>I love what mods can do with a game!
I guess Doom is probably the game with the greatest number of mods/user-created levels made for it, they were still going hard over at Doomworld last time I checked in. I couldn't even estimate how many I played back in the 90s/early 00's, and some were really amazingly creative - I think the engine is sort of a sweet spot for user creation, where it's just complicated enough to have a reasonable barrier to entry, but simple enough that you don't need to be a dedicated programmer/modeller/etc to make something really cool.
Pretty much this. Especially now we have editors like DoomBuilder- Most other engines simply aren't around long enough for their tools to reach such a level of refinement and ease of use. Stuff like Quake and Unreal Tournament wasn't much more complex in theory, but Doom is still the only game of a reasonable complexity where you can read a tutorial, and start cracking out perfectly decent maps, in the same afternoon.
Even I have managed to make a reasonably impressive set of Doom levels in my time. I could just never figure out how you do stuff like changing the title screen and background music etc in order to make a cohesive pack out of them. If I could have figured that out I was going to put the .wad on my band's last CD release for shits and giggles, each level would have a midi version of a track from the album and then there would be a little text scroll about how a humble roadie saved the tour from hellspawn.
>>22066 Likely not a coincidence, but Doom started out at id as a potential Aliens-licensed game. Talks broke down with 20th Century Fox over creative freedom; probably for the best.