"Dreams is... it's so hard to describe. It's a game that's going to be defined by its community, but we will seed it with amazing Media Molecule content. People always ask 'is it playing, or is it creating? Is there a story?' and the answer to all those things is yes, yes, yes."

No one, not even Media Molecule itself, has really been able to explain exactly what Dreams is yet. Even now, as the studio prepares to launch a beta next year on PlayStation 4, it remains as cryptic as ever. But, after seeing Dreams in action here at Paris Games Week, I think I can give it a shot: Dreams is a 3D crafting tool and a grand social experiment that may, or may not, result in some wonderful gaming experiences. Does that help?

The brief snippet of gameplay shown at the Sony conference barely scratched the surface of what's possible in Dreams. Going by that demo, you'd think it was some sort of adventure game with a bit of level creation thrown in. And while it can be that, it can also be a racing game, or a platformer, or an audio-visual experience that's more cerebral than competitive. Dreams extends Media Molecule's work with user-created content in Little Big Planet into something that is entirely shaped by the thoughts and creativity of the community.

"The point of Dreams is to have fun," Media Molecule's Alex Evans told Ars. "At no point do you have to decide to go create now; you're just playing. Maybe you'll meet a character, and that character will ask you 'do you mind trimming the tree please?' So you get the hedge trimmer, and you have a really good time lopping branches off. At the end of it your new friends says 'that's brilliant, why don't you share that?' Just like that, you've got play, you've got create, you've got sharing."

Unlike Little Big Planet, which was divided up into creation and game modes, Dreams mushes them together, letting players mess with the world around them as much or as little as they like. The imp character, shown during the on-stage demo, is the only constant that runs throughout the game. You can use the touchpad to create new facial expressions for the imp, depending on how you want others to see you, or jiggle around the gamepad to pick up objects or take over characters within a dream.

You can think of a dream as a level, except that there aren't any levels in the strictest sense of the word. Everything in the game is linked together in some way, so that you seamlessly wander between the dreams of everyone that's playing the game, organically creating stories and levels that users will link together. An example might be a racing dream with a secret track that trundles off into another creation, changing it from a racer to a platformer. That's the theory at least, and it's a bold one at that.

For those that just want to play a game, Media Molecule will seed Dreams with content, creating at least some form of narrative to get players started. But I imagine—and Media Molecule is certainly hoping—that most people will want to use the creation tool to mess with the world around them. This is where Dreams really comes into its own; everything shown off in the demo was built from scratch using the exact same tools that users have access to.

"These characters [referring to the panda from the demo] are built using the same tools you build the world with," explained Evans. "In case it's not obvious: everything in Dreams can be built from scratch. In Little Big Planet you would piece together assets that we made at Media Molecule, but in Dreams, literally everything is made by the community, or by us. But we don't get any different tools than you guys. Everything you see was built using only a DualShock, or a Move controller. We support all controllers on PlayStation. We support DualShock with no camera, DualShock with a camera, Move, the second-screen iPad app thing..."

The preferred control method for content creation seems to be Move, at least if the Media Molecule demo was anything to go by. Everything in Dreams is in the form of sculpture, with the Move controllers allowing for precision control in order to morph and chip away at simple shapes using other simple shapes. The panda, for example, was created by starting with a ball, after which a cube was used to create dimples that would become eyes. With a lot of practice, you can come up with some stunning creations. Animation is simple, too, in that everything is a performance. If you want to script a part of a dream, you just hit a record button and perform the motion using the controller. You can overdub, and punch in and out, as well.

While the creation UI is very much a work in progress, it's pleasing to see that there will be no end of options for materials, colours, and sounds to work with, along with a text search (that will hopefully include voice later on) for finding objects created by others.

Media Molecule hopes that players won't have to dive into search that often. In fact, it's counting on it. It wants the game to filled with superstar creators and curators—people who others will follow directly in order to find the best content. And instead of using a UI, Media Molecule hopes that there will be hub worlds—areas where each player can showcase their latest creations for others to play with, modify, and share. At a technical level, objects won't be stored as finished rendered products, but as editing histories, helping to speed up loading times.



















"That character [the panda] is actually built out of a few billion voxels, and then we automatically generate a level of detail," Evans said. "What's really cool is that although it's billions of voxels, the amount of data that you have to download is just a few bytes. The game stores what you did, not the finished product.

"This is the key to collaboration. Everything is stored as history. What did they do? They clicked here, they clicked there, added an eye, searched for a mech, added a robo-haircut, inserted some spoons, and then set fire to it all. That's all it needs to download. The level load times are really low. The idea is that you can link together dreams into this sort of web, so you get this play experience that's like lucid dreaming."

Gamers only love you when they're gaming

Although Media Molecule will be creating content, Dreams' success is ultimately in the hands of the community—and that's a brave move. What if they don't bother making stuff? What if they don't like the tools? What if they, as the Internet is prone to do, spend all their time creating intricately sculpted dickbutts?

Dreams is so hard to describe or predict or analyse because Dreams can be anything that anyone wants it to be. It can be a place where people go to create fantastic works, with the ability for anything in the game to be exported out to 3D engine Unity, or to 3D printers, turning the game into one of the most accessible tools around for digital arts creation. It can be a place of meditation, where people go to explore, and to relax, taking in the weird and wonderful dreams of others. Or it can be a place to play, and compete, and to craft intricate stories to share with others.

Where Microsoft's Project Spark wanted everyone to make games, Dreams will let them make anything they desire, and even bring it into the physical world. That's a very powerful thing, and there's nothing else quite like it in games.

"How are they going to use this?" Evans rolled the question in his head, searching for the answer. "I really don't know. But it's gonna get meta, and I'm really excited."

The Dreams beta will be released exclusively for PS4 in 2016.