Skyrimâs vast, lush world is a wonderful thing made all the more remarkable by the fact that it continues to grow and expand, constantly changing in unexpected ways. This is not only due to the downloadable content that Bethesda has planned for the game (the first one, Dawnguard, looks pretty terrific). Skyrim keeps growing because of modders, PC tinkerers who tear the game apart and rebuild it in lovely and unexpected ways.
Skyrim is the first non-Valve game to use the âSteam Workshop,â which puts mods in one place on Steam, making them easy to install alongside of the game. âWe know a lot of the guys at Valve,â Howard said, âso we wanted to dig in deep with Steam and Skyrim
âOne of our level designers Joel Burgess, he handles a lot of our Wiki and our Moddingâwhat people want, and how the editor works, and all those things. And he became friends with one of the designers at Valve, and they just started talking about it. And they came to me, and I said âYeah, this sounds amazing!â The Valve guys were in our office the next week.â
âWe were like, âThis is amazing, want a job?'â
The Steam Workshop isnât the only place to get modsâyou can also find them at the Skyrim Nexus, a site that has been hosting mods since the days of past Bethesda games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion. I asked Howard how much Bethesda engaged with the community at the independent Skyrim Nexus as they put together the plan for the Steam Workshop.
âTheyâve been doing it for a long time, and thereâs a lot of great stuff there,â he said. âWe found that we were of two minds on it. One is that we should stay out of itâwe should give them the tools, and the creators will be fine. We donât want to muck it up for them somehow.
âBut we started feeling like, mods are so cool, we need to do more to make sure more people are trying them out. The Steam Workshop thing was, weâre going to be on Steam with our game, so we have that working, we should do this.â
I asked Howard if heâd ever seen a mod that was so good that he wanted to hire the person who made it. After saying that he hesitated on that question since it felt like he was passing judgement, he shared a cool story: âOne of the top Morrowind mods, where you could cut guysâ heads off and stuff, heâs our main combat AI programmer. He has been for years. We were like, âThis is amazing, want a job?'â
Howard says that modding often plays a role in hiring at Bethesda. âBecause our tools have been out for so long, if youâre applying with us, weâll say, âThrow something up!â So we can look at their mod, their levelâand our bar is, âWould we have shipped this?'â
As for his own personal favorite Skyrim mod, Howard mentioned liking clever functional mods like the one that adds fast-travel markers for the houses that you own. He also mentioned another favorite: âThis isnât a mod per se, but have you seen the âGreat Battles of Skyrimâ? [Embedded here] I love that. Thereâs something where Iâve never seen the game do that. So itâs more like, I start watching the video and I think, âLetâs see how this goes,â is the game gonna break? But it actually worked! So Iâm thinking, âHey, look at the combat go! Awesome!â
Modders continue to push the limits of Skyrim beyond what even its developers would have thought possibleâand theyâre just getting started. Heck, Iâm really into modding the game and I canât keep up!
Given the fact that people are still making revolutionary mods for Morrowind and Oblivion, it stands to reason that weâll be getting Skyrim mods for a long, long time to come. As Bethesda continues to crank out new game content, it seems like a safe bet that one of the best games of 2011 will continue to get better and better into 2012 and beyond.
(Top Image | Duncan Harris /Dead End Thrills)
