I don't understand the problem you guys seem to have with modding. I've been part of a modding community since 2001, although in the last year have moved away from it a bit. But through those years I've seen people achieve great things through modding.

Modding isn't just restricted to adding new object or character types and textures, there are many many things you can do with a decent bit of code.

For example, we could extend the depth of the lives of the creatures in Spore. We could create specialist creature types that hunt in a certain way, have a certain mentality, prefer a certain food type and so on. The tribal and civilisation stages could be extended, we could create a more complex and in depth trading system, a more dynamic diplomacy section or even create a civilization style technology tree.

Global Thermonuclear War for Spore anyone?

What people will origninally think of as game limitations, impossibilities, can be easily overcome by a skilled modder with a bit of time on his hands and a bit of imagination.