Romero: "modders are screwing up the industry"

Honestly, I couldn't give a crap either way about mods. I don't use them. However, the ESRB should NOT rerate a game based on something an third-party mod does. In all honesty, having played through it, Oblivion should have probably been a M in the first place, but it wasn't, nothing has changed about it, and yet somehow it is now an M. The ESRB needs to grow their balls back. Rockstar screwed them on GTA:SA, but this is not the same situation. ANY game can be made mature, or AO for that matter, through modding. This is NOT a good precedent to set.

While some of your guys comments are valid I think there's some problems that people are addressing.
We live in a time where there's still damage from Columbine and guys like Jack Thompson and Hilary Clinton are actively taking stabs at the industry. Kids have played more video games than books and can name more video game hero's than presidents. While all of this is largely due to education and parenting, outsiders do not see that.
They view games as a dangerous media because kids are more likely to pay attention to Ratchet and Clank than there parents or teachers. Religious groups, parental groups AND the government are all trying there get there hands on the video game industry. This is common knowledge and everyone should be aware of it.

From John's side this is his job that we're talking about. While some Random Joe can make a mod in the name of fun, its people like Bethesda that feel the burn. Its the team that made Oblivion that find themselves out of work if the ESRB goes to town on them. No one was every meant to see the boobs in Oblivion, they locked it away after using it to make the girls look realistic.

Gamers(especially programmers) can understand that its easier to lock content they have to rip things out and have to re debug it. But outsiders once again, do not.

In the end the game industry just isn't respected enough to be able to get away with the things movies and books can. And its just as much up to the fans to safeguard there industry as it is the developers.

The ESRB is wrong for what there doing, but they also have the goverment and the ESA so far up there ass they can't see straight. So there not going to be of any use whatsoever. If were not careful we'll end up like Germany who has so many restrictions is crazy.

So in the end I see it like this:

Boo on Bethesda for not trying to rip the textures, but Boo on the modders for starting a small Hot Coffee fiasco on a great game for the sake of some Orc boobs.

These fools (ESRB) have smoked themselves retarded.

You know, the ESRB has always been lazy about keeping track of content. Let's take DDR Extreme for example. One song in that, one that's available without unlocking, slips in an F-bomb. Now, the ESRB makes a great show and says they'll bump up the rating of anything with strong curse words. But DDRX is rated E.

The ESRB relies on self-reporting - much of the rating is based on what the manufacturer tells the ESRB about. And to be honest, whether by accident or design, stuff gets left off of those submissions frequently. Seriously, rerating is just the latest in a long line of ESRB foul-ups. If I was in California, I'd love to do an exposee on the ESRB process and why it fails.

You want irony? The same media that is now after Take Two and Bethesda is the same media that wanted to blame id and Romero for just about every act of violence caused by teens.

Remember the cries for bans on violent video games after each school shooting? Romero is nothing more than an attention seeking hypocrite.

I can't believe it took 49 posts to make 32_Footsteps' point. It's the first thing I thought of. Romero owes his success to modders; Doom wouldn't still be played if it weren't for WADs and TCs.

Romero didn't mind extensive modding when it came to Stevie Case's breasts, hair, and face.

Oh come on... Somebody HAD to say it.

Is he serious or is he pandering to the ESRB?
Someone should stone him for deriding mods and their creators. Mods make games more interesting and more fun.
His negative comments should be directed at the ESRB and their unreasonable logic at game ratings.

I didn't realize John Romero was so disconnected from gamers. Mods are made when gamers want (more) of something the game didn't give, and are the future of gaming. Game Devs need to wake up and stop playing defence with whacko polititians whos only gameing experiance is tetris and pacman and think gamers are all 12 years old. If someone made a "mod" for a DVD movie that when you played, say any Star Wars movie, it would automaticly overlay topless versions of the queen or princess, would they make Lucas Arts re-rate the movies? Hell no.

the only people who mod online to beat other people and raise their rankings is because they love video games but they suck at them and they dont have the skill to play fair and sqaure peroid.

Yes modders making "topless" mods for a game might cause some problems but I have played the game and it deserves a much higher rating. Two weeks ago a female NPC asked me character if it knew the penalties for necrohilia and that it wasn't her first offense. I understand programmers get bored but I don't want my tweleve year old nephew getting asked that question and then asking his mother what necrophilia is...not to meantion the Dark Brotherhood guild which takes contracts for killing people. "T" for Teen was an inappropriate rating for this game.

#50, I don't think he's pissed at the modding community for existing, but rather pissed off that the modding community he helped create has evolved into creating "nude patches for cat people".