A Look at Customization

Nowadays people are expecting more and more from video games. Back in the day all I cared about was that there was something to shoot at. But people want more, and luckily the video game industry can keep giving more and more. People will always want variety in anything they do. Otherwise we’d still have black and white television, an ice-cream shop called One Flavor, and so on. So it wouldn’t surprise anyone that games today have more variety and customization than ever.

The Battlefield franchise is probably the best example of this evolution of customization. It all started with Battlefield 1942. Which had many mods and then a sequel was made called Battlefield 2, this new system that allowed people to rank up and get new weapons for themselves. Then Battlefield 2142 came along and let the player customize their character even more, it let them have upgraded weapons. This was expanded further upon by Battlefield: Bad Company (1 & 2) by letting the player customize their soldier’s loadout even more by selecting attachments to put on their weapons. Now Battlefield 3 is coming out and it will involve even more weapons, more attachments and more “perks.”

But what is variety without different types of variety? Hmmm? Sure you can give a person different weapons, but what about changing all of it, yes that’s right, ALL of it. There are many mods out there for games. Most of the total conversion mods, the ones that change all of it, are for Half Life or Battlefield, although many of the less well known games could have one or two. They literally take the game and change it to something completely different, there is a mod out for Half-Life 2 that institutes a whole new style of game play, instead of running around shooting aliens, two teams are pitted against each other and have to take over strategic points to gain resources, then they use those resources to build tanks or facilities which gives them an edge over their opponent. Both teams have one commander which plays the game like a strategy game with a birds eye view, and the rest play it like a first person shooter.

There are so many ways that developer’s change the way the game is played; it’s like a whole new world. Of course I can’t tell you all the ways that they do this, because I don’t think I’ve even experienced it all.