As a digital artist and experimental games designer, I was one of the first in line to dive into Dreams – a PlayStation 4 game that aims to give everyone the ability to unlock the potential artist within – when the developer Media Molecule opened up limited early access in April. From the breadth of its artistic toolset to the community of creators it is enabling, Dreams feels like the start of a genuine revolution in accessible, creative play. The promise was that Dreams would represent a space where almost anything is possible, and Media Molecule has somehow got closer than I ever imagined.
Dreams is hard to sum up succinctly, but it sits somewhere at the intersection of art studio, game engine and vibrant creative community hub. Almost the first thing new players see is a fun video of the development staff, smiling together in their office and holding up handmade “Welcome” signs. This warmth permeates the rest of game, the friendly tone and slightly squishy visual style helping make the work of creation less intimidating. In my real-life work, I favour simple and efficient tools such as Processing, Pico 8 and Twine over sprawling complex packages, and the tools available in Dreams replicate them surprisingly well.
Behind the soft, painterly presentation lies a powerful toolkit that allows players to digitally paint, sculpt, model, animate or compose. These components can be used to construct whole scenes, games, worlds, anything. The complexity was almost overwhelming at first, but over time I have found myself referring less and less to the on-screen prompts and focusing fully on what I was making. Practice makes perfect when waving a real paintbrush around, and this is apparently also true in Dreams. The learning curve feels just right, and in its own way reflects what being creative is like in real life: big broad strokes are easy, but getting more complex and nuanced takes some practice and a willingness to experiment.
Even at this early stage, Dreams is already overflowing with the creations of its players, from homages to Metal Gear Solid to countless original short games, films and pieces of static art. As in the open-source software movement (of which I’m a passionate part), Dreams encourages players to remix and reinvent other people’s creations: everything is sharable, from the tiniest 3D model or sound clip right up to entire playable games. Knowledge is sharable, too, and there are a growing number of interactive tutorials in the Dreamiverse. On Dreamers’ in-game profiles, the game tellingly categorises their activities as “passions”: art, music, animation and even curation. Curation!
I’m still very much exploring, but my own artistic interests are manifesting in my Dreams experiments already. I have been making visual pattern generators, glitchy sculptures, and I can see Dreams as a quick way into making game jam entries and prototypes in the future. It’s not a ridiculous notion that someone could prototype mechanics or sketch out concepts in Dreams before moving on to professional game development tools such as Unity or Unreal. The constant stream of creativity flowing from the wider community is a huge source of inspiration, and I have probably spent as long picking through the creations of other players as I have making my own things. I’d love to see non-digital artists take a run at working in Dreams too: real-world sculptors or musicians or animators exploring their work within the Dreamiverse.
Dreams feels like a logical endpoint to the path that games such as LittleBigPlanet – also by Media Molecule – set out on years ago. But instead of a limited space with clear boundaries for players to work in, it feels as if the gates have been thrown wide open. And because creating things in Dreams is so efficient, the question stops being “Can I do this?” and becomes “What’s the best way to do this?” This is a hugely important cognitive leap for a creator to make, and is the point at which the good stuff really starts happening.
Already, the range and ambition of some of the works in Dreams is incredible, and scrolling through the popular entries showcases the power and flexibility of its creative tools. In Dreams, I have played dozens of fully realised platformers, driving games, first-person shooters and even rudimentary RPG’s. As with other creation-focused games, such as Minecraft, there is a popular strand of players using the tools to recreate the well-known, which is understandable and part of the fun for many (my six-year-old was enthralled by the idea of playing Mario within Dreams – much more so than playing actual Mario). I’ve seen experimental music systems, sculptures, paintings, visualisations, scenic vignettes, episodic animations and some things that honestly I couldn’t identify but thought looked very pretty – and that’s part of the fun. People are creating and sharing things in the Dreamiverse just because, and that is really something special.
