I don’t often consider that 2 of the biggest gaming trends, zombie/survival and battle royale, came out of Arma mods. Arma3 is probably my “desert island” game, it’s flexible enough to be a FPS, a simulator, a RTS, and much more.

There was an Operation Flashpoint mission where I was supposed to be waiting for an officer to arrive in a Jeep. I waited like 10 minutes and he never came. I walked down the road and he had crashed the Jeep and died. That to me was an important moment in gaming, it was a scripted event but in the game world, and the AI had some randomness to it. That is the sort of gameplay experiences I enjoy, when a mission isn’t the same every time and the open world truly feels like anything can happen.

The developer Bohemia Interactive found it crucial to promote the idea of player creation, something that was true for most of the golden era of early PC gaming.

I can’t agree more - so many high profile games and trends came from the ability for players to mod and map for things, going back to CS and further.

That games with subscriptions etc are so much more locked down these days (for sort of fair reasons, if you agree with that model for monetising games - and not, if not) is pretty sad, and means that folk who may otherwise organically start mucking about with the ideas behind game development much earlier than otherwise.

That said, stuff like unity is way more accessible than it used to be, but it’s a whole other can of worms for various reasons.

Looking back at community mapping competitions as late as TF2 (which didn’t require mindbending detail, just an art style), it’s sad that we’re missing that these days - partly due to the increased detail, but also the ability to host your own server, mess with modding it, add new maps… And all in the name of (pessimistically) greater recurring revenue for shareholders.

To sum it all up, “:(”.

SovietWomble has a really cool video Essay on how arma and its mods paved the way for the battle royale craze