Yeah. The purely technical skills involved are not especially difficult: probably the most difficult single thing to set up is a star system, and apart from market generation I managed to bash my way through
that with nothing but the forum. Art is a matter of static images or fairly simple animations.
The
creative skills involved are not esoteric, but they do require an eye and an ear for appealing content. Nothing outside the skillset of a bright undergrad who likes to draw. Set a scope for your project, iterate your assets to the point you want to reach, know what you can do and what you need to ask for help on.
Where I think most people fall down is the creative discipline to put in sustained work on a mod across months or years. That's really the only way you make it to the point of even having a bad mod worth rescuing; you decide to work on it and keep at it for a while. I'm not going to blame anyone for
not putting in that kind of work for free on a game that isn't released yet, but there are plenty of people who seem think it
is worth it, who have plenty of ideas and enjoy talking about modding
possibilities, who nevertheless don't so much as try their hand at it. We have a
free sprite thread and the internet is full of
free sounds, taking care of everything besides the actual structure of the mod itself if you just want to spend an evening making something simple.
Personally I've had a blast, it dragged me out of a creative slump, gave me a chance to sharpen up some skills I already had and start acquiring some new ones, but I wouldn't promise that experience to everybody. Just note that it's there for you to find if you want it.