McCheese
Member
Dreams allows the player to create things much much more complex and bigger than Project Sparks.
Don't worry about them losing money, they are still in the green from LBP cosmetics and they are a small team of 30-50 devs. It costs Sony peanuts to keep them around compared to studios like Japan Studio that have very little to show this gen for the amount of people they employ.
Also, Dreams purpose is not profitability, its to give Sony positive criticism by funding something that would be seen as a crazy risk by any other publisher and that vastly increases the diversity of their offerings.
Going to disagree with a few of those points.
Dreams isn't a goodwill gesture by Sony, It's a SaaS title that will require a lot of ongoing support and updates. How long it's supported for, will be directly linked to how well it sells, and how much money it continues to make from IAP. Once it's no longer profitable to support it, the plug will be pulled.
And this leads to my other problem, I like games like Mario Maker as you can sit down for an hour and produce something that's fun, but that you haven't poured you're whole life into, and won't be too upset about when it's no longer playable. It lets you dip your toes into the game design water for a bit and wiggle them about, without taking things too seriously.
But who is Dreams for?
I found trying to create anything in Dreams to be a cumbersome, unintuitive, and frustratingly slow experience. In comparison, I found both Unreal Engine and Unity to be easier to pick up, thanks to the wealth of tutorials and, well, proper controls. I cannot fathom why anybody who is planning to invest a serious amount of time in Dreams, would not just apply that time to make an actual game, in an actual game engine, that they then own the IP for and can do what they like with, and that isn't tied into how long Sony decide to keep Dreams running for.
I honestly think people look at Dreams cutesy interface and think it's somehow an entry point into game development when in reality, it's harder to learn and trickier to use than the (free!) tools we use to produce actual retail games.
The modelling, audio and gameplay stuff all being intertwined is neat, but man.. that's like the only positive thing I have to say about it from my initial few hours trying it out.
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