Editor Sophie is here today to talk about video games!

If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, you might have seen the recently released demo for “Twin Peaks: Into the Night,” a fan-created adaptation of “Twin Peaks” in the style of ’90s third-person puzzle games. Fan games have always seemed to be a particularly impressive form of fan work to me. They’re certainly less prevalent than cosplay, or fancams, or twee Etsy merch (I say that with love). It’s hard to imagine the amount of effort that must go into creating a game like this from scratch, without the help (or budget) of a studio—it’s like writing fanfiction, drawing a bunch of fanart, and then making things a million times harder by introducing programming or the Unity engine. And I think that’s wildly cool! I love seeing people decide to put their time and effort into creating art about the things they love.

But let’s take a half-step back here and talk about a different form of gaming fandom expression: modding. Modding, as you might be able to guess from the name, is the practice of modifying an existing game to add extra content. Most of the time this is new, player-created content that adds anything from original characters, storylines, locations, and even new mechanics into the game. Some modders restore material that was cut from the final release by a game’s developers. Occasionally someone creates a mod that is so well crafted that it either makes its way into the game proper, or gets spun off into its own separate release, such as 2013’s “The Stanley Parable,” which started off as a mod for “Half Life 2.”

Some mods are solely utilitarian: Unofficial patches for notoriously buggy games like “Fallout 4” and “Skyrim” are some of the most-downloaded mods around, fixing everything from game-breaking glitches to a misplaced comma in a subtitle. There are also a large number of mods that simply translate a game’s original language—usually Japanese games that never received English-language releases. (See: “Mother 3,” “The Great Ace Attorney,” and a surprising number of “Final Fantasy” games.)

But the most enjoyable mods, or at least the flashiest ones, will tweak a game’s aesthetics. These tweaks can range in scope from replacing lower quality graphics with HD retextures, to reimagining rugged fantasy landscapes as pastel pink Barbie-inspired dreamworlds. Some of these mods are downright silly, like the mod that changes the dragons in “Skyrim” to “Thomas the Tank Engine” characters, or the one that turns them all into terrifying Eldritch horror versions of Macho Man Randy Savage (content warning for some gore and uhhhhhh body horror?).

Modding can also give marginalized gamers a chance to create their own representation in video games. Black Simmers make up a huge portion of “The Sims” fan community, and many have taken it upon themselves to fill in gaps left by the game developers. There are probably thousands of natural and Afro-textured hairstyle mods out there, the majority of which were handmade by Black creators who want to be able to see themselves and their communities in their favorite games. Similarly, it’s not uncommon to see mods by LGBTQ players that add same-gender romances or gender neutrality into games.

Accessibility mods are another way that modding can foster inclusivity. Game studios have been slowly catching on to the fact that video games tend to be a pretty inaccessible medium, but when developers don’t build accessibility features into their games, disabled players might instead turn to the modding community. Screen reader mods, user interface customization, text scaling, difficulty modifiers, and colorblind-friendly graphics updates are just a few of the ways that mods can make gaming more accessible.

I’ve only just scratched the surface on modding here. Considering that there are almost 70,000 mods available to download for “The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim” alone, I hope you’ll forgive me for focusing in on just one for the rest of this newsletter: a particular favorite of noted gamer and mod aficionado Sir Terry Pratchett.

Let me back up a bit here.

If you know of Terry Pratchett, you probably know him as the creator of the “Discworld” series of novels, or maybe even as co-author of “Good Omens,” whose TV adaptation just received a second season. (I’m trying to be real cool and not wax too much poetic about Terry Pratchett as a writer, but just know that I and any number of his fans are always anxiously awaiting our chance to foist a battered copy of “Guards! Guards!” upon an unsuspecting bystander.) Either way, Sir Terry is best remembered as a beloved writer of fantasy novels, not as an outstanding member of the gaming community.

But I mean, maybe he should be! Just look at this sick monitor setup. (“Why do you have six computer screens?” “Because I don’t have room for eight.” Asked and answered.) He was even featured in the very first issue of PC Gamer magazine. Though it may seem an odd choice for a fantasy author, he introduced an early computer analog to the Discworld in what I can only assume was his attempt at setting some kind of world record in barely comprehensible computer-based puns. And he was an avid gamer.

In 2010, Sir Terry reached out to a modder he admired, a woman named Emma who had created a companion to accompany the player character in “The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion” (precursor to the much-modded “Skyrim” mentioned earlier). The companion was an alchemist named Vilja, fully voiced by Emma herself. Sir Terry appreciated the detail Emma had put into the character, particularly how she interacted with the player and the world. Their correspondence eventually evolved into collaboration, as Pratchett began to make suggestions and write dialogue for Vilja to use.

This was around the time that Sir Terry was working on “Snuff,” 39th in the “Discworld” series and one of the final novels he would write before his death in 2015. Pratchett’s “Discworld” started out as a send-up of the fantasy genre. Over the years, the series became more sincere, focusing in on worldbuilding and the characters of the Disc. Still, Sir Terry wrote with an awareness of the fantasy conventions he was invoking, almost always with the intention of reworking or complicating them. Part of the reason he was playing “Oblivion” in the first place was to do research on the game’s portrayal of goblins, a species that played a major role in the upcoming “Snuff.” When he mentioned that he wished he could explore the goblin caves without having to kill any goblins, Emma created a mod that made them non-aggressive. And when “Snuff” was released in 2011, it contained a dedication to “Emma… for helping me understand goblins.”

Now, remember when I talked about modding for accessibility earlier?

In 2007, Terry Pratchett had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. By 2011, he was beginning to struggle more and more with his memory, which meant that at times he found it difficult to navigate the gloomy caves and dungeons that litter the “Oblivion” landscape. Enter once more Vilja, who received an update in the form of a “lead the way” feature that could help guide a lost adventurer back to safety. It’s an elegant little solution that grants players agency in deciding when to ask for help, while still letting them stay immersed in their adventure.

To me, Sir Terry and Emma’s collaboration on the Vilja mod perfectly illustrates some of the coolest aspects of modding. Now, there are definitely some pretty weird and unsavory mods out there (you can only scroll past so many mods that turn women’s armor into bikinis before you start to feel a bit disillusioned), but overall modding exemplifies a kind of shared joy and community in gaming—mods like the unofficial patches are largely crowdsourced, and meant to make games less frustrating (at least, the wrong kind of frustrating); fan translations make games available to more people; and modding communities have taken it upon themselves to ensure better representation and accessibility in gaming. It’s all about the joy in sharing a thing you love!