Why I hope all my games have Mod support.

Mods are something I was never really interested in when it came to my game selection (which I suppose is two parts starting as a console gamer, one part being late to get into PC games) - they never really appealed to me or could sway my opinion on whether or not to purchase a game... until recently.

Torchlight II - a fantastic game I HIGHLY recommend to all - was released just at near the end of last year. The game has 4 hero classes you could select and three action packed acts to traverse through. Each of the four heroes has three different skill trees, so each hero could be played multiple ways. On top of this, there was a whole slew of equipment and quests - the game just feels very deep.

And this was great; me and my friend (and housemate/team member) cleared the game and made it to new game plus while the game scaled in difficulty and the loot drops became greater and greater. Torchlight II took the back seat for a while as we worked on our game - but suddenly a news article popped up while I traversed the internet searching for what was new and happening in the game industry.

A team by the name of Synergies was planning on adding:
- A whole new act starting with "Or'Ak Pass, Path to the Troll Homeland" 
- 106 Elite monsters 
- 106 Hero monsters 
- 6 Rare dragons 
- 8 Ancient Trolls 
- 6 extremely Rare world bosses spawning in the major areas of the map 
- A new vendor in Estherian Enclave that will sell alternative leveling dungeon maps 
- A portal to the end game TABLE MOUNTAIN city. <This city is meant for end game level 100 use for transition into the raids, it is only included in the start for alternative leveling characters.> 
- New quests, new hairstyles, more faces, more customization! 
- New pets associated with the Necromancer and Paladin. 
- New HP / Mana and Fame UI 
- A PVP dungeon "the warcamp" Available in Tablemountain

Holy bananas. 

That's about all I could think - a game I already loved getting MORE content for FREE. As soon as I learned about this mod, I thought, "Hey, what other kinds of mods are out there?" After searching through only the highest rated ones on a Torchlight II website dedicated to the aforementioned (which was still only scratching the tip of the iceberg), I found two more awesome classes to try on top of an increased inventory size and new pets to follow me in my quest. In addition, I was racked with anticipation at what else people in the community would end up creating - the possibilities were endless.

The problem lay in the fact that each one of these modders had to sit there and figure out the code for the game... not exactly an easy or enjoyable task. Recently, Runic Games offered what they call the GUTS system - basically a dev kit for Torchlight II. This has now made modding way more accessible for current and aspiring modders. On top of this, Torchlight II just received Steam Workshop integration - this means your favourite mods can now automatically update so you can have the developers latest content.

How flippin' cool is that? Imagine if I could make a game like that? Not only would the game's longevity be extended by X period of time, it'd also be plausible for that game to sell more copies just for people who want to play with the mods. Mods made me impulse buy Killing Floor - the satisfaction of dual-wielding two golden guns while running around a cel-shaded Kakiriko Village from Legend of Zelda and head-shoting zombies is just too great.

I understand that adding the functionality for mod support can be daunting - you're already making a game, so you probably don't have time to be making a way for others to make your game after you've made your game. But the benefits from modding seem like to good a deal to pass up... Hopefully more developers pick up on this and start implementing them into their games too.