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Doom's user-gen mode, SnapMap: It's not mods, but here's what it is
This year Doom, the latest game in the storied franchise, will arrive on PC and consoles -- without mods. But id hopes that its SnapMap custom building system will be just as good.
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"It takes the idea of what was a really vibrant mod community around Doom, and puts all of the Lego pieces that we have right in their hands using a completely custom-built editor that is easy enough for somebody who's never created anything before, and has no special expertise, to use and be really successful with, or have someone who is a very experienced mod maker to make something very compelling."
- Doom game director, Marty Stratton
Game Informer has a new video interview with Doom game director Marty Stratton that sheds some interesting light on SnapMap, id Software's not-a-mod user-generated content solution for the upcoming shooter.
The PC audience, and the Doom community in specific, both have long histories with modding games. However, the new Doom will not offer traditional mods; SnapMap hopes to be a best-of-both-worlds solution that allows for extreme customizability of Doom without cracking the game wide open.
Stratton calls it "a tool to create new experiences"; Bethesda VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines earlier compared it to Minecraft in its wide-open field of possibilities: " ... the idea is that there's enough complexity and depth there that you can do all this scripting stuff, and make new gameplay modes. It’s got this really steep high end ..."
"Just even internally we've seen an explosion of content," Stratton says, in the new interview.
Of course, the lack of true moddability will rub some in the PC community very raw, and means the Doom game technology is out of the hands of independent developers to create new modes.
On the flipside, Firaxis' XCOM 2 will have mods at launch in partnership with Long War Studios, a mod team that recently went pro after making mods for 2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Id's decision on Doom shuts down possibilities like these.
You can watch the SnapMap interview, which contains a lot of footage of the mode, over at Game Informer.
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