Modding Video Games

Months or years after a release people always design and send out mods to popular video games.  I for one think that video games are art by themselves but some do not agree with me.  This game had an incredible landscape originally but these people have released mods that make the graphics even better.  It is not just one person either, each mod is created by a separate programmer.  The community that surrounds this game is quite active and they produce great art all the time.

Normally this game looks pretty good but these add ons have created such an amazingly beautiful 3D environment that it is somewhat hard to believe they are real screenshots from the game!

Such amazing landscapes are created through the games engine and they are breathtaking.  The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is a game that has an environment that takes hours to walk across for your character.  This means that if you were to transfer it into human scale it would add up to some serious mileage.  And the whole environment gets transformed into one big explore-able fantasy realm.  

This really shows why video games should be considered art.  Why are simply 3D images considered art and then entire worlds that get created get thrown to the side?  I think that these worlds are much more impressive.  They truly show the potential for the future of video games as well computer generated art.