We find it easy to argue that modding is one of the best things about PC gaming. It has long been an integral part of the community and produced some of the best games of all time, and has since spread to consoles. For example, Counter-Strike and DayZ started as mods and went on to be incredibly influential in different ways.

You may remember that DayZ spawned as a modification of Arma 2, and the developers, Bohemia Interactive, have been in touch with us for an interview. They’ve shared their thoughts on the modding community and why it remains an integral part of their development and design choices, commenting that “it’s in our blood”.

Bohemia Interactive shares its thoughts on modding

Arma’s project lead at Bohemia Interactive, Krzysztof Bielawski, shared his thoughts on the modding community. He says that “modding is in our blood, it’s part of the project”.

“It’s two sides of the same coin. We wouldn’t have Arma without modding and modding wouldn’t exist without us, so it’s basically the same ecosystem. Arma without mods wouldn’t be so good, it would be a different game.

When we develop, especially when we start developing the code on the new engine, we were from the very beginning thinking about what people will do with our platform, with our features. Our way of testing it was looking at add-ons which were already created for Arma 3 and previous Armas and see how far modders will take it.”

Krzysztof Bielawski, Arma project lead at Bohemia Interactive

Bielawski also goes on to explain that modding is an important consideration for the team. He mentions recruiting passionate modders into the team; “in our dev team, there would be lots of people that come from the modding community”.

The developers want to make sure that systems are in place for modders to work from a base level of content. “Even when we created the weapons, we had like 5 or 6 basic types,” ensuring they all have specific mechanical differences for modders to build upon however they like, rather than the developers creating a ton of variations themselves.

So far, Bohemia Interactive has developed a trilogy of mainline Arma titles and a lot of DLC content to go along with them. Next up in the franchise is Arma 4, which was given a 2027 release window during the company’s 25th Anniversary Concert.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.