

Mods might be old news for PC gamers but for console owners this is uncharted territory. It's a staggering number, but Howard isn't surprised that the interest is there. According to Howard, nearly 20 million Xbox One gamers have downloaded mods since the launch of the program. Those people have wrought one of the biggest mod booms ever seen. "And it turns out there's a huge crossover there of people who do have both." So you have to have the PC version," Howard says. We didn't know how many people would (make mods) because you have to do it on PC. "We're finding quickly with Fallout 4…we were worried. That finally changed this year when Bethesda launched them for its latest release, Fallout 4. User-created mods are nothing new on PC, they've been around since the halcyon days of Quake in the mid-90s, nut this content never made it onto home consoles. It's an unprecedented level of industry recognition for a subset of the gaming community that has toiled in relative obscurity for years. "It's just part of what we've been about for a very long time."įor the upcoming release of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition, a souped-up version of the 2011 game of the year coming to Xbox One and PS4, Howard and his team at Bethesda made the decision to include mods as part of the release. You know back to Dungeons and Dragons even," he tells Newsweek during an interview at this year's E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles. "I think it goes back to when people think about roleplaying games, they think about making their own adventures. For him, the user-generated content is just a natural extension of what gamers have been doing in RPGs since pen-and-paper games first came on the scene. Todd Howard, the president of Bethesda Game Studios, understands the value of mods.
