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What is Dreams?

Dreams is a Playstation 4 game with a radical concept - instead of giving you a game to play, developer Media Molecule gives you all the tools you need to make your own games. Players use these tools to animate, sculpt, design, and code whatever they want. The game is a celebration of human creativity and a powerful outlet for imagination. The tools alone justified the game's purchase to many of the 100k+ players who have picked up the game since the “early-access” version became available on the Playstation Online Store in April 2019.

The Argument Against Dreams

The tools are innovative, but for Dreams to connect with a broader “gamer” audience, Media Molecule needs its players to create compelling experiences in order to persuade new customers to buy the game. In a recent video, David Jaffe, developer of hit console games like God of War, explains the inherent competition between the Dreams engine/platform and the commercial games industry. “It’s not that I think (professionally developed games) and games made in Dreams should be equatable,” says Jaffe, “but the fun factor, the engagement factor, the worth-my-time factor… those are absolutely competing.”

Jaffe agrees that players have released games in Dreams that are technically and aesthetically excellent. However, he says the games are mostly unfun and don’t yet stand up to traditionally made games. “As of now, Dreams is coming up extremely short.” He claims that this is because creators are not currently compensated for their efforts. “Why would you take the 6+ months to be super proficient at this if you actually have talent?” asks Jaffe. “Ultimately, they’ve made something that nobody really wants… if you are so hardcore into video games, or want to be, go learn Unity. You can get a job, you can sell your game.” 

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Raising a Ruckus

While game journalists have shown a major interest in Dreams, the projects which get coverage are usually gimmicks, not compelling, complete games. That all changed on August 27 with the release of the game Ruckus: Just Another Natural Disaster, made primarily by Dreams creators Mori Shiro and HeartfactoryKW. Ruckus is a game about a Godzilla-like salamander that destroys a city. The player uses the creature's various abilities to earn points by attacking buildings and vehicles. The game hilariously depicts the world's rapid descent into chaos. It is both adorable and adrenaline-pumping.

 

The developers of Ruckus weren’t anticipating mainstream interest in their little side-project. The game was made in their spare time, for fun, from the comfort of their couches. And yet, on the afternoon of the game’s release, the game was featured by Polygon, and by sites like Kotaku and IGN soon after. In the days leading up to the game’s launch, videos of the game exploded on Twitter, despite the developer’s previously small reach. Even Dreams critic David Jaffe retweeted the game, “This looks so cool and fun!”

How did this happen? How did a couple of hobbyists playing a video game manage to stir up such a commotion? I reached out to the developers of Ruckus, and also to the developers of popular Dreams games Pig Detective and Ommy Kart, in order to learn more about the making great Dreams games.

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3 Lessons from Top Dreams Creators

Lesson #1: Set yourself apart from commercial games.

David Jaffe made an excellent point when he said that games in Dreams need to be able to compete with professionally-made games. Currently, many dreamers focus on replicating experiences of popular video games, with projects like Metal Gear Solid Remake and Final Fantasy 7 Remake gaining a lot of attention. Projects like these are impressive, but they aren't going to convince new players to buy and play Dreams because they are gimmicks that don't actually provide value to players. In order to give players a reason to play Dreams, more dreamers should focus on creating novel experiences instead of replicating popular commercial games and trends. By creating different kinds of games than the industry, dreamers can turn Dreams into an essential gaming platform.

The Ruckus team accomplished this by making a game in a genre mostly unserved by the commercial games industry. “There are very few kaiju games on the market, so we were able to tap into an untapped market.” In this way, Dreams serves as a sort of democratic branch of the games industry, one which serves as a direct check on commercial game design. Games of commercially outdated genres will find new life on Dreams, and they’ll be resurrected by passionate, life-long fans. These resurgences of genre and style, along with the introduction of totally new kinds of interactive experiences, could affect the kinds of games players demand from commercial developers. Mori has already used the success of Ruckus to direct attention to similar kaiju games in development.

But no game on Dreams does a better job of setting itself apart from commercial games than Pig Detective, a hilarious adventure game series by the dreamer duo Lotte and Sebastian. Neither is an experienced game developer, yet both are using Dreams to create games that commercial developers are not providing. “We are creating the game we would like to play,” they say, “without paying attention to what is currently being made.” Pig Detective puts the player in the shoes of a world-famous detective pig. The player explores unusual 3D worlds filled with quarky characters to talk to and puzzles to solve, in attempt to solve the underlying mystery of the game.

 

Classic adventure games like Space Quest, Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango were foundational for Sebastian, who designs and creates the logic for the games. But these games fell out of favor with most game developers following the rise of 3D graphics and action games. Humor in general is a rare trait of modern video games. But because Lotte and Sebastian aren’t motivated by profits, they can explore these rich pockets of gaming that developers are ignoring. “That for us is the true charm of Dreams,” they say. “You can create whatever you want, even something that is horribly out of fashion.”

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Lesson #2 - Keep experimenting.

Experimentation is the core activity of applied game design. Unfortunately, experimentation is often stifled in commercial game development. The lack of experimentation in the industry is due to the high cost of wasted work and a need to schedule a game's development months in advance, among other reasons. Many games' designs are completely hammered down before designers even get a chance to see the game in action. These are not ideal conditions for creating art. Dreams solves this problem by allowing players to rapidly develop new features using an integrated set of tools and a giant library of user-generated content. And the moment you are ready for feedback, there will be a swath of hungry Dreams gamers waiting to oblige. Therefore, you should be taking full advantage of this and experimenting with all aspects of your game in order to make the coolest game possible! Speedy experimentation is one aspect that gives the Dreams platform a major edge over platforms like Unity.

The developers of Ruckus experimented with many features, including all kinds of weather and alternate mechanics, before settling on their final product. “We weren’t trying to make a hit,” said Mori. “We were just adding interesting ideas to each other, trying to make the game as interesting as possible.”

Another example of a game born through experimentation is Ommy Kart, which was recently released by Diesel Laws (PSN: ManChickenTurtle). This sophisticated game is reminiscent of professionally-made kart racers like Mario Kart, but it all began as a simple experiment. “Dreams really lets you play with physics in a way that is much quicker to experiment in, compared to Unity,” explains Diesel. One day, inspired by another dreamer's work, Diesel quickly threw together a working hoverboard in Dreams. “It was fun to play with, but it needed a track to go around. Very quickly that grew into needing AI, powerups and more.”