The various forms of recognition that we at Media Molecule can currently provide - Mm Picks, Impy Awards, a front-page banner or playlist feature, and editorial in the form of more in-depth reviews and creator profiles, as well as weekly review roundups - hopefully encourages them to keep going, keep improving, and keep doing their own thing. Our creators spend time and energy making beautiful things in Dreams, and that effort deserves recognition. Similarly to Roblox or Minecraft, Dreams creators don't get a lot of coverage in the wider media - the way online media works means it's hard enough for game journalists to make time and space for indies, let alone indies made within UGC (user-generated content) games - but anyone who takes the time to look through some of these creations will see they deserve their time in the spotlight.
It was also why I wanted to start The Impsider! I know from my experience working in video game journalism how much a write-up can mean to developers. That balance between serving the players and nurturing the talented, highly invested community of indie creators in Dreams is exactly what drew me to working at Media Molecule. Having Media Molecule and others in the community recognize your work can be really validating and motivating for our creators happy creators hopefully means they stick around and we all get to see even more brilliant, unusual and inspiring stuff from them. But it is also about making sure we represent and support as many aspects of, and people in, this community as possible - from the more established and experienced creators, to people who are just getting started. It's a big part of it - we want to serve our present Dreams audience, as well as to bring in new ones. Curation for Dreams is not just about making sure the most interesting, original, high-quality creations make our front page on DreamSurfing, or are written about on our editorial blog, The Impsider. It's a HUGE curation task, and with Dreams there are layers to it. So yeah, all of that - and sometimes it's in VR. We're talking short films, animated series, entire albums of music, sculptures, paintings, helpful gadgets for creators and players, curated museums showcasing other dreamers' art, "coMmunity-created" challenges to make vinyl figures or pieces of a pixel art mosaic, even blueprints for houses being built in real life. It's not just games (including platformers, shooters, visual novels, puzzle games, walking sims, 4x strategy, JRPGs, shmups, roguelikes and plenty of bizarre new genres) but everything else in between. Simpkins: There is so much going on in the Dreamiverse at all times. I can only imagine there's a huge number of projects floating around the Dreamiverse, so I'm curious to know how you go about unearthing those gems while sifting through the sheer amount of content out there?
Game Developer: I'm always amazed by the breadth and quality of the Dreams creations you surface. Fascinated by that assured and infectiously upbeat approach to community management, we caught up with Media Molecule (Mm) editorial manager Jen Simpkins to learn how the studio is working to encourage the next generation of game developers to, well, follow their dreams. Supporting and engaging with Dreams creators to spark inspiration and foster positivity would seem like a Herculean task, but it appears to be a challenge the PlayStation-owned studio has tackled with aplomb. The studio itself has also collaborated with users to bring new tales to life, having recently launched a new game project called Mega Penguin that was produced in-house before being opened up to the community.Īs someone who has only ever peered into the swirling maw of the Dreamiverse from time to time, it seems like one of the biggest challenges of maintaining a proliferating platform that actively encourages its residents to explore endless possibilities comes with curation. In a similar fashion to other player-driven platforms, Dreams has managed to gamify the art of game development, with users across the world populating the ever-expanding "Dreamiverse" with a diverse and unique array of creations that others can take for a spin.
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