5 Years Ago, Game Development’s Greatest Breakthrough Went Completely Unnoticed

Media Molecule is probably the most underappreciated developer among PlayStation’s first-party studios. While its output is far from the traditional big-budget blockbusters or indie darlings its publishing partner is known for, the Surrey-based game makers have consistently innovated in ways few people can truly appreciate.

Few games prove just how unrecognized the studio’s efforts have been than its last (and sadly most recent) title, 2020’s Dreams. The game was a truly limitless creation suite whose true potential still hasn’t been realized some five years later; one of the greatest technological feats in gaming history. Despite its efforts to get ahead of its confusing premise, it never found the audience it deserved.

Dreams was the developer’s magnum opus. It was the logical next step for many of the ideas it had first introduced to players in 2008’s Little Big Planet. Whereas Little Big Planet was primarily an in-depth level editor for its floaty-yet-fun brand of platformer (though some creators managed to make games in other genres using a bit of ingenuity), Dreams took things up several echelons.

Dreams was more than a game creation tool for a specific genre. It wasn’t even a tool for making just games. It was a full suite of tools users could use to create music, 3D models, animations, short films, sound effects, digital paintings, and, if you wanted to pull all of those elements together, full-on video games.

Like Little Big Planet before it, sharing one’s creations was meant to be the backbone of the experience. But instead of being limited to sharing just levels, users could upload any individual element they created for others to use. Need an asset of a car for your game-in-progress? Just hop onto the community page and scroll through hundreds of cars others created and uploaded. Looking for some new music? Check out what tracks up-and-coming artists are making and even use it in your next project. The ability to collaborate on pieces also meant you could upload assets for others to iterate on and improve seamlessly.

Creating all of this wasn’t limited by its platform either. The PS4’s touchpad, triggers, or Move controllers could be used to create character models quickly, scrolling through audio timelines, or placing objects in 3D space was somehow more intuitive than using a mouse and keyboard. Media Molecule also managed to make an extremely flexible visual aesthetic for Dreams, one that allowed players to make stuff as stylized as the ethereal single-player experience included in the game, and as photo-realistic as the game’s first viral creation, a full-British breakfast. It was also ridiculously efficient, with zero rendering or load time when pulling an asset from the network or loading up a full game to play.

This was the full Adobe Creative Suite, Unity game engine, Pro Tools, Blender, and more. All of these individual creation tools worked seamlessly with one another because it was all in one package. And potentially everything users made and every breakthrough they had, was completely open source.

Dreams sounds impossible because it should have been. And yet, somehow, Media Molecule thanklessly did it. And they were selling this powerful, absurdly capable, and relatively easy to use (so long as you were willing to put the time in to learn it) creation suite for just $60.

“Dreams sounds impossible because it should have been. And yet, somehow, Media Molecule thanklessly did it.”

We can talk endlessly about the great potential and engineering achievement that is Dreams endlessly. But unfortunately, it was a product being marketed to the absolute wrong audience, something that haunted the game long before its release.

When Dreams was first revealed in 2015, people struggled to make sense of what it was supposed to be exactly. Media Molecule was always considered the weird, artsy studio for PlayStation thanks to oddities like Tearaway and the many Little Big Planet spinoffs. But the nebulousness of whatever Dreams was supposed to be was a step too far. Critics didn’t get it. Players didn’t get it. And based on what its developers were saying about this project, even its creators couldn’t quite nail down what this thing was.

As mentioned before, Dreams included a three-hour single-player experience called “Art’s Dream.” Like Little Big Planet’s campaign, Media Molecule created Art’s Dream using the same tools players had at their disposal. It was a neat showcase for what was possible in Dreams, incorporating familiar gameplay types like point-and-click adventure and platforming. But that fact was lost in the shuffle when the rest of the package was so mysterious for so long. Players could see the single-player campaign of Little Big Planet’s cutesy aesthetic and immediately identify what it was. Art’s Dream was not that showcase for Dreams.

We don’t know how well Dreams sold as PlayStation never shared that information publicly. But considering the dire straits of the studio shortly after it released its final update for Dreams, it’s safe to say it didn’t live up to expectations.

But it’s not all bad. As a cursory search on YouTube shows, the community around Dreams lives on today. Creators were absurdly creative with the tools provided. From full-on video game remakes, to headbanging metal jams, to animated short films, some of what Dreams was capable of has been preserved. And just a few months before Media Molecule moved on, it was given to all PlayStation users via PlayStation Plus.

It’s not an understatement to say Dreams is one of the most powerful and intuitive creation suites ever released on the consumer level. There’s a reason why people are still making stuff with it to this day. It’s a crime that it was never ported to PC (despite interest from its director), as it would surely breathe new life into the community and give more people another chance to appreciate the audacity of what Media Molecule was able to accomplish.

Dreams lives up to its name and then some. It’s just a shame that more people take note of just how high it soared.