Ahmad Qoqas’s zombie modification of The Sims 4. Now, he has the tools to make it a day job. A decade ago, Qoqas would be making his mods in his off-hours. It’s made him one of the few people who can call themselves a full-time modder. He won’t tell me exactly how much he’s making on the platform, but does disclose that it’s over $3,000 a month, which is more than enough to live reasonably well in his native Jordan.

Qoqas makes each of his mods available for two weeks before their public release to the donors who contribute $2 or more to his Patreon. They’re still free today, but with the advent of services like Patreon, modders are finally able to inject themselves into the marketplace. Throughout the ’90s and 2000s, mods were almost always free. Enterprising designers dive into the source code of something like Doom or Half-Life or The Sims, create their own variant of that game and upload it to Steam or Mod DB. For the uninitiated, a mod is essentially a homebrew addition to an existing video game. Instead, you feed your dog, throw barbecues with your neighbors, and maybe get married to the cute girl or guy across the hall.Īll of that low-stakes freedom has made The Sims ripe for modding. You will not shoot aliens, or level up abilities, or kill the warlord who set you on a quest for vengeance. Unlike other games, there isn’t a clear victory condition or story to follow. You take control of a small family in a modest house and enjoy the thrills of ordinary life. The Sims is one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. It is Avengers: Endgame, in Macintosh form. A Sim’s eyes glows blue and it calls lightning from the sky. Armageddon, Ahmed Qoqas’ latest mod, warps the docile suburbia of SimNation into an epic struggle of superheroes and supervillains.

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