Hello everyone!

I'm very new to the forums, but have been reading interestedly for quite a long time. The title is very self-explanatory and I'd mostly just love to hear why people enjoy modding. I know from extremely limited personal experience that it is a time consuming task and always freely done. The main reason that I ask this question is that it is a very rare situation nowadays to have such great content and great products produced for free and I am merely curious as to how/why this happens.

So what is it that makes you want to mod?

And as an added question...would money rewards change your view of modding/why you do it?

• Because I feel something is missing from the game that would make it a more complete experience, and I have the power to implement it.
  
• A learning experience. I've learned so, so much about object oriented programming through Papyrus, enough that it motivated me to pick up C++ in my spare time.
  
• Because I love figuring out how to do new things.
  
• Because I trust my own work more than I do anyone else's. This isn't meant to be offensive, but from experience, I know how easily mistakes can be made in scripting, in the CK, etc, which makes me paranoid not only about my own work, but the work of others as well. Even if there are other alternatives available to download, if a mod is small enough, I'd rather just do it myself first. I have plenty of "mini-mods" of this nature sitting in my load order that will never be released.
  
• Because I want to improve someone else's game experience.
  
• Because I enjoy collaborating with other users and authors. While this is at the bottom of the list, what I've found is that my users are almost always smarter than I am, and come up with new ideas and methods I would have never thought of before. So then I look at those suggestions, and I realize, yes, that suggestion is important, and something really is missing. And then we get back to point 1. So the entire thing is really kind of like a circle. Examples: Torchbug Lanterns, the W.E.A.R. mechanic, Cloaks. None of those things would have ever happened had they not been suggested or without the help of other authors.

Bring money into it and I'll be out.
...No, wait, I am already out before I was really in, so I'm not really representative anymore.

But for me modding always was a hobby, to see what I can do or to get stuff into my game I wanted to have for myself. I shared my mods, only because I was asked to share them. Publishing is not the cause for why I mod, but I never saw a cause not to share something once I created it.

But that's just me.

Because skyrim isn't morrowind and I smoke too much marijuana.

What Chesko said.

Plus, though it might fall under his #3, it's just fun.

1. Because I like to pretend I'm a game developer. That's it

The main reason I'm here is to get a job. I absolutely love game design. I've been designing levels and content for games literally since 1st grade (I made full multi level age of empires campaigns complete with scripted events, objectives, the whole shibang). If I could wake up, design videos games until I fell asleep then do it all over again I would be a happy man. I'm here modding because I think BGS is one of the best game design companies in the world, and their genre of game is my favorite, so I want to work for them to help make the product all it can be, and have fun doing it.

I also mod because it's fun. While I am aiming for that job, even once I get it I plan on potentially continuing to mod, just because I love it so much.

As for the bonus question- I don't think anyone should ever be paid to mod. If money was brought into it things would get far more complicated, and the entire dynamic of the community would change; and it would be bad.