More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods. You have entire platforms like roblox where all the games are more or less mods. How long until the platform itself is community created and managed and the viability of games created by companies dissappears?
It’s been happening for years, almost decades at this point. In fact, I’d be willing to say that at least 50% of most games ever made were made by someone who used to mod other games for fun.
Decades.
Team Fortress started as a mod for Quake 1(30 years ago)
Red Orchestra was the winner of the Make Something Unreal contest that Epic Games held over 20 years ago.
Famously, League of Legends and DOTA started as a custom map for Warcraft 3(Defense of the Ancients) and apparently Activision/Blizzard missed that window so much that they are a footnote in the genre they fucking started.
I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to mod quake into dwarf fortress until I reread your comment.
Battlefield 2 was at least partly made by the team who made Desert Combat for Battlefield 1942
Also Phoenix Point, made by the team behind The Long War mods for XCOM.