that reflects an entirely different game and when you upload it to the game’s servers for other players to play - you’re engaging with the games, well: game. It falls into the same prosumerist category, we think, so we felt the need to address it, but ultimately it’s not the same as modifying a game code. This is simply because it doesn’t involve any modification of any code or, realistically, any game.
It is a fantastic tool for the production of similar things, nonetheless.
a brief prologue to the case
The case that we’re looking at starts with Quake, a gaming engine licensed under a GNU General Public License - an open source code. The story starts and immediately branches into two distinctly different paths before meeting up again.
We will start with Valve, now one of the most influential and successful game publishers and developers in the industry. One of their earliest games, Half Life, was built on what they called the GoldSRC engine - a modified, and closed, adaptation of the Quake Engine. GoldSRC is now better now as the Source engine. Nearly every single lead Valve game runs off the Source engine including Team Fortress 2.
Team Fortress 2 lies at the end of the second path: the first Team Fortress was built by a group of independents using and adapting the Quake Engine in 1996. Its sequel, produced by the same developing team, was distributed by Valve, through Steam, built on Source.
We will start with Valve, now one of the most influential and successful game publishers and developers in the industry. One of their earliest games, Half Life, was built on what they called the GoldSRC engine - a modified, and closed, adaptation of the Quake Engine. GoldSRC is now better now as the Source engine. Nearly every single lead Valve game runs off the Source engine including Team Fortress 2.
Team Fortress 2 lies at the end of the second path: the first Team Fortress was built by a group of independents using and adapting the Quake Engine in 1996. Its sequel, produced by the same developing team, was distributed by Valve, through Steam, built on Source.
Valve is a big, hungry, fish in an infinitely large pond and it hopes to consume all of the smaller fish. Team Fortress 2 being absorbed into Steam, Source being cannibalised and closed from the open Quake engine; these are just early and easy examples of how Valve work. They consume other developers: Steam, a digital distribution platform for games, sells an entirely baffling amount of games that, before appearing on Steam, were available for free elsewhere on the web. Their biggest game at the moment, Portal 2, is a sequel to a game adapted from an independent tech demo - just another example of an independent developer being absorbed into Valve’s being.
But the biggest example, and possibly the most interesting example of this, lies in Garry’s Mod.
But the biggest example, and possibly the most interesting example of this, lies in Garry’s Mod.
garry's mod
Garry’s Mod is a game that you, right at this moment, can jump onto Steam and buy for something like ten dollars. It’s an open sandbox that allows you the freedom to build anything, for any purpose, and to share it with other gamers. It’s much like Little Big Planet, only it leads to things like Counter Strike: Source - another game, a separate game, available on Steam. Counter Strike: Source is a modification of a modified game; because Garry’s Mod is, as its name suggests, a modified game.
Garry’s Mod is built in Source. There is a certain degree of poetry in play there: the developer of Garry’s Mod broke into the closed Source code and modified it to his own purposes when Source was originally adapted from the open Quake engine. We would like to draw a similarity here between this case and the case of independent cinema (re Star Wars and fan culture). In one example, the other, we see the independent fan taking the closed, privately owned and protected, narrative and converting it to something they can use and distribute. Here, in this example, we observe the same phenomenon only transposed to consider code and source engines instead of narratives. We are, essentially, observing the same thing, only with the prosumers using different tools to achieve different pieces of media.
"This was one of the good things about GMod. I could see the right way to do stuff because a lot of the time Valve had already done it somewhere else in the code. So their code would teach me." (Newman, 2007)
Garry’s Mod is, if we might be so bold, the most well name gaming modification on (or off) the market. It is the quintessential fairytale prosumer story. A gamer with knowledge of code went inside a game, ripped that code away from it and modified it to build his own thing. He distributed that thing over the internet and then, as one would expect, the original intellectual property owners (Valve) approached him, as his activity had garnered their attentions. But they didn’t approach him with the legal wrath of a lawyer legion, no: they approached him with the promise of gold and the outstretched offering of employment.
"I was really out of my depth in the Source engine at that point. I had no idea how anything worked, but managed to throw version one together by thinking back into Half-Life 2--to work out where I'd seen the feature before." (Newman, 2011)
garry newman
Garry Newman started off as a humble PHP designer who got fired for building a dating website on the side. Then he jumped into a game engine he didn't understand, taught himself the language and built the now famous Garry's Mod.
"I'm not the kind of person that can learn from books, I really need working examples." (Newman, 2007)
"The animation system in the Source engine annoys me. Well, not so much the animation system. Just all the defines. Pages and Pages. But when you add an activity, you have to add it in 3 places. It’s really, really crazy. It seems kind of weird considering how artist driven the source engine is. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about and that’s the best way to do this shit I dunno." (Newman, 2011)
Garry Newman is a case that is somewhat contradictory to the other studies that we've been looking at. When we considered the Star Wars: Revelations case we examined a community driven enterprise; a project made entirely through mass people power. When we looked at citizen journalism we look at individuals creating a voice en masse and when we look at bedroom music producers we look at an audience creating their own work. In these other studies we are seeing the ultimate importance of the community in influencing and inspiring the work while in this one we are seeing, clearly, that one person can do all of the work and rely on that community in a different way (below).
Garry Newman isn’t exactly a prodigy, though. That is: he did not spontaneously develop programming skills. He had a background in code and, as the quotes scattered around the page demonstrate, that background, the code he was working with and his general knowledge of the applications that already used that code helped him as he worked through it.
Garry Newman isn’t exactly a prodigy, though. That is: he did not spontaneously develop programming skills. He had a background in code and, as the quotes scattered around the page demonstrate, that background, the code he was working with and his general knowledge of the applications that already used that code helped him as he worked through it.
The Modding Communities
We don't mean to invalidate the modding community, though, for it is a large and domineering force within the gaming industry. We need to carefully separate this community - this subsection of gaming prosumers - from the community of consumers proper. Both divisions of gamers are important to what we're looking at here, but for different reasons. We will first consider the modders and mappers who, like Garry Newman, break into code a re-appropriate the content.
"Valve has mailing lists for coders and mappers. They'd usually reply there if you asked a question, but they're pretty approachable if you email them with a question. I never got a "fuck off" reply anyway." (Newman, 2011)
It is important to point out that the producers proper, the employed and professionally paid for the work kind of producers, are wholly aware of the modding community. There are two responses in the industry to this community. The first is the Nintendo approach: battle them, vilify them and make their work as difficult as possible. The second is the Valve approach: give them a job.
[We call it the Valve approach because Valve gave Garry Newman a job (and a development team) to maintain and update Garry’s Mod that they could sell and distribute it through Steam. This is not an officially endorsed part of anyone’s lexicon; it is just something we adopted for these two paragraphs. It will never be mentioned again.]
Valve is not the only company that hires independent modifiers, however. Stardock, publishers and developers for the recent Elemental hired a team of modifiers after they released their game to less-than-stellar reception. They, essentially, hired modifiers who created a new and original game, Fall From Heaven, from existing Civilization IV material (code) and made it available to players online for free that they could do the same to Elemental; thus effectively fixing the badly developed game. (Leahy, 2010).
It all comes down to two things: the quality of the coding/hacking and the reception of the hack. The consuming gaming community is, therefore and in a way, equally as important, if not more than, to the gaming prosumer than that prosumer community is in and of itself. Because that community is the audience and that audience is vocal. But they are both important, idealistically and realistically. A talented modifier won’t get work if his game fails to hit off with the playing community and a popular modification won’t get an untalented prosumer work. It is an issue of hitting the sweet spot with both aspects of the gaming community; we can see that is something that is, evidently, very possible.
[We call it the Valve approach because Valve gave Garry Newman a job (and a development team) to maintain and update Garry’s Mod that they could sell and distribute it through Steam. This is not an officially endorsed part of anyone’s lexicon; it is just something we adopted for these two paragraphs. It will never be mentioned again.]
Valve is not the only company that hires independent modifiers, however. Stardock, publishers and developers for the recent Elemental hired a team of modifiers after they released their game to less-than-stellar reception. They, essentially, hired modifiers who created a new and original game, Fall From Heaven, from existing Civilization IV material (code) and made it available to players online for free that they could do the same to Elemental; thus effectively fixing the badly developed game. (Leahy, 2010).
It all comes down to two things: the quality of the coding/hacking and the reception of the hack. The consuming gaming community is, therefore and in a way, equally as important, if not more than, to the gaming prosumer than that prosumer community is in and of itself. Because that community is the audience and that audience is vocal. But they are both important, idealistically and realistically. A talented modifier won’t get work if his game fails to hit off with the playing community and a popular modification won’t get an untalented prosumer work. It is an issue of hitting the sweet spot with both aspects of the gaming community; we can see that is something that is, evidently, very possible.
Some artists approach the idea of modification in a more social context, disrupting game systems with more interventionist approaches. (Betts, 2007)
Distribution
The distribution of modified games has been, more or less, addressed by the other sections of the page, making this elaboration brief. Modified games, modified aspects of games, homebrew and independent games are all distributed in predominantly the same way: over the internet.
What that means, exactly, is exactly as vague as it sounds. There are websites dedicated to following particular projects, others to compiling them and then others again that are dedicated to pointing you to them - and that is not to mention the forums that engage discourse amongst the developing communities and the playing communities. The Internet is a big place and these projects find their ways.
The more interesting and specific examples are of the independent projects crossing the lines. Garry’s Mod, and many games like it, being made available through Steam. Independent projects, smaller in scale than Garry’s Mod, end up in places like the Apple iTunes App Store, or in the Microsoft Xbox 360 Live Arcade, or the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel, or the Playstation 3 Network, &c. These games, when they become absorbed by the larger media industry that they worked within, still keep the principles of their distribution channels. That is: they remain digital and they stay in the domain of the online. Because they are small, or because that is where their audience is --- or because that is where they were built by the prosumer in the first place. There is no clear conclusion to be made here. It could be something unrelated to the prosumer phenomenon entirely (the digital distribution of gaming media and the imminent death of the gaming disc) or it could be symptomatic. It is unclear. All that is clear is that the independent market starts online and, even if given financial dependency, stays online.
What that means, exactly, is exactly as vague as it sounds. There are websites dedicated to following particular projects, others to compiling them and then others again that are dedicated to pointing you to them - and that is not to mention the forums that engage discourse amongst the developing communities and the playing communities. The Internet is a big place and these projects find their ways.
The more interesting and specific examples are of the independent projects crossing the lines. Garry’s Mod, and many games like it, being made available through Steam. Independent projects, smaller in scale than Garry’s Mod, end up in places like the Apple iTunes App Store, or in the Microsoft Xbox 360 Live Arcade, or the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel, or the Playstation 3 Network, &c. These games, when they become absorbed by the larger media industry that they worked within, still keep the principles of their distribution channels. That is: they remain digital and they stay in the domain of the online. Because they are small, or because that is where their audience is --- or because that is where they were built by the prosumer in the first place. There is no clear conclusion to be made here. It could be something unrelated to the prosumer phenomenon entirely (the digital distribution of gaming media and the imminent death of the gaming disc) or it could be symptomatic. It is unclear. All that is clear is that the independent market starts online and, even if given financial dependency, stays online.
Conclusion
The case of Garry Newman and Garry's Mod offers a curious insight into the possible changes of the media landscape. We see this predominantly in his use of copyrighted material to produce his own media product and to find himself, rather than legally reproached, employed and rewarded for his infringement. It is an odd result entirely in contrast to the expectation of the average person. We do not expect copyright to be applied against us leniently and we do not, realistically, expect to get away with it when we publish something containing (or in this case: cannibalising) someone else's work. This is indicative of a tension in the copyright standards of the world and the shifting attitudes of the producers in contrast to the consumers. Systems like that in the United States and Britain are becoming tighter and harder to work against while systems like that in Russia, a system shifting toward the fundamentals of Creative Commons, become easier to work with. We do not presume to consider Garry's Mod the first example of copyright infringements leading to reward rather than punishment, but it is definitely a big, recent prototype for the phenomenon.
We also see, through the frame of the entire mod culture, a change in what it means to be a media worker. The independent prosumer is not necessarily a team of independent creatives; it is entirely possible for the creator to be a single, talented, motivated individual with a fantastic skill set. Further: we now, all of us, have access to the tools that make it possible to produce work with a team of just one man. We see this evident in the words of Garry Newman himself as he talks though his working practices and describes the processes of creating his Mod. Indeed we find the majority of the research here is directly sourced from first hand sources, legitimate news sources, Garry Newman's blog and interviews with Newman. Primary resources like this are particularly relevant to this case study because it deals with not the theory but with an event, with a phenomenon, from which we draw conclusions. We look at industry politics, copyright lore and working practices from the firsthand perspective and we draw what we can from the real encounters. The writing, the concepts and the trends in the industry - the theory - are left for other sections of this greater piece.
