Abstract
Problem: Tim Cain frequently receives questions about his stance on modding — does he like mods, does he play with them, and will he review them?
Approach: He shares his personal modding preferences, his history of supporting mods in his own games, and explains the practical challenges developers face when trying to make games mod-friendly.
Findings: Tim loves mods and deeply respects modders, but acknowledges that shipping mod tools is often constrained by publisher priorities, proprietary tooling, and schedule pressures rather than developer unwillingness.
Key insight: Modding represents action over opinion — it's far harder to do something than to say something, and Tim respects modders for putting in the work rather than just critiquing.
Tim's Personal Modding Preferences
Tim states unequivocally that he loves mods and loves when people mod his games. However, he has a clear personal approach to playing with them:
- First playthrough is always vanilla — patched with official updates, but no DLC and no mods
- He patches games because "the developer probably didn't intend to have all those bugs" — patches represent developer intent
- On subsequent playthroughs, he adds mods that introduce new areas, quests, and NPCs
- He's less interested in mods that change base system mechanics (e.g., redoing the entire magic system or changing how archery works), because those alter the fundamental foundation of the game
Using Skyrim as an example, he gravitates toward mods that add new maps, dungeons, or quest-giving NPCs rather than system overhauls.
Why He Won't Review Mods
Tim explicitly declines to review the mods he uses. His reasoning is straightforward: it's not what his channel is for, and mod preferences are deeply personal — a mod he loves or hates may not match his audience's taste, making such reviews irrelevant.
Modding as a Path to Getting Hired
Tim reveals that companies he's worked for have hired people who got their start as modders. When he advises aspiring developers to "make a demo," that explicitly includes making mods.
What matters is relevance to the position being applied for:
- Level designer applicant? Show areas you've built
- System designer applicant? Show how you redesigned skills in Fallout 3, for example
He draws a sharp distinction between someone who says "I wish the skills worked this way" and a modder who made the skills work that way. The former is an interesting opinion; the latter is something he can actually evaluate by playing it.
Respecting Modders: Actions Over Words
Tim expresses deep respect for modders because they represent action rather than mere opinion. Modding shows both that the person liked the game enough to invest effort, and that they worked hard enough to learn the tools and create something tangible.
His philosophy: "It's far harder to do something than to say something, and the internet's full of people who say things. I prefer doing. It's why I always say I pay a lot more attention to what people do than what they say."
Encouraging Modding in His Own Games
Tim has actively encouraged modding in games where he had significant control. With Arcanum, the team shipped modding tools with the game:
- WorldEd — the sector and map editor
- Sock Monkey — the scripting engine and script editor
To get publisher approval, they framed the tools as supporting the publisher-requested multiplayer mode — arguing that multiplayer players would want to create new maps. The tools worked equally well for single-player mods, which was the real goal.
Why Games Aren't Always Easy to Mod
Tim pushes back against the common assumption that developers who don't ship mod tools are actively hostile to modding. The reality is more nuanced — modding simply wasn't prioritized, often for practical reasons:
Proprietary Tools
Many development tools can't be shipped because they're third-party products the studio had to purchase or subscribe to. A lip-syncing tool, for example, generates files the game needs but can't be freely distributed to modders.
Network-Dependent Tools
At Obsidian, the string table tool kept all game text in a networked database — tracking references, translation status across languages, and multi-user access. Shipping such a tool would require end users to set up their own network infrastructure just to run it.
Schedule Pressure
When a project is running out of time and the team is cutting content — deleting skills, quests, NPCs — to meet deadlines, there's no room to prioritize exposing functionality to modders. Publishers explicitly push back: "We're not paying you to make this game easy to mod. We're paying you to finish this game."
The Common Engine Advantage
Tim notes that many modern games are built on shared engines like Unity, Unreal, and Godot. These engines use similar data formats, so learning one gives modders the ability to create certain types of mods across all games built on that engine. This is another reason to learn a popular game engine — even if you don't want to make your own game, you can mod games you enjoy.
Summary
Tim's stance on modding is enthusiastic and consistent: he loves mods, plays with them, respects the people who make them, and has historically fought to ship mod tools with his games. When games ship without mod support, it's usually a matter of priorities and practical constraints rather than developer hostility toward the modding community.