The mods of today might just turn out to be the great games of tomorrow. Somewhere out there among the armies of modders creating new and exciting things for us to play lie tomorrow’s game designers. Modders are an incredibly dedicated set of folk, driven by the love of games and the determination to make something new and interesting. The rest of us lucky folk get to sit back and play their efforts and it doesn’t even cost us a penny. That’s why mods are an important pillar of PC gaming, and it’s one of the reasons we love mods so much here at UserCreated.
So to celebrate I’ve listed three great modern games that started out as mods and ended up making it big. I’ve only selected three to avoid this post becoming catastrophically huge, but there are many, many more examples I could have listed. Venture below the jump for a comedy screenshot and many words besides.
Team Fortress
August 24th, 1996. Saturday. Three amateur developers released a mod for a little known game called Quake. The modders were Robin Walker, John Cook and Ian Caughley. The mod was Team Fortress.
It may have looked very different to the sequel we all know and love, but all nine classes were present in the original, as was the emphasis on working as a team to complete shared objectives. It had none of the visual flair of the 2007 follow up, but the meat and bones of a great game were there for all to see. All three modders went on to work for Valve on the sequel.
Team Fortress inspired many official and unofficial spin-offs including the immensely popular Team Fortress Classic, made for the original Half Life. Fan made iterations have appeared as mods for Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament and even Aliens vs Predator 2.
Eventually, after a very long wait, Team Fortress 2 hit retail as part of the Orange Box in ’07, and it was magnificent. It stands today as one of the most fun and well supported multiplayer experiences out there, all thanks to three gamers with a great idea who made it happen with a mod.
There won’t be many people left playing the very first Team Fortress, but it’s still up on ModDB here if you fancy some retro action.
Killing Floor
August 15th 2007 saw the release of Killing Floor as a total conversion mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. It saw six players battling against waves of devilish enemies before facing off against the menacing Patriarch. Medicine Guns and Welders were present in the original mod, allowing players to control their environment and create more easily defended positions. At the end of each round players would spend the dosh earned slaying the evil multitudes to buy bigger guns to vanquish future multitudes even more effectively. It proved to be an addictive and popular formula that would soon make a successful transition to a full retail release on Steam.
Killing Floor went gold as a standalone game in 2009 with revamped monster designs and new levels. It retained the moody survival horror atmosphere of the original mod and garnered some favourable press attention. Killing Floor really came into its own with patch late last year that added new levels and weapons and fixed some exploits. A free weekend and subsequent sale price on Steam over Christmas ’09 have seen it become a staple in many gamers’ multiplayer diet.
The original Killing Floor mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 can be found here on ModDB
Defense of the Ancients
This Warcraft III mod has gone a step further than many of the mods in this roundup. Defense of the Ancients can be said to have created a whole new genre. Any tower defense game you’ve played recently owes a debt to this mod. It made it’s first appearance in 2003, created by a mapper using the alias Eul who based the map on a scenario from StarCraft. With the release of The Frozen Throne expansion for Warcraft III many modders had a crack at improving on Eul’s work, but the most popular iteration was Denfense of the Ancients Allstars, developed by one Steve Feak (aka Guinsoo). This is the version recognised as being the official continuation of the DotA legacy, and development has since passed to the elusive IceFrog, who worked closely with the DotA forum communities to keep improving and updating the game. Recently IceFrog was headhunted by Valve (yes, them again) and is currently at work on a secret project deep in Valve HQ.
The mod has seen considerable success as a serious competetive multiplayer game with official competitions taking place as part of Blizzcon ’05 and the World Cyber Games Asian Championships from 2006. It’s a big as Counterstrike in the Phillipines and Thailand and there are serious LAN competitions in Northern European nations like Finland. It’s acted as a key influence for Gas Powered Games’ 2009 title Demigod, which has been sadly overlooked due to some horrible connection problems on launch. It’s also responsible for one of the most addictive online experiences in existence, Desktop Tower Defense.
‘Where should I go to obtain this stellar mod?’ I hear you ask, like so many crazy voices in my head. Well, crazy voices, get out of my head and go here. You’ll need Warcraft III to play of course.
One more thing. Basshunter released a song about Defense of the Ancients. It made me want to eat my own eyes. Here it is:
The horror … the horror.
DotA and tower defense have nothing to do with one another. Both map “themes” for starcraft (Aeon of Strife for example) and warcraft 3 (Element TD and such) were created concurrently, and have very different communities that play them. If you wanted to reference DotA becoming a game I really have no idea why you didn’t pick Heroes of Newerth as an example.
Tower defense games, while different, are clearly influenced by DotA. Desktop Tower Defense even calls the lanes of enemies that march accross the map Creeps in a direct reference Defense of the Ancients.
Heroes of Newerth, meanwhile, is still in closed Beta phase. Maybe when it’s actually out and I’ve played it I’ll update the article.
DotA inspired a bunch of games…Demigod, League of Legends, and yes, most recently, HoN. But they definitely all come from tower defense roots.
Also, Killing Floor is awesome. Possibly my favourite game of last year.
I reviewed Killing Floor and ended up settling on a lukewarm 6 out of 10 mark, if I recall correctly. I enjoyed my time with it, but I think it’s telling that, after I’d completed the job, I never played it again.
I like Killing Floor a lot! Way more than L4D.
Same…As soon as I was done with the campaigns, I was all but done with L4D…I just found so much more replayability on KF. Although granted, I can see the issues it has.
“Creeps” was a term used by Blizzard to describe all neutral units in WC3 and of course both TD and DotA variants carried that term forward.
@Thomas Senior: Tower Defence influenced DoTA, not the other way around. Heck, the first TD was an arcade game released in 1990!
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