User:Masem/drafts/User-made content in video games

While most video games are made by profession developers and publishers, a large portion of video game content has been developed by players and users of video games. This content ranges from user-generated content that extends existing games to wholly new fangames inspired by published games.

User-generated content
Some games are designed to allow players to create content within the game itself and then share that content directly with other players. These may be tools directly within the game itself, such as with games like Dreams and Super Mario Maker, or may be offered through special level editors provided by the game developer or publisher themselves, such as Forge for the Halo series. Games that support user-generated content typically have means in-game to access and share this content.

Mods
Mods (short for "modifications") are new content for video games developed by players using a combination of official and unofficial tools. Mods may be as simple as new graphics, models, or levels for a game, to total modifications that completely revamp a game. Mods are typically not directly supported by the video game developer or publisher, and thus often require extra steps to install and use, though recent storefronts like Steam provide tools to both developers and users to collect and incorporate mods for games. In some cases, these mods have gone on to become standalone commercial projects, such as with Garry's Mod and The Stanley Parable.

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Emulators
Emulators are software engines that mimic the hardware of a video game console, allowing games from that console, typically stored as a ROM image, to be played on other, modern systems. Emulators are distributed with the expectation that the end-user has legitimate ownership of the original game and its ROM image as well as the required BIOS image for the emulated system, both elements which are otherwise copyrighted materials. Examples of emulators include MAME for running most major arcades from before 2000, and PCSX2 for running PlayStation 2 games.

Game engine recreation
Similar to emulation, the recreation of game engines is used to create games that have similar gameplay and rules to commercial titles but typically offered for free or as open-source software. The engine may be fully compatible with the original game and capable of using its media files so that the game can be played on other systems; examples of this include several Z-machine interpreters to run text adventure games, and the ScummVM engine to play graphic adventure games. In these cases, the end-user is expected to own the commercial game's original files to be used by these engine recreations. Other game engine recreations mimic the original game but may add new features to improve on the commercial product and may not be fully compatible. Examples of such engines included Freeciv that mimics the Civilization series, and OpenTTD based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

Indie game
Indie or independent video games are those typically developed without support of a publisher, though this is a loose definition. While many indie