This document discusses the topic of modding, or modifying digital games. It defines modding as changing games' representational or gameplay aspects, ranging from minor tweaks to total conversions. The document then briefly outlines the history of modding, including early examples from the 1980s and prolific modding of games from the 1990s like Doom and Half-Life. It notes modding allows the blending of games and other popular culture works, and helps establish games as "intertextual commodities". Finally, it states modding highlights games' new media aspects like fluid texts and distributed authorship.

1. textual looting: modding as a popular cultural practice julian r. kücklich university of ulster

2. overview what is modding? a brief history of modding modding and popular culture modding and new media

3. overview what is modding? a brief history of modding modding and popular culture modding and new media

4. what is modding? modification of digital games on the representational or gameplay level ranges from subtle changes (torch in doom 3 ) to total conversions ( counterstrike ) modding can also be used for political purposes ( escape from woomera )

5. doom 3 duct tape mod

6. counterstrike half-life

7. counterstrike counterstrike

8. escape from woomera

9. overview what is modding? a brief history of modding modding and popular culture modding and new media

10. a brief history of modding castle smurfenstein (1983) doom (1993) – 10,000 wads created from 1994 to present half-life (1998) – hundreds of mods listed on moddb.com games such as the sims (2000), gta3 (2001), halo (2001), and morrowind (2002) also have sizable modding communities

11. castle smurfenstein

12. doom mods 1994 - 2003 aliens tc batman doom goldeneye tc sin city 2002: a doom odyssey doom raider ...

13. half-life mods moddb.com dragonball: break the limit

14. the sims 2 mods modthesims2.com

15. overview what is modding? a brief history of modding modding and popular culture modding and new media

16. modding and popular culture modding tools are often used to inscribe popular cultural texts into digital games this can be seen as similar to henry jenkins‘ concept of textual poaching – however, it de-stabilizes game texts to a much greater degree (‘textual looting’)

17. modding thus emerges as a practice that fluidifies game texts and blurs the boundaries between games and other popular cultural texts this allows us to regard games and mods as ‘intertextual commodities’ (marshall 2002) modding and popular culture continued

18. overview what is modding? a brief history of modding modding and popular culture modding and new media

19. modding and new media modding thus draws attention to games‘ new media aspects fluid rather than fixed texts multiplicity of authorship distribution more important than production convergence of different media forms innovation from the margins

20. questions? ? ? ?