Malleable Games - A Literature Review on Communities of Game Modders.

The creations of people who modify games (game "modders") have had an significant impact on economics of game development. Being part of a creative participatory culture, their mods serve as a source of inspiration that has even steered the direction of game development in the past. This paper presents the findings of a comprehensive literature review on game modding. We structure our findings according to the three perspectives from which game modding has been analyzed: an outside perspective, a meta-level, and an inside perspective. We identify aspects that have received little academic attention so far, but warrant future research. Our analysis of the body of literature shows that only few publications focus more closely on community aspects such as differences among individual game modding communities, dynamics and collaboration within modder communities. We argue that gaining a deeper understanding of these aspects is essential in order to be able to capitalize from the huge creative potential that lies within game modding communities.