Why is brawl modding so popular?

[Jabberwockxeno]

Something I've always wondered was why there was such an active modding community for brawl, and one that puts out content as successfully as the brawl modding community.

I've never seen another console game that has so much modded content, and as complexly modded as brawl. You have entirely new stages, with animated backgrounds and models, new characters, game system overhauls, such as project M, etc.

Why is this? Is brawl just easy to mod? Is it because the wii has functional emulators, which means we have a better understanding of how the game runs?

 

[[TSON]]

Basically every person with a Wii has Brawl, so that definitely helps. There's also the fact that we can run homebrew straight out of the game we're editing, and also the fact that the exploit can't be fixed by Nintendo. With PS3 games or the like, the exploit would be patched way too fast to have a community this big.
Plus we have a lot of super talented devs. Without Brawlbox/PSA/etc. we would be nowhere near as far along.

There are other games that have all of the above requirements, but there's also just the fact that the way the game is set up screams for more and more characters/stages/music and these tools make that reasonably easy. Who wouldn't want to make something awesome for a Smash Bros. game?

 

[Darkly Dreaming Dexter]

Brawl modding isn't as hard as it seems, for one.. Another reason is people can set their creativity to use, and create characters, stages, ect. they wanted to see in the game, but didn't get to.

 

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

Without trying to sound smug, there's enough room for a whole research paper on the subject.

One major factor to take into account is the overhyping of brawl via the dojo. With the daily posts, fans were in a frenzy and all the hype led to a "major fall" when the final product came out. How many of us remember checking Sakurai's blog every day with bated breath, writing our own roster ideas both on and offline, no matter how unrealistic? The same thing seems to be happening with smash 4, though it seems to be to a lesser extent with more of a focus on pics rather than long posts. All one has to do is go to please sakurai tumblr and see that almost every fan will have some reason to be "disappointed" because our expectations were so high, and that's exactly what happened with brawl. Are we ungrateful? Idk if that's the best way to describe it, but the backlash is definitely a major factor. Brawl is a good game, just not what everyone was expecting.

There's also the changes that sakurai made to make brawl more "casual friendly"; the fact that we live in a postmodern, open-source, fanfiction-friendly age (tv tropes hit the nail on the head when describing fan labor as "if you want something done right, do it yourself"); the popularity of the wii console at the time; and plenty of other factors I'm sure I'm forgetting.