Dreams Is Already Fostering the Next Generation of Game Developers
Dreams from Media Molecule is an incredibly powerful game design tool that's easy to use, and it's already raising a new generation of game designers.
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No Man's Sky for all its initial faults, is an ambitious and beautiful game. It features a massive open-world universe full of countless new worlds and creatures to discover — a very impressive feat for a company with just 25 employees to make in just four years. There's also a No Man's Sky fan game that got whipped up in just a few months in Dreams. The game, called Beyond, was the work of just two creators, Kevin H and Chris D.
Kevin and Chris have experience creating games — they've released projects on itch.io, created a game for their university's arcade, and are currently working together on a racing game that uses the Unreal engine. But it was Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet games that inspired Kevin to pursue a career in the games industry in the first place.
When Dreams first came out, he knew he had to try it — and he was blown away by just how much it let its users do.
"Dreams is like Maya, Unreal, Fruity Loops, Sony Vegas, and Photoshop all bundled into one $40 package," said Kevin. "It's super intuitive and easy to get started too."
I really wanted to show how powerful Dreams was (as) a game-creating tool, so I tried tackling one of the hardest games I could create," said Kevin. "I ended up choosing No Man's Sky — not only for its technical feats, but also for how fun I perceived the game would be to make and play."
There's no truer testament to Dreams' strengths as a game creation tool than how well an inexperienced hand can piece something together. One creator, who goes by the handle Jimmyjules153, had never tried to create a game before. He'd never even done any professional programming before. But when he booted up Dreams, he knew he'd be able to make something.
The tools are beyond anything I could have imagined on any platform," he said. "I could immediately see the potential for what this game could become with a supportive community behind it."
I didn't expect the kind of support that my game received, but it makes me happy I was able to entertain so many people," he said. "There are some brilliant games on the front page, and it's an honor to be chosen to be among them."
Being a featured game got him more than just honor, however — it may very well have set him on a course towards a career in game development.
"I was approached by a European game development company who asked me to join their team," he said. "I'm excited for the future and where this may take me!"
All along the way, Jimmyjules153 was impressed by the support and assistance he could find in Dreams' community — something of a common theme among creators. The community has spread beyond the game itself and into Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube. It's been described as "warm," "welcoming," "helpful," "passionate," and perhaps most notably, "not toxic at all."
"Everyone is always willing to help each other out, whether through collaboration, prototyping, or bouncing ideas off of each other," said designer busterwackycrash, who created the strategy game Strike II. "This is all thanks to the warm and friendly atmosphere Media Molecule has cultured all throughout the years when interacting with the fanbase."
An atmosphere of collaboration is in the DNA of Dreams. Creators can choose to make their creations "remixable," which lets others use their art, sound, and even in-game logic to jump-start their own creations.
The ability to share assets was essential to Keld's game, Art Therapy, which involves smashing up an art museum to try to cause as much damage as possible. It was created as part of a Dreams Community Jam, where participants had 10 days to put something together based on a theme; in this case, the theme was "Night (or Day) at the Museum." He started up a Twitch stream to brainstorm ideas before putting a team together and coming up with the concept.
"It turned into a huge collaboration, and in the recent update, I finished adding credits for every creator involved," said Keld.
"Huge" is no exaggeration — the game contains content from no fewer than 232 different contributors, including sculptures, sounds, paintings, and textures. Keld estimates that he himself put 80 hours into the game's creation — no small amount of effort, to be sure, but one that was alleviated by the sheer amount of content he was able to use from other players.
The game has been something of a hit with the community, and it became yet another game that Media Molecule chose to feature front and center when players start browsing creations.
Our entire team is made up of people that have zero experience in game creation, actually. We are complete amateurs in that respect," said user ArcaneArts_, who heads the project. "Dreams makes it possible for even us to learn foreign tools and begin learning and experiencing a small taste of game design."
Some of the community get resentful about fan games getting loads of attention, but I think it's a big plus," Keld said. "Did you hear about Elca Gamingon YouTube? He gained 60-70K subscribers in a few days when the YouTube algorithm decided to show the videos about his Avatar: The Last Airbender game to Avatar fans. That's tens of thousands of people exposed to Dreams because of their love for another thing."
Dreams is going viral, but rather than elicit some chuckles and vanish like a meme, it's ushering in a new generation of game designers.
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