Tim Cain, one of the developers behind the original Fallout and a consultant on The Outer Worlds 2, has outlined how he feels about mods in a recent YouTube video, and one of the big positives he alludes to is their potential to serve as an alternative or solution to annoying back-and-forths about features and mechanics in video games.
If you’re modding a game, odds are some of the first works you’ll grab - assuming they’re on offer - will be ones that revamp certain systems within it to better match what you want from the experience. For some people, it’s turning Fallout 4 into a survival game, for me it’s turning everything into Fallout New Vegas, complete with perk and skill systems that mirror that game.
As it turns out, Fallout co-creator Tim Cain’s a big fan of these kinds of mods, because they can actually help developers think about things people might want them to do with or add to their games without just being someone declaring ‘do this’ on the internet.