By one estimate, what we now know as mods appeared in 1983, with a fan-made reinvention of the original "Castle Wolfenstein," a classic arcade-style action game for the Apple II. (You played an Allied spy fighting it out with Nazi combatants, who'd shout at you in German as they opened fire.) But the inspiration for this mod was not so much WWII as Saturday-morning cartoon.

"In the true mod spirit," says Tom Hall, a co-founder of id Software, "The first instance I know of that type of modifying an original product was "Castle Smurfenstein," probably the first total conversion, where they took the original Apple II classic and replaced all the actors and text with Smurfs and Smurf-related items ... It was hilarious!"

This wacky jiggering with popular culture is a enduring theme in the mod tradition -- years later, for example, thousands of "Doom" fans would play a mod where you got to blast away at Barney the Dinosaur.

Scott Miller, now CEO of 3D Realms, first noticed that enthusiasts were creating levels for the original "Duke Nukem" (1990), developed when Miller was at Apogee. Not only were gamers creating mods for his company's games, they were even creating level editors to simplify the process for making them -- then distributing both to other gamers online. "This was a fascinating development," says Miller. "We just didn't expect players to take the time and effort to create their own development tools."

All this roiling fan enthusiasm came to a head in 1992, after John Carmack and John Romero acquired the rights to the original 2D "Castle Wolfenstein" and created "Wolfenstein 3D," an ultraviolent bullet-fest. It wasn't the very first first-person game-- that title belongs to "Ultima Underworld" (1992), released a few months earlier from Looking Glass Studios -- but "Wolf3D" was the original first-person shooter. It was an immediate success, driven in part by its method of distribution: The opening levels of the game were made available on the Internet as freeware. To get the rest of the game (and hundreds of thousands did), you had to purchase the "registered" version.

And with its success, according to Miller, came the unambiguous signal that mods could be an integral part of a game's staying power. At Apogee (which published id's first games), Miller and his "Wolf3D" developers watched astounded as mods "actually helped extend the life of a game by providing free additional content for players to explore."

"So by the time 'Doom' rolled around," id co-founder Tom Hall says, "we really wanted to enable the user to make their own content, to make that easy as possible. [John] Carmack's always had the Berkeley-like 'Information should be free' mantra."

In return for allowing mods to be created and exchanged, id simply requested that fans modify only the registered version of "Doom" -- not the freeware version. Almost all modders abided by this request; many even incorporated elements in their mods that prevented their use in the freeware version of "Doom." Not only did this tradition of communal self-policing create a bond between id and their best fans, it benefited the company commercially -- to enjoy all the free fan-created content now coming available, you first had to pay your toll to id and Apogee.

Meanwhile, as mods helped drive ongoing sales of "Doom," id developers were noticing how good those mods could be. "Many were really cool and innovative," Hall says. Justin Fisher's "Aliens Total Conversion" for "Doom" and "Doom II," says Rich Carlson, an independent developer and veteran level designer, changed the way "Doom" was played "by focusing on stealth rather than frontal assaults ... [It] presaged the kinds of 3D action games and mods we play now -- by about eight years!"

In keeping with Carmack's commitment to the principle that the source code for software programs should be made available to the general public, the code for "Doom" was released in late 1997. (Unix guru Eric S. Raymond even cites the game in his influential essay "The Magic Cauldron" as a case study proving the power of open source.)

From then on, modders had full access to "Doom's" innards, enabling them to grow even more ambitious with their efforts. The open-source tradition associated with id was a boon to mod development, says Iikka Keranen, a Finnish modder who now designs levels for Valve. "This way," he says, "mod makers aren't limited to one set of tools but can constantly improve them, [to] add new features or fix bugs." From "Doom" on, id would release the source to all its games.

As Raymond noted, the studio benefited from this generous access as well. Id's "Final Doom" (1996), for example, was a compilation of fan-made levels sold on software store shelves (a share of the profits went to the amateur modders involved).

And by encouraging such innovation, id had also created a new way for fans to infiltrate the game industry. Keranen, Carlson, and many more would be hired by game companies largely on the strength of their mods. And unlike, say, the film and music industries, which are powered by personal acquaintance and face time, the discourse of games is defined online. Which is perhaps why the division between amateur and pro has remained so permeable. For modders wanting in, who you are doesn't ultimately depend on your experience or your contacts but on the quality of your mod file. The upload is all.

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