Mod Nation Racers
Drive to Create and User generated content
Mod Nation Racers was a labor of love, that brought not only Kart Racing to the Sony Play-station 3, but allowed gamers to create their own fully customizable Karts, Characters and Tracks. In addition all the creations were shareable and allowed online play.
I was the lead level designer on the project and was a founder at United Front Games. It was our first project as a new company, requiring us to build a completely custom game engine and tools from scratch. This was a very heavy undertaking, but was a very rewarding learning experience to be a part of.
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Previously at Electronic Arts we had internal tools to build our environments and levels, but this was the first time we had to not only create story levels, but we had to build the in game tools that gamers would use to build levels themselves. This was an incredible UX/UI challenge, as we had to put ourselves in the shoes of the user, and make the tools incredibly easy an intuitive whilst also allow experts enough depth to create advanced levels like the ones we made through the story.
Create your own Character, Track and Kart
The process to create a track in mod nation racers. We pioneered "Drive to Create" which allowed anyone to easily create a track in minutes.
This image shows some of the variety we allowed users, the ability to create tunnels, bridges, varied road surfaces and fence styles allowed a powerful set of tools for the creator community.
We played up this feeling of being a god, creating your own mountains and water with mesh deforming brushes.
One of the big features for the track editor was the procedural generated auto-population of props, fences and track. I created this video in the early design phase to give inspiration for showcasing the feature and get buy in from Sony. They loved it, and supported us to execute this feature and fulfill the promise of what the editor could become.
What if creation could be fun, playful and in a sense it's own game inspiring new creators to build levels and share them with the community. Mission Statement: Make creating fun!