In the video game world, there are a certain class of games that are fun to play in their own right but have become even more popular as a platform to make other games.

The Elder Scrolls series, especially Skyrim, are games that almost require a level of modification to be fully enjoyed, and adding extra quests, items and even gameplay mechanics was made easier and even encouraged by the development team, leading to mods like The Forgotten City.

In some cases, such as many mods based on Half-Life (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal, Half-Life: The Lost Coast, Black Mesa), a team that made a mod were actively hired by the company that made the original game to turn the mod into a full release.

Minecraft is, in some important respects, an even better platform to learn to code, and a Minecraft modding course can provide a fun, dynamic headstart into the world of development.

Part of the reason for this is that Minecraft is a dizzyingly complex game built from very simple parts. The majority of blocks are simple shapes like cubes with small textures that can be very readily edited and added to.

With a little bit of coding work, you can create a new block and incorporate it into an existing biome in the game, and see your coding efforts work as part of a larger game.

It creates a natural progression, as you can start with creating a block, then creating an item that is mined from that block, and move on to ways it can be crafted into other blocks.

Each of these sections teaches a different set of skills that are fundamental to the coding process and many people started their coding journeys by playing and modding Minecraft before moving on to their own projects.