PS4 game Dreams is an amazing creation tool with an exposure problem
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/14/21136244/dreams-ps4-game-creation-tool-exposure-problem-curation-media-molecule
Reported today in The Verge.
PS4 game Dreams is an amazing creation tool with an exposure problem
Dreams is a game about creating games. And not just games, but music, animation, and art, all through powerful creation tools provided by developers Media Molecule. Players have created hyperrealistic breakfast food and 90-minute detective games during the seven-month early access period, and a community emerged to teach one another tricks they'd discovered or showcase amazing creations they'd found. There's just one big hitch: there's no way to fully release a Dreams game (confusingly called a "dream") outside of the tool in which it was made.
Media Molecule has said that it wants to give creators commercial rights and the ability to export away from the PlayStation 4 where Dreams is an exclusive title published through Sony Entertainment. But there's been no elaboration on how or when that might happen. Right now, the only ones directly benefiting financially from these players' creativity and work are the developer and publisher.
But as with all games, Dreams and its player creations can be experienced elsewhere (albeit in a limited form), thanks to social media, YouTube, and streaming. This is something Cameron Kunzelman notes in his piece on Dreams as a walled garden where anything that's shared to outside platforms serves as an advertisement to draw more people into the game. That advertisement does little for those who made the creations. They might gain more attention within the Dreams ecosystem, but there's no tangible reward for that. It's predominantly Media Molecule and Sony that benefit. But the streamers and YouTubers who curate and broadcast their discoveries outside of Dreams also have ways of monetizing their content.
The fairness (and legality) of broadcas