That said, I would LOVE a return to modding and more open source extensibility to gaming to converge the two. There’s such a good case for this when you realiz

That said, I would LOVE a return to modding and more open source extensibility to gaming to converge the two. There’s such a good case for this when you realize two of the most profitable game modes ever emerged as shitty custom map mods in StarCraft and Warcraft (Tower Defense and the entire MOBA genre). Counter Strike was a mod as well. The industry has sort of turtled and sheltered itself away from this. In pre-CS:Source/Global Offensive days, players made weapon skins/models/sounds and distributed it for free. Instead of making a marketplace and platform for gamers to create assets, the industry monopolized asset creation and cornered the market in these spaces so they are the only ones that can sell content. This is true across the board, gamers are not being given a chance to take place in the marketplace and effectively shut out. The new map, skin, game mode, all come from the game company only. Roblox is kind of the only forward thinking platform at the moment because they serve as a platform, but even that is not enough. You still have to be a developer to take advantage of their platform. I don’t think their tools are the same as well designed map creation tools, model creation tools, etc. There’s no effort being put into this, and I believe it’s mostly because there is simply more money in monopolizing content creation. Weirdly, I think the rise of the Sandbox game (your Minecrafts, every survival game) is an offshoot of the dereliction of player created content. That, in the absence of this initiative, what you have is an admission that the players want to contribute to the game in their own way. Instead of giving them the well thought out tools and monetization platforms, you instead give them a half-assed open world where they construct their gameplay, with no chance of ever making anything more of it (like a whole genre, skins, models, game modes, to share and take credit for).