Team Dakota envisages plenty of post-release work on free-to-play Xbox One create 'em up Project Spark - in fact, studio manager Michael Saxs Persson feels the developer could add things to the game forever.
"We look at Project Spark as a game that will never truly be finished," he told All Things Xbox last week. "The directions we can take the game are nearly infinite, and we plan on continuing to grow and evolve the game over time, based on input from our community."
New to Project Spark? It's, well, everything - or rather, anything you want it to be. Drawing on a vast library of props, backdrops and programmable entities, testers and beta players have cooked up games as diverse as Limbo-style platformers, block puzzle games, Street Fighter clones and, latterly, a glorious new version of Fable's Oakvale.
Besides the vanilla creation tools, the game also has a Crossroads mode that randomly generates a bundle of action-RPG quests. This may suit tiresome, uninspired people like Aoife, who lack the gumption to make games of their own.
"Yes, there is a very rich and deep backstory in Project Spark, that we've just hinted at so far," Persson added elsewhere in the interview. "In our beta we've focused on the core experience of playing, creating, and sharing, and will be rolling out more of the storyline aspects of Project Spark after the launch of the Xbox One closed beta."
Team Dakota also has Top Secret Ideas for multiplayer - you may even be able to create worlds in company. "The experience of creating with others can be very powerful, I've seen it in the past with other games I've worked on. We're not quite ready to release all the details on our multiplayer plans, but it's something that all of us on the team consider to be very important."
The base game is completely free - you don't even need a Gold subscription. Creators can buy additional props in the form of Content Packs, or Spark Time in order to visit worlds that contain props they haven't bought. Pleasingly, both Content Packs and Spark Time can also be earned simply by doing things in the game.
It's possible, though not confirmed, that players will be able to sell what they make with Project Spark. The game's presence on materials for ID@Xbox suggests that Microsoft considers it a successor of sorts to the now-retired XNA tools.
Project Spark hits Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC this year. The Xbox One beta begins in February.
http://www.totalxbox.com/70141/project-spark-for-xbox-one-will-never-truly-be-finished/
