Garry's mod is an independently developed game developed by Facepunch Studios. The name is derived from the fact that the game was original a Half-Life 2 modification developed by Garry Newman. The game is based Valve's "Source" engine, which was used for their series of Half-Life games starting from Half-Life 2. Valve encourage and cooperate with the modding community to allow them to create modifications for their engine (mods for short). This encourages new modders
Garry's Mod is distributed over Steam, Valve's digital distribution platform for games. This links well with the Steam Workshop, which is an official repository of modifications and addons available to enrich the breadth of content available for the game. These 'Addons' as they are referred to in Garry's Mod, are created by the community and serve a wide range of needs and content types. Addons for the game can include scripts in a programming language called lua, which is a widely popular language for scripting game engines - but it is not limited to just that. Hereafter these 'scripts' are referred to as code
Garry's Mod is referred to as a sandbox, which is an analogy to the creativity encouraged by a real life sandpit. The game comes with two 'gamemodes' by default. These gamemodes set out the rules of the current game in progress.
Sandbox is the default gamemode for the game. It allows the player to create (spawn) in various categories of objects, such as Props, Weapons, Vehicles, NPCs etc. The player is also provided with tools to modify the objects around them, such as Welding them to each other or attaching balloons to them.
Trouble in Terrorist Town is the second default gamemode for Gary's Mod. It is a round-based gamemode. Everyone in the game is part of a terrorist organisation. At the beginning of a round, some traitors and some detectives are chosen at random. The traitors must kill all the innocent terrorists, while the detectives must use their special abilities to track down the terrorists and examine the evidence left behind on bodies of dead innocents.
Other gamemodes are easily available to be downloaded through the Steam Workshop as well or on sites such as garrysmod.org or from source code repositories. Gamemodes exist that revolve around: Roleplaying in a digital environment with avatars and game mechanics. One such is DarkRP, which is the second most popular gamemode in terms of number of servers and players).
Yet other gamemodes revolve around a series of mini-games, mostly round based. Garry's Mod Tower is a set of servers that revolves around these kinds of minigames. Prophunt revolves around players disguised as props hiding from hunting players. Melonbomber recreates the old Bomberman game in Garry's Mod. As one can see, there is a huge variety of gamemodes available for Garry's Mod.
By considering the wide variety of gamemodes that are available to a player in Garry's Mod, we can see that there is a wide variety of interests and levels of time commitment in the spectrum of gamemodes available. We can see that people perceive it as a need to be entertained with a wide variety of kinds of games. As will be discussed further in the exploration of the need, gamers may consider it their need to be entertained while on a budget.
Over the course of time, the Garry's Mod community has given birth to a huge range of gamemodes. This has been achieved to some extent by the large number of people who have created, developed and implemented additional content for players to consume, all at no cost. The work of these modders does not come without some reward, however. There are two kinds of benefits that modders receive for their hard work and time spent creating custom content for a game. Firstly, they receive social recognition for having created something that the community enjoys or finds useful. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the modder develops skills that also apply in the development of commercial games. Modelling, texturing, sound compositing and programming are all roles that are undertaken both by modding teams and professional game development studios. By modifying a game that they enjoy, a modder is creating skills that increase their employability in the area of game development. In fact, it is not unheard of for the best of modders to gain roles in game development studios after having spent some time modding.
The work of these modders also tends to the needs and wants of the community that is interested in these mods. In general, there will always be far less modders in a game's community than there will be mod users, let alone those who do not use modifications in their games. Many users are quick to complain when a mod does not function as advertised, especially when there are bugs involved. But when a skilled or dedicated modder creates something truly desirable to the mod-using community, the community will be quick to embrace that mod.
The hard work of dedicated modders - individuals or members of teams - satisfies the need of the community to be mentally stimulated with changes and additions to an old game. A good mod can breathe life into an old game and make it worth playing again, or perhaps even do a better of creating an experience than the output of a lousy game development studio. Gamers, especially those on a budget or with the purse-strings held tight, have a tendency to prefer installing a mod or set of mods in their game, rather than fork out the cash that they are saving up elsewhere. Modders fulfil the perceived need of mod users and gamers to have new experiences, but without charging like a game developer would.
The best investigation is often firsthand. I have personally played over 260 hours of Garry's Mod at the time of writing. I have played around a dozen gamemodes at least once. I have most thoroughly investigated Garry's Mod Stranded, a gamemode which emulates the Stranded series of games from Unreal Games. I have also researched a little into the nature of Trouble in Terrorist Town, which contains some interesting ideas. It is well implemented and supported by the author, which is likely one of the reasons it is widely accepted by the community as the most popular gamemode, although it could be considered tied with DarkRP in the number of publicly listed servers and players.
I have browsed on forums on the Steam Community and Facepunch sites, which relate to Garry's Mod. This has shown me that there is always interest in creating new gamemodes, but not all of the suggestions are worked on; some because they lack originality or merit, but some valid ideas are passed by and not picked up. Mostly these posts involve members of the community suggesting that something be done, but usually include phrases such as "I don't know how to code" or "Can someone else please make this for me?". This presents the many opportunities for working with a client to design and implement a gamemode. It also gives the impression that there is always room for a new gamemode to be designed for Garry's Mod.
I have discovered that the source code is publicly available for several popular gamemodes, including the two most popular: TTT and DarkRP. The source code describes exactly to the game how to execute the gamemode for both the server and client - the player(s) and the computer controlling. This is considered an advantage by many parties that participate in the gamemode, including the author, server administrators and contributors. By open-sourcing the code behind the gamemode, the modding team or modder increase their image and give the ability to the wider community to contribute to the development of the mod.
This leads me to a final design brief for my MDP:
Create a gamemode for Garry's Mod that players will find engaging and fun.
Drawing from what has been discussed so far and adding, I will describe why I would like to pursue to goal of creating a gamemode for several reasons.
Firstly, I am genuinely interested in the area of the design: The design involves programming the logic for the gamemode which I will aim to create. To a lesser extent the project may possibly including creating graphics and/or audio to flesh out the gamemode and make give it a sense of originality. The level to which these 'secondary' elements of the design will be eventually be implemented may vary depending on time constraints.
Secondly, as has been mentioned in the Design Situation, creating mods for a game develops many of same skills that are involved in the development of a real game. At least some of these skills would be useful to me if I were to see employment in the game industry, but also the Information Technology field in general, which is where I can see myself in the future. The skills of programming and game engine scripting would be an important part of developing the MDP, and these are skills that I would like to develop.
Lastly, not only would completing the MDP build on the technical skills required to see it through to completion, it would become a part of my folio of work that I could present to organisations for employment or if applying to a training organisation. Having completed prior work and having prior experience in the field, even if only a little, would help me in future.
At least superficially, there tends to be a strong bias and stereotype towards younger males playing video games. I have found this, in my own experience, to be the case especially in Garry's Mod. The game provides a convenient facility for voice chat through a microphone, and I personally cannot recall I time where I have heard a female voice on microphone. Certainly there must be females who play the game, however they seem to be disproportionately outweighed.
As mentioned in the design situation and the exploration of the need, money is definitely a factor influencing the purchase of games or the installation of mods; often players choose to install mod to extend the longevity of their current game, rather than spend money on a new game. This is generally an easy market to cater for, since it does not incur many direct costs on myself. However, in terms of indirect costs, I should make sure that the entirety of the content contained in the gamemode is available to my end users. This is especially applicable to Garry's Mod, where some content such as maps and gamemodes often require that players own other games, especially Counter-Strike: Source (another game from Valve). Thus, some players are excluded and restricted from playing all of the content that should be available to them since they have not paid for another game. However, through the game's mod distribution system - i.e. the Steam Workshop, mod authors can include such content along with a map or gamemode. So, since this opportunity is available, I should make sure to include any content that is used in gamemode that does not exist in Garry's Mod by itself with the gamemode when it is distributed over the Steam Workshop. This will allow me to better reach my target market.