January 2020 Newsletter

Happy January, and happy 2020! Let’s start things off by saying THANK YOU to all of you who tuned in to watch our first ever IMPY Awards show this month. Congratulations again to all our winners and nominees! It was our honour to be able to put on a show to celebrate the amazing Dreams community and we hope you take a minute to compliment or share your own favorite dreams and dreamers, nominated or not! We’re already looking towards how we can make the second awards even better and celebrate even more of you all.

If you missed out on the show - don’t worry! That’s what our trusty Mm Monthly is for, after all. Read on to catch up on all things IMPYs and what else has been happening the world of Mm and CoMmunity.

Oh, and one last thing... We’re only *checks calendar* 2 weeks away from the launch of Dreams!!

Guest Artist: sleeperwolf

Our most recent Hall of Fame is FULL of fantastic sci-fi creations, with sleeperwolf’s amazing Vanguard being named the most popular! This collaboration with BukkoroChan, Esuki and BloomAnimate is truly epic, so we asked sleeperwolf to give us a little background on the creation.

There wasn't really a lot of planning when it came to creating Vanguard. There were only basic ideas I.E. a ship, a mech, and sunset/sunrise. It kinda of had to be that way since Esuki and BukkoroChan spoke Japanese and Bloom and myself only spoke english. If anything Vanguard was a project created by people using gifs to communicate to each other.

So we started with the sunset. We chose a cloudy mountain background so we could take advantage of the dramatic lighting we had come upon. Music was added along with the ship not long after. We wanted to emphasize the size and scale of the scene so we added the small jets that zipped across the screen using emitters and a randomizer. Finally to double down on the scale of the scene, we added the mech on to the foreground which was brought to life using Bloom's animation skills. After few tweaks as well as adding some controller rumble, the scene was done and could finally take a break!

What's New at Mm HQ?

The 1st Annual Impy Awards

Whew, what a show - we’re glad we have nearly a year to prepare for the next one! We had an amazing list of nominees, incredible winners, wonderful presenters, lovely industry judges, an actual IMPY Award, the most legit-fake Dreams movie ads you’ve ever seen and now we’re out of adjectives. We’re getting a little misty eyed just thinking back to the big night.

If you missed out on the show, you can catch up on Twitch and YouTube, or head to our website to see the full list of winners.

We’re already thinking about what we can do next year, so please do share your feedback, category suggestions or other ideas with us on social. We’ll check back in when next years planning starts in earnest.

Dreams is...Almost Here!

Yes, it’s actually happening. Pinch us! Dreams will be launching to everyone on February 14th, 2020!! Whether you’re an Early Access player, revisiting for the first time since beta, or brand new to the Dreamiverse, we can’t wait to hear what you think about Art’s Dream, the iterations and improvements we’ve made since launching Early Access last year and can’t wait to see what you get up to in the Dreamiverse, whether it’s creating, curating, collaborating, painting, animating or simply playing - the list goes on!

We’ll have some news dropping VERY SOON about how EA players will upgrade to the full version (it won’t be hard!) and more improvements and offerings coming with the launch. Stay tuned!

If you don’t have Early Access, you can pre-order Dreams on the PlayStation Store right here.

CoMmunity Happenings

The CoMmunity Visits Mm!

What a way to welcome in the new year! When we heard about a planned CoMmunity meet-up happening in our beloved Guildford, we couldn’t not invite everyone to the studio. Little did we know just how many wonderful faces we’d see on the day! Thank you to all our CoMmunity members who spent the day at Mm Towers.

If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry. We’re planning a lot of fun things for this year, and we’ll hopefully see a lot more of you lovely lot around the world and here at home.

The Most Amazing Birthday Cake

We love a good cake here at Mm, don’t we? Well, hyperdude53 and DiamondDiancie10 know this fact very well, and arranged for the most I N C R E D I B L E Media Molecule cake to celebrate our 14th birthday (did we mention we turned 14 this month?)! It was so impressive and beautiful we didn’t want to cut in to it... but we absolutely did and it was very, very tasty.

Meet SlurmMacKenzie!

We thought it was about time we caught up with him to get to know a little bit more about Dreams’ first ever Creator of the Year, SlurmMacKenzie! Read on to find a little bit more about the Dreamer who brought us Shifting Islands, Time Corruption, Do Robots Dream of Electric Imps and more!

What do you like to do in the Dreamiverse?

I like to build short gameplay experiences, usually by focusing on a simple idea and building around it. I also like DreamSurfing and discovering weird and surreal experiences. I also love playing with optical illusions, I've used a few ones in my projects, and I hope I'll be able to make a Dream that revolves around this idea in the future.

If you could give other members of the CoMmunity a piece of advice for their time in Dreams, what would it be?
Start small, don't be afraid of failure, and keep playing with the tools. I like the idea of publishing playable and finished small projects, at least in the beginning, because you'll learn so much from your experience and the feedback you'll get. It really keeps you motivated and you can always take a step back and see how you progressed through your creations.

What was the first thing you created in Dreams?
Everyone has to start somewhere: a flattened rounded cube. I then used the clone tools with it, and it became the setting for Polarity.

Favourite food, movie and song, in that order. GO!
For the food and movie it's easy : Raclette and Brazil. For the song, I just cannot pick a single one. So here's some of the music I like and probably listened too much at various point in my life: Petit frère by IAM, Léa by Louise Attaque, Le spleen des petits by Stupeflip.

How can people find you in the Dreamiverse?
You can search SlurmMacKenzie in the Dreamiverse. My latest Dream is already a few month old, but I have two short projects that should hopefully be published soon!

Who'd you like to get to know in the Dreamiverse? We'll ask them some questions for next month's newsletter!
I'd love to know more about MrCaseyJones' sense of humour and if he's not tired of the word "Opposite".

You can check out SlurmMackenzie's work by heading to his indreams.me profile right here.

We're on the lookout for new Molecules to join in the fun and make Dreams the best it can be! Follow the links below to read more about our current vacancies at Mm Towers!

Stay up to date on our jobs page

Current positions

We’ve said it twice this newsletter, so what’s one more time? DREAMS! DREAMS IS COMING SOON! 2 weeks today, in fact! February 14th is fast approaching, and we can’t wait to see what you think (and create!) Be sure to let us know on Twitter by tagging your tweets with #DreamsPS4 and #MadeInDreams.

We’ll be at PAX East at the end of February and hope to see plenty of you there! Keep your eyes out for details on what we’ll be getting up to in Boston and where we’ll be next.