Modders

Modders are the people who commit the devil sin of modding. Sometimes referred to as “moders”¹ when they’re particularly bad at it.

Note: This article is about modder behavior. To see common shitty practices in mod development, click here.

Dunning-Kruger effect

A lot of what you’re about to read is caused by the Dunning-Kruger effect, i.e. incompetent people thinking they have superior skill. Typically people will learn basic modding and think they’re chad architects of virtual horror when in reality they’re basically playing with Legos.

Most modders are the blue guy

Asking for help

In most cases modders ask for scripting help. Very often they don’t actually want help, what they want is for someone else to finish/fix the script for them.

For example, this is a common conversation type seen in modding discussions:

– How do I multiply 2 times 3?

– You have to add two three times, so: 2+2+2

– I see, so what’s the result?

Additionally, many modders can’t be assed to describe their problem properly. While most questions aren’t this retarded, the general vibe is the same as in these:

Clearly this information is sufficient to get help

Feedback

Modders are famous for their ability to accept feedback.

Almost invariably modders are convinced that their shitty map in their screenshots is a masterpiece and they get offended when people find issues in it. This happens even when the feedback is friendly and aimed to further improve the results. Modders tend to get salty even if they asked for the feedback in the first place.

The reason for salty reactions is that modders are very annoyed when they have to improve (improving is hard). Predictably, these situations lead to massive cope campaigns.

Some of the common copes are:

• “As if you can do better xddd” – because unless you’re better at something, you have to accept shit quality with a smile. If you consider this a valid argument, please see yourself to the nearest penis explosion chamber
• Claiming that the map is unfinished and will improve – despite initially not marking it as WIP
• Trying to prove the criticism wrong
• Disregarding the feedback “because they worked hard on the map”
• Citing subjectivity, i.e. “it’s an opinion so it doesn’t count”
• “Didn’t ask”
• Whatever the fuck this is:

Further reading: Critischism

Criticismtards

Some modders roast mods in the comments to stroke their ego by flaunting their mod design knowledge. They say it’s criticism, but their comments are usually nonconstructive. Their point is not to help someone else improve but to flex their own sick skillz.

The mods made by criticismtards usually aren’t that good, so this behavior is probably a cope.

Mod pages

This is where most of the drama goes on modders show off their creations.

As outlined in the article about modding, modders are very original. This also includes the way they present their mods.

Two cliches that get repeated ad nauseam are:

• Using white text on a black background as the mod logo
• “You are [name]” and/or “you wake up in [place]”. Ctrl+F “wake” on the main mod list page usually yields 4-6 results

Typical sight on the Amnesia mods front page

Another very common sight is using an unedited screenshot as the logo (image editing is hard). This at least has the chance to make the mod stand out, so it’s not as bad as “white text on black”.

Modders often also won’t bother formatting their mod description, let alone making any cool designs (HTML is hard).

Updates

Typically, mods are updated with blog posts where the creator says that they’re alive and haven’t abandoned the mod. They naturally feel stupid about posting a 3-sentence blog so they will usually add some crap information nobody cares about.

Showcase

ModDB asks to upload 5 images when creating a mod page. Because most people announce a mod before they have much to show off, the images are usually boring and the maps look unfinished.

The pros also make sure to include the hand with the lantern in the screenshots, and the ultimate chads post screenshots of the level editor, sometimes without even cropping their desktop.

A WIP level clearly worth showing off.

Typically the screenshots are also painfully dark because Amnesia uses some retarded way of applying brightness settings. Obviously modders don’t bother correcting it, so often when looking at screens it is unsure if they sent a screen or a black square.

Downloads

Virgin modders keep a single download and update it when necessary.

Chad mode auteurs upload each update separately and sometimes even maintain multiple versions of a mod. The result is that the player has no idea what to download and then has to assemble the mod themselves.

Bumping

Some modders figured out that if they open the mod edit page and click save, their mod gets bumped to the #1 spot on the front page.

Some use it sparingly, but there are also retards who do it every week. Your mod is still 5th on the list, calm your tits.

Mod teams

Some modders register groups called something like “Kaka productions” or “Studio poopoo” just to feel more important. These groups rarely have more than 2 members and in particularly laughable cases they consist of a single member.

Reviews

Some modders get incredibly salty about mod ratings. Not general reception mind you, but the number next to the mod. As outlined here, these scores mean jack shit, which makes these people rather laughable.

The biggest showcase of such behavior are troll mods. To quote the legendary exchange² presented below:

You’re so transparent. You can not stand that, as of right now when im writing this, this [troll mod] has a higher score than your work.

It is absolutely worth reading in full though:

Weening

Trolling is somewhat of an art, so obviously modders aren’t good at it. They sometimes still have the need to annoy someone, which results in a bunch of unfunny shit appearing on mod pages. Weening is not exclusive to modders, but moddbtards usually aren’t salty enough to bother with it.

The probably most unfunny attempts at trolling are player-added tags. ModDB allows users to tag mods themselves, and weens usually put obvious insults there.

Some of the weening done by Sabatu and co. during the Bavarian Drama. Another example of weening in that drama was adding easter eggs with insults to mods.

Another common weening method are anonymous comments. They’re rarely any good and it’s often painfully obvious who wrote the comment.

Then there are the so-called troll mods. A true troll mod would play with player expectations and predictable behavior. What the self-proclaimed troll mods usually are though is a few dogshit levels with screamers every ten seconds. These mods sometimes try to emulate things like “The Unfair Platformer”, but fail miserably because there are few player reflexes in Amnesia and the creators fail to notice them anyway.

An example of a good troll mod was the Escape series mentioned above. The mods were silly and poor-looking on purpose, and their aim was to bait moddbtards into posting shitty comments (which worked marvelously).

Gallery

Footnotes