> Minecraft and Roblox both have creative / extensible outlets built in to them
Not at all the same thing as the community-created content of old.
Roblox is an entirely microtransaction-driven experience, you create games and publish them on the developer's platform so you can charge players for things and make money, not because you simply want to create something for people to enjoy. The developer is in full control at all times and can decide to remove your content at any time.
Minecraft is fundamentally a sandbox game but that's also not really the same thing. You can still run your own servers with your own mods on the original edition but that's just a remnant of the past and Microsoft wants to get rid of that as soon as possible so they can force you to play their version of the game where you pay microtransactions for servers, skins, maps, etc. And besides, most popular java servers have their own set of microtransactions, and there's no server list, so generally you either host your own server for a group of friends only or join a large existing server.
Compare all of this to the classic Valve game concept of loading up a level or script editor because you have an idea and want to make it a reality so other people can enjoy it, not because you think "I can make money out of this". You release your content on the internet for free, others download it, load it up on their servers, and it's now playable by anyone in a few clicks. Players open up a server browser, scroll through a list of servers, pick one they like and join, and suddenly they're playing a player-created map, on a player-hosted server, with player-created plugins providing gameplay and general quality-of-life features, together with other like-minded players. The developers had basically no control over this entire process beyond hosting the server list. No (alive) game released in the past decade replicates this experience because it's simply not as profitable as having full control of the game.
It's especially painful as some of the greediest modern games released (COD franchise) used to have some of the most flexible modding tools I've ever worked with.
COD4 was incredible, could change pretty much everything about it, custom maps, modes, models you name it (here's one I worked on back in the day https://www.moddb.com/mods/cod4-minigames).
I agree Roblox is a cesspit of overly monetized P2W experiences, and minecraft from what I've heard has most its audience on micro transaction (p2w) based servers.
As I mentioned in another comment, fingers crossed s&box can bring back the glory days. Although I worry there's now been a shift in how people play, and the "why" people build things (money, versus personal gratification / fun), similar to how the same thing has happened on Youtube (most people don't seem to create for the fun of it anymore, but rather to make money).
> As I mentioned in another comment, fingers crossed s&box can bring back the glory days
It won't, because it's just trying to be Roblox. You don't create maps, models, or scripts that can be mixed and matched or modified by server owners as they please, you instead create entire self-contained "games" that are then published on a game developer controlled platform and played via a matchmaking service, and the developers have expressed interest in implementing monetization systems directly into the game which means almost every game will be pay2win just like Roblox.
And yes, the climate around content creation on the internet has changed a lot and that's one of the reasons why the "glory days" will never return, very few people still create for the sake of creating without thinking about getting paid.
I'm not sure that's entirely true from what I've read (at-least I really hope it's not), see https://asset.party/ looks like you can download individual parts and create mods / run on your server as you see fit.
I also don't think matchmaking will be a thing, it will be dedicated servers just like gmod & rust. I will be extremely disappointment if not, was hoping we would begin to see 1000+ player modded servers on a game more built for modding from the ground up, as rust has began to experience.
The monetization is an issue, especially since they have no doubt had a taste of it in rust (through cosmetics), so I'm wondering how they can bring this in whilst still allowing full creative freedom, which would in affect make cosmetics useless outside of official servers (which you would assume would be the majority).
> Roblox is an entirely microtransaction-driven experience, you create games and publish them on the developer's platform so you can charge players for things and make money, not because you simply want to create something for people to enjoy. The developer is in full control at all times and can decide to remove your content at any time.
Well people can treat Roblox like this, they don't have to. My children are part of several gaming communities on discord that share and tweak their games 3d models and lua source... There's a ton of people developing just for fun and growing communities on these platforms.
to be fair Valve just continued the trend Carmack/Id started with their engines. Valve made HalfLife as a licensed adaptation of the latest SDK-able Carmack engine
If you're looking for something more modern Elden Ring was an enormous success last year and has a pretty creative modding community. I don't think it can quite compare to Doom, HL, Quake or UT where you effectively got map tools and/or SDK that explicitly supported modding. But these were relatively unique situations where the most popular games happened also to have good support for mods, with the developers often bundling the necessary tools to do so.
It’s definitely going against the grain but what I was trying to say is that there is a surprising amount of modding wherever you look, even in very recent games that you might not otherwise expect. What’s missing is a UT or a Quake - triple-A title with first-party modding - and we were lucky to experience a few titles having this within a few years of each other. But as another commenter said you’ve now got entire engines and asset libraries available at your disposal. Where more indie games like Neon White, Amid Evil or Dusk would back in the 90s/00s probably have been developed as a Quake or Unreal TC, they can now be built from the ground up as a standalone game.
I do miss the days of stumbling upon all sorts of mods on magazine CDs or on FTP sites, for what it’s worth.
In all fairness, I would be hard-pressed to name two games that have been released over the decade of my own youth that have offered a map creator system and have been hugely popular.
Amazing that those are "current trends". Minecraft's first beta released 14 years ago (and it was super hyped right from the start). Roblox is even older at 17 years!
There’s a lot of competition for attention these days. It takes a long time to build a community. Also, someone else mentioned the age of Minecraft and Roblox as if it were a negative thing. But I’m impressed by the ability of these games to stay fresh and relevant literal decades later.
