MeinMMO spoke to Nekatus at gamescom 2024. He is a modder for the survival game ARK and gave us some insights into his life and profession.
Whether it’s ARK: Survival Evolved or the UE5 successor ARK: Survival Ascended: Mods play a crucial role in Studio Wildcard’s dinosaur adventure. For years, the game’s extremely active mod community has been diligently designing new content for the survival hit, so there’s something for every player. The selection ranges from new creatures to quality-of-life improvements to extravagant building structures for your base.
New maps are also being created by hard-working members of the community. The German modder Nekatus has earned a special reputation among the gaming community with his creations. He has created maps such as Fjördur and Valguero, but his latest work, Svartalfheim, is already playable.
Every map designed by Nekatus has one thing in common: players love them and they are downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. Some of his maps are even officially adopted by the game’s developers and added to the game across platforms.
MeinMMO’s community manager Marylin Marx spoke to Nekatus at gamescom 2024 and got some insights into the life of the full-time modder.
From WoW to ARK: How Nekatus became a modder for dino worlds
In the interview, Nekatus says that he started his modding career at a young age. At the time, however, not with a survival game, but with the MMORPG World of Warcraft. It was only years later that he accidentally landed on ARK and realized that he could also express his creativity there:
“I was already modded WoW a little bit back then, but I was about 12 or 13. It wasn’t really a thing yet. I always liked creating things, making new maps and stuff, and then I realized that I could do it with ARK too.”
Nekatus now works full-time as a modder for the German server provider Nitrado. He says that the company allows him to design his own maps. He is happy to work up to 14 hours a day on them.
“So I have days when I get less done and days when I work extremely hard and for a long time and then do something for 12 to 14 hours. Basically it’s a 24/7 job because my head is always on the job, it’s like gaming for me. And I do it full-time now, so I do it all day anyway.”
Nekatus tells us that he works on a single map for around 2-3 years. He spent three and a half years on the Viking world Fjördur. It took him around 2 years to complete the previous map, Valguero. He is particularly proud of the map he is currently working on: “I would say that this is already the best of my maps,” he tells us.
His new map is called Astraeos and is inspired by ancient Greece and its mythology. Nekatus already knows which bosses await you there, but that remains a secret for now.
ARK: Survival Ascended reveals itself in trailer
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The right inspiration and an eye for aesthetics
When designing Astraeos, a popular title from Ubisoft played a major role for Nekatus: “I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed since I was a child,” reveals Nekatus, adding: “I learn a lot from the ‘Assassin’s Creed’ games.”
A particular inspiration was of course AC Odyssey, but also the now over 20-year-old strategy game “Age of Mythology”, for which a remake will be released in September 2024.
Generally, Nekatus plays games or watches films and documentaries in the respective setting when he is researching a new map. Designing a map involves not only designing the landscape, but also research.
According to Nekatus, you also need an eye for aesthetics and naturalness. Good English skills and spatial thinking are also important. If you want to start modding, Nekatus has a special tip for you:
“Start small. So don’t start with the biggest map right away. A lot of people do that, I think I did back then too and that was a mistake. So definitely start small and learn the techniques first.”
He also learned the most when he worked with the developers of ARK. There he also received tips on what he could do differently in the future.
ASA or ASE, Nekatus has a clear favorite
With ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA), the dinosaur adventure received a new coat of paint in Unreal Engine 5 in 2023. Even before the release, however, the developers of the Steam hit received a lot of criticism from the community for the financing policy of the survival game. After the release, there was a hail of complaints about bugs and performance. Nevertheless, Nekatus has a clear opinion about which is the better game:
“Definitely Ascended, simply because it has a newer engine and the mod support is also better. But even apart from these 2 points, ASA is now the better game, in my opinion.”
Nekatus would also recommend ARK: Survival Ascended to newer players, provided the PC has sufficient performance. He himself will continue to design mods for ASA even when ARK 2 is out. Personally, he is less keen on that: “ARK 2 will be more of a Soulslike and that’s not really my genre. So I’d rather stick with the normal survival sandbox.”
For the future of ARK, he also wants to see more open communication between developers and adherence to release dates. This has long been an issue with ARK and is well known to every active player: ARK 2: Release, Trailer, Gameplay – What we know so far