Games as art. It’s a recurring topic in the gaming community and in general entertainment as the video game industry continues to grow and be taken more seriously. Beyond video games we so often ask, “Is this art?” for any creative venture. If we rearrange the question however, we wind up with something just as provocative: Is art a game? With Little Big Planet and Tearaway, unique developer Media Molecule has demonstrated a penchant for creating games that tease both questions, and their forthcoming PS4 release, Dreams, looks poised to now impose those questions.
To describe Dreams, let’s go to thesource:
Dreams™ is a space where you go to play and experience the dreams of Media Molecule and our community. It’s also a space in which to create your own dreams, whether they’re games, art, films, music or anything in-between and beyond."
Part creative suite, part portal, Dreams is an anything goes experience in which players can create almost anything they would like. For contrast, the level editor in Little Big Planet games gave the players the tools they needed to create mostly action games. In Dreams, artists can create paintings, musicians can compose pieces, designers can create entire games, and the game will provide all the tools needed. Collaboration is as easy as creation, and you can take the sparks of imagination from other games and remix them into your own.
The game makes use of the PS4 tech is some very interesting ways, both in how it renders and how it makes use of the hardware which is something Media Molecule has always excelled at. The controller is how the players will do their interacting and everything has been designed to be intuitively controlled in this way. Not confirmed but intensely intriguing is the rumor that Dreams will also have connectivity with the PS4’s virtual reality headset Morpheus. Given that Morpheus was the ancient Greek god of dreams, this sounds like quite the fated pairing.
Once you get past the initial bewilderment, you begin to see the limitless possibilities this game offers. The biggest barrier to something this ambitious will be the interface and tools, much in the way an implement an artist uses affects the composition. No release date has been confirmed but when it does, we may have to ask ourselves: “Are we buying a game or are we buying an instrument?” Have a look at Dreams in action and begin asking yourself that question:
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