User-created content is a complicated subject, with all manner of issues like profitability, piracy, distribution rights, liability, and various other words which are the exact opposite of fun.

Which is why we’ve broken it all down into one simple question:

It’s purely a question of corporate attitude, and any “issues” raised by that company are excuses because their corporate attitude is one that says “suckers” instead of “players”. Modifications are indisputably a good thing for gaming. The question of whether mods actually add anything to the player experience hasn’t just been answered, it’s been so answered it now reveals anyone who even asks it as either a non-gamer or a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome. And at least the latter has an excuse for not knowing what they’re talking about.

Team Fortress and Counter-Strike both started off as modifications (for Quake and Half-Life respectively). Sorry, typo, I meant to say the two greatest FPS games in existence started as user-modifications. You could no more argue that mods are a “maybe” than you could claim the Sun is optional for life on Earth.

The most badass family tree in history

Smart companies take things like those and extend them into incredible new products. Team Fortress 2 and CS: Source servers are the most popular shooters online, and Valve regularly embarrasses every other company in the business with their sheer levels of sales and support based entirely on “providing great content for users, and letting them do that too.” It’s enough to make other developers ask themselves “Why the hell are we doing it our way?”

Like Modern Warfare. The first was an excellent online shooter with integrated Mod support. Modern Warfare 2 treated the user like a special needs student. They removed so many options you counted yourself lucky they still let you control the character. Tying to set up a server in ModWar2 gave you the strong impression the developers thought you were wearing a helmet.

The idea that modifications damage profits is ludicrous. Civ V took approximately infinity man-hours to make, and they’ve installed mod-support right from the first menu. No unpacking, no hacking your way through file trees, just telling the game “Hello lovely game that I bought, I would like to use you for fun things!” And the game goes “Great idea!”

Next time Activision claims mods are too hard, tell them Sid Meier disagrees.  And makes far better title screens.

You can tell somebody’s lying when people hide behind issues of “stability” and “customer satisfaction.” No company has ever failed to work out technical problems when there’s real money to be made, and unfortunately the opposite is also true: if they can make more by refusing to do something simple, that’s exactly what’ll happen. Player-made mods for popular games aren’t an abstract option, or some weird internet extra: they’re a simple binary indication of whether the company really cares about players or not.

Now we’ll look at which games don’t allow server mods. Or to put it another way: which Halo are you playing? It’s certainly not the original (unless you have a PC Halo server) despite how it that introduced the revolutionary - in fact now mandatory - shield mechanics for console shooters, or the grenade button (not so much an incredible innovation in that title but an incredible oversight in every game before that) Because the original Halo servers have been shut down (though you can still play on PC!) So has the Halo 2 support. So you’d better have bought 3. No, ODST. Sorry, Reach. Whichever they told you to buy most recently.

And people accept that! A strategically-mandated announcement “You don’t get to play anymore. It’s no longer worth OUR while to support this, so YOU don’t get to play this game you paid for - and clearly love because you’re still playing - anymore. Why not buy our sequel RIGHT NOW?”

Meanwhile, six years after release Half-Life 2 players can now now enjoy the cyberpunk class-combat of NeoTokyo, or the horror-movie hunting of The Hidden, the teamwork of Synergy and Follow Freeman, the insane Mad Max mayhem of D.I.P.R.I.P. and many more all from the same game.

You could be playing this right now, for free.
Which is why its still selling on the occasional Steam sale, while they can’t shift Halo 1 even in the Best Buy bargain bin.

You already know that Half Life 2 is the greatest first person shooter ever made. If you don’t, whatever reason you think you have is wrong. In fact, the only possible explanation is that you haven’t played it - in which case you should leave right now and start. GO!

HL2 has won more Game of the Year awards than you can name (seriously, name thirty awards). Even if Captain MacPicky teleported in from the Universe of Whining, the only thing he could complain about is that the single player campaign isn’t multiplayer. Which is like saying the Space Shuttle isn’t awesome because it can’t go underwater, but the heroes at Merciless Development are fitting submarine systems to the masterpiece by developing “Folllow Freeman” - Half Life 2 co-operative.

Any game that starts with a Bertrand Russell quote has to be a cut above, and the high standards don’t stop there. The sheer level of work that’s gone into this is apparent from the instant you log into a Follow Freeman Server. You appear in ff_readyroom, an entire (and quite detailed) map built to control the server options and level select - you know, the things most modders just use !server console commands for. When you get to a game level it gets even better, replaying epic battles from the single player campaign with human backup (like the defense of the lighthouse tower). The respawns are intelligent, it’s great to know that your fellow rebel fighters are real people humans rather than NPCs, and wow but those Combine dropships really aren’t ready for co-ordinated fire from multiple rocket launchers.

Which is why you can help them! In “Combine Assassin” mode a quarter of the players can be assigned to the dark side, beefed up super-troopers out to sabotage the resistance and destroy every freedom fighter they see. Moving among your computer-controlled backup/cannon fodder, you can wreak havoc among human players slightly distracted by all the regular baddies. Come on, you’ve always known you’d do a far better job than those grunts - and donning the metal Metrocop facemask to dispense “pacification” is always fun…

There are brand new missions too - bz_trainstation sees you and Combine squadmates in the wake of the demolition of Dr Breen’s tower, desperately repairing the perimeter shield around the train station while fighting off headcrab zombies until you can be evacuated by train.

The experience isn’t yet perfect. It’s based on the single-player engine, so you’ll need a Teamspeak server of your own (there aren’t any in-game chat options - not even typing text!) Attempting to move past each other can occasionally be clunky, and the aim in user-made missions isn’t always as clear as in the converted single player stages.

But it’s a damn awesome concept, and now that it’s in open beta (and free!) it’s a project that deserves your attention. How many cool things can you help just by playing games? There aren’t many FF servers online, but a custom Follow Freeman server is a perfect option for the clan looking for a new way to pass the time - and a great way to make one of the best games ever made fresh again. Everyone will enjoy it, and if they don’t? You need to screen admissions to your clan more carefully.