Neither "ALIENS Colonial Marines" nor "AvP 2010" were games intended to be open to modding. They're locked up pretty tight. The same can be said for "ALIEN Isolation".
It's possible to make a few changes to some scripts, cfg files and other "exposed" files but the bulk of these games assets are locked up in archives that cannot be accessed.
Mod tools for these games would have been ideal! Anyone of them. "ACM" would have been perfect for modding. It uses Unreal Engine 3 as its backbone. At the time of its release, the public version of the UE3 editor, the "Unreal Development Kit" had an install base of over one million users. That means, over one million people around the world already had some experience with the tools needed to create content - ANY content - for "ACM".
If just 1% of those users were interested in making mods for "ACM", we would have ten thousand mods. At least. Considering it's been almost a decade and we all know how creative the "ALIEN" fan community can be, it's unimaginable how many mods would be available now. Eight years since it's release, there'd be some killer mods, too. Like "AvP2", which did have mod tools release, it would last for years, not just exist on the fringe of the fringe like it does now, but front and center in the community with new content being generated.
"ACM" (along with those other two titles SEGA released) could still have had a burgeoning community today if mod tools were released. We'd still be building content for it. It would be so much better as a game, we'd all have fresh content to mess around with and the game's sales would still be strong as a result.
But no. SEGA shoots that promising premise in the foot because Day One sales and consoles are prioritised. What we really need is an "ALIENS vs PREDATOR" game that allows modding; and be accessible to all. I am hoping the new Cold Iron Studios title will be like that. Can we please have a moddable game? That would be great!
Creativity grows a community. Deny us of that; and sure, the game will have a limited life. Very limited. Unfortunately, fire and forget titles are where the money is at right now. Thank you Sony. Thank you Microsoft. Consoles suck.
Well, in terms of creativity, they certainly do.
-Windebieste.