How Dreams changes what people can do with a video game

People have been making first person shooters, exploration games, platformers, puzzle games, art, and a hyper realistic breakfast with eggs, sausages, toast, tomato, bacon, and mushrooms — all within a new game..

Making a video game is hard work. It takes years to develop the design and coding abilities you need. It involves coding movement, scripting events, design animations, modelling and so on. But with Dreams, a game making platform released for the PS4, anyone can create a game using just the controller.

Released in February by the creators of the hit Playstation franchise, LittleBigPlanet, Dreams is not so much a “game” as a platform for creating and sharing your own games and art. Because of how simple Dreams is, it’s easy to get into. But while it is easy to pick up, hard to master.

Previous maker games like Super Mario Maker or Little Big Planet have kept the user limited to creating more or less within a particular world or game structure, essentially creating new levels. For example, Super Mario Maker lets you create your own Mario level by giving you basic enemies and blocks to place, but you can’t make your own type of enemy or blocks. But Dreams gives you tools to make literally whatever you want from A Farming simulator, A Sci-fi Shooter, A playable fallout game, A 3D platformer, horror games and many other creations. 

From your first time playing the game, picking it up blind and learning from tutorials, it is possible to make something that works.

No other game to make things really has the many tools Dreams provide you to make whatever you want. Dreams split tools within different possible game modes with corresponding tools that are appropriate with the tools. The first game mode is Assembly Mode which includes transforming tools such as, stretch, clone, tweak, freeze, and sculpture detail. The second game mode, Sculpt Mode, involves sculpting anything you want and coloring your model. Next game mode is Sound Mode where you get to implement the sound design part of a game by making your sound and giving it detail to sound appropriate and good. The next game mode Paint Mode speaks for itself, you paint anything like different sculptures and also user created models. That’s right you can post your own models to the web for others to use them which just shows how much Media Molecule cares about their game.

Co-founder of Media Molecule, Kareem Ettouney, Stated they are interested in exporting users’ “Dreams” into full-blown game releases for the PS4. “We want people to be able to go to the moon with their projects,” he said. “We already have a commercial license, which means when you get Dreams you can apply to get the commercial license.” 

Everything you make in Dreams is your IP to use. The developers have been very generous with Dreams and want everyone to be happy. Rather than being greedy like EA or Blizzard, Media Molecule cares about their crowd while also not being too greedy.

Making games in dreams is a thing now, I better get to work on that.

Cover Image: Media Molecule