Hot take: most games actually aren’t all that good.
Most everything actually isn't that good. But there's more than enough good stuff in the mess of bad stuff to occupy your time. I'm on hour 160 of Elden Ring, for instance. When I'm done with that, I've got half a dozen other high quality games in my queue.
On the other hand, there’s a decent amount of modding effort that makes games better, especially in terms of QOL for older games.
All the good Pokemon games are fan-made. Counterstrike, Team Fortress, and DOTA - three of the most popular games in the last twenty years - started out as mods of otherwise-decent FPS/RTS games. Minecraft and Roblox are basically just "What if we made modding the game the point of the game?"
That said, there's a certain amount of polish only a AAA developer can deliver. You're not going to get movie-quality cinematics or next gen graphics engines from the overwhelming majority of modders. And a lot of mods are at least as crappy as what gets turned out to the budget bin every year. The best mods tend to be labors of love that are comparable to fully developed and realized game franchises. And they tend to be attached to games that are, themselves, fun to play out of the box.
Elden ring is absolutely taking forever for me lol and that's not a bad thing. I already have like 60 hours in the game and I'm not done with my first playthrough
Most everything actually isn't that good. But there's more than enough good stuff in the mess of bad stuff to occupy your time. I'm on hour 160 of Elden Ring, for instance. When I'm done with that, I've got half a dozen other high quality games in my queue.
All the good Pokemon games are fan-made. Counterstrike, Team Fortress, and DOTA - three of the most popular games in the last twenty years - started out as mods of otherwise-decent FPS/RTS games. Minecraft and Roblox are basically just "What if we made modding the game the point of the game?"
That said, there's a certain amount of polish only a AAA developer can deliver. You're not going to get movie-quality cinematics or next gen graphics engines from the overwhelming majority of modders. And a lot of mods are at least as crappy as what gets turned out to the budget bin every year. The best mods tend to be labors of love that are comparable to fully developed and realized game franchises. And they tend to be attached to games that are, themselves, fun to play out of the box.
Elden ring is absolutely taking forever for me lol and that's not a bad thing. I already have like 60 hours in the game and I'm not done with my first playthrough