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The methods and motivations for this labour will be the main focus of this paper.
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Queer players labour to create mods that productively and fundamentally enhance their play. Rather, I am interested in the affectively productive power of mods that exists in spite of publisher exploitation. This is not to dismiss the impact of the exploitation of modders. Though game publishers can exploit the labour of modders for profit, mods can also represent alternatively valuable forms of labour and community building modding is often simultaneously productive for both publishers and players.
#POLYGON LOVE 2 MODS MOD#
In particular, I am interested in the use of mod labour to create alternative mechanics, systems, algorithms, and representations within game spaces on behalf of marginalized groups.
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Though it is an important aspect of modding, the free labour of modders appropriated by publishers is one small part of this web of systems. The interaction between free labour, modding, and representation is an intricate but important system within game communities as a whole. Whatever the case, there is a nonfinancial value in modifying games. Others still use mods as a basis to tell entirely new stories. Underrepresented groups in particular often use mods to reflect the kinds of representation they would like to see in games. Whether it be the inclusion of alternative forms of representation, gameplay changes, or stylistic changes, the labour undertaken in the mod economy takes many forms. Moreover, creators often use mods to proactively address issues that are not otherwise considered. At the same time, the free labour provided in the creation of mods heavily augments the gaming experiences of average players and modders alike. This constitutes a form of free labour (Terranova, 2016) where the work of users is appropriated without compensation. On the one hand, corporations often do rely on modders, benefitting from their work fixing bugs and engaging communities in their games. The twin reactions to the Valve paid mods debacle reflect the larger culture behind video game modification. In the wake of mass protests, Valve canceled the paid mod program in less than a week. For modders, the value of the labour of creating mods was not economic, but rather something more affective, relating to the quality of play and the establishment of community. Second, they claimed that paid mods went against the spirit of the modding community-that Valve was changing an aspect of gaming that was meant to be explicitly non-commercial. They had two main arguments against them: first, they argued that the proposed pay structure was exceedingly unfair. Many Steam users, however, were not as keen on the idea of paid mods. According to Valve programmer Tom Bui, Valve considered the idea a “great opportunity to help support the incredible creative work being done by mod makers in the Steam Workshop…opening new avenues to help financially support those contributors” (McWhertor, 2015). The company professed a desire to expand the revenue streams available to those who created mods.
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In April 2015, Valve Corporation ( Half-Life, Portal, Team-Fortress, etc.) allowed creators of mods for the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to put them up for sale on the Steam store, a digital distribution platform for PC games. Keywords: mods, queer theory, labour, mechanics, fans Ultimately, this paper works to develop a grammar of queer mods and their resulting critical affective experience. My argument is that the act of queer modification of video games constitutes a form of “affectively necessary labour” that builds from and ameliorates a lack of queer representation in gaming, both narratively and mechanically.
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I then investigate the ways in which the labour of modding can map onto this definition and energize otherwise uncritical games. In the service of this analysis, I trace a definition of modding based on level of interaction with the game object, including cosmetic enhancements and gameplay modifications.
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Later, drawing from theoretical work on labour, gaming, and queer reading practices, I will frame mods as interventions into the code of games in order to unpack their potential for resisting hegemonic attitudes towards gender and sexuality. Using the work of Tiziana Terranova, David Hesmondhalgh, and others, I will discuss the exploitation of audience work in relation to the augmentation of the game itself. In this article, I consider how the labour of modifying games can both be exploited by large corporations and also create a queer, affective counterplay experience through which a temporary dismantling of heteronormativity can be imagined. The Affectively Necessary Labour of Queer Mods by Tom Welch Abstract