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An opinion piece about the possibility of mods in mobile games, following Supercell's announcement yesterday.

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Hey all - Scott here founder of ModDB and IndieDB. As you may know we've been busy building mod.io a cross platform modding API for game developers. As a result i'm particularly interested in seeing mods in more places. We love our big total conversion PC mods from games like M&B, Half-Life, Total War, C&C, STALKER, Doom and others, which is kind of our speciality, but we're also keeping an eye to the future with mod.io. We're close to seeing more mods on consoles, and it looks like mods on mobile are *kind of* here.

Mobile the next frontier?

Today is another big day in the history of modding with Supercell launching Make, their content creation platform. What's interesting about this, is for the longest time UGC hasn't really happened on mobile because creating content on the device is severely limited by the form factor and tools available, and mobile platforms are still quite closed when it comes to custom content. We've never really considered the first point a barrier to entry, because passionate modders will always find a way to personalize and mod their favorite games. Clearly Supercell doesn't consider this a barrier to entry either, because in order to make content for Brawl Stars they recommend you use traditional PC 3D modelling tools.


However, whether it is deliberate or by design, or the fact that mobile is still quite a closed platform, it appears that in order for your content to make it into the game, you need to win a submission process and be picked by the Supercell team + community. At that point i'm assuming your content is baked into the game and released in an update, but despite this limitation, this is an incredible first step for UGC on mobile from such an influential company in the space, and we look forward to seeing others follow in their footsteps.

What's next for modding

I'm keen to hear from our community what they think about the direction modding is moving in. Do you believe it's suited on mobile and would like to see it in your mobile games. How about console? Do you believe the movement towards more cosmetic and item-based UGC is a good thing, or do you believe a mod is a total conversion that needs to do more than just change the visuals?

Talk to us about modding in your game

If you like what Supercell are doing and want to explore new ways to succeed with UGC in your game on mobile or elsewhere, we'd love to chat to you. We are big believers in the future of UGC, and our cross-platform mod API (mod.io) includes all the bells and whistles Supercell have (+ a few more). We're committed to the long term development of UGC in games, and are ready to power your users creativity in bold new ways.

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Eärendil_Ardamírë
Eärendil_Ardamírë

In theory it's possible to play M&B on the smartphone afaik, there has been done some android port for it. Modding seems to be a bit more complicated for it due to different packing of ressources from what I have read about it. Not sure about the actual status there, I don't know anyone playing it on mobile ^^

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INtense! Author
INtense!

Interesting, yeah I believe the packaging of content makes it harder to do. Everything is sandboxed. I'm assuming on iOS it's impossible, and Android possible...

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Teancum
Teancum

I've focused almost all my modding in recent years on consoles, handhelds and a bit on phones. I 100% think this is a viable thing, and it really just takes a few pioneers and some good coverage to get the ball rolling.

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