1996. Enter WarCraft II. Or… more specifically, WarCraft II‘s map editor. Or even more specifically, the map editor for WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal — the expansion to the original game, which was the version of it that I owned. Beyond the Dark Portal came out in 1996, a year after OG WarCraft II, which conveniently allows me to sneak it onto this list! I’ve told this story a little out of order. The journey that started as a taste of creation in the early 1990s with SimCity — and ultimately led to creating full game mods in the 2000s with Doom — was