Earlier today EA took the wraps off Create, a title that is powered by a player’s imagination and rewards players for being creative. To celebrate El33tonline has an exclusive interview with the Producer for the game, Justin Manning from EA Bright Light.

Read the interview below to find out more about what Manning thinks the inspiration behind Create was, what types of challenges you can expect to encounter in the game, the lowdown on Creative Sparks and more!

El33tonline: Create seems like it would have been a perfect fit for the Nintendo DS – with the interactivity of the game and touch screen matched and the 3DS in the wings. Why did you decide to not bring the game to any handhelds, particularly the NDS?

Justin Manning: There are definitely features of the game that would fit on the NDS, however the product is the sum of many parts and the smaller screen on the handheld platforms doesn’t work for the creative elements of the product – there can be a lot going on that requires a full-size screen to engage with it all.

El33tonline: Create will be compatible with the PS3’s Move but not with Xbox 360’s Kinect. Why are you not including this new technology and are there any plans to make the game compatible with Kinect in the future?

Justin Manning: There are no plans for Kinect. Create is actually a deep experience which can engage a player for hours, whether it’s creating a scene or solving a challenge. It is more cerebral than kinetic.

El33tonline: The creativity part that includes the use of stickers and objects and sharing levels is reminiscent of LittleBigPlanet in a way, while the creativity being limited only by your imagination echoes the principles of Scribblenauts. Did you take any inspiration from LBP or Scribblenauts and what other games have inspired Create?

Justin Manning: When Create was first conceived, it was actually going to be an arts package, but one that was easy to use and had “no fail” tools that could bring a scene to life. We wanted something that anyone could pick up and create, something that didn’t require technical skills or prior knowledge of complicated software. For us, the ultimate aim was to be able to get involved in creation, not in learning to paint.

From that beginning, the game evolved. The biggest inspiration was the product itself and our own interest in left-brain/right-brain processes. That’s why we have ended up where we are today, with a game that allows a player to express their visual creativity as well as their creative problem solving.

El33tonline: The idea behind Create, using brushes and tools to design environments, will be a perfect match to the use of the Wii Remote, with a player waving the Wii Remote to brush on a colour or add a texture. What influenced your decision to also bring this game to other next-gen consoles and will the Wii version support Wii MotionPlus?

Justin Manning: One of our mantras on the project was to make all the creative tools in Create as simple as possible, so that anyone can use them. In this way we capture their creativity not their skill and hopefully everybody can enjoy themselves or express themselves in that way. The ease of use of these tools means that we can use any of the platform’s controllers. So it wasn’t a case of designing tools for the Wii and then figuring out how they fit on a joypad. The paint tools are a small part of our creative set, and even with those we have more ‘brushes’ that allow you to create patterns so that it doesn’t require fine controls to make them work.

Wii MotionPlus is naturally supported for the Wii version.

El33tonline: Create will allow players to design environments – are there any plans to bring characters into the mix in the future?

Justin Manning: Create is all about imagination, specifically the player’s imagination. Characters tend to help drive attention in certain directions and we don’t want to limit our players. We are not making a platform or character action game with an editor. All of the challenges are about how the player solves them, not what the challenge is. It is about what happens off screen in the player’s imagination, whereas a traditional game is about what is on the screen.

El33tonline: What kind of rewards can players expect to receive from the game for their creativity? Will there only be new levels, objects and challenges to unlock or can players also look forward to trophies?

Justin Manning: Create’s core idea is that imagination unlocks play. Everything you do in the game can earn you Creative Sparks. For every Spark you earn you get a new item or object to use in challenges or in your creations. Sparks also unlock new levels and new challenges. There are hundreds of Sparks to collect in the game and therefore hundreds of game objects/decorative objects the player can earn as they create.

Naturally we support trophies and achievements for the HD consoles.

El33tonline: If Create will feature trophies can you give us a taste of some of the trophies that can be unlocked in the game?

Justin Manning: We are still in the process of finalising our trophy and achievement designs so we will reveal more on that later.

El33tonline: Can you tell us a bit more about the level-based challenges that the game will offer.

Justin Manning: There are five types of challenge in Create. I’ll give you a quick one liner on each: - 1) Object challenges – From a small set of objects, the player has to find the most efficient solution. - 2) Scoretacular challenges are quite the opposite. Find the most outrageous solution using the most objects and setting up crazy chains of events. - 3) Contraption challenges - the player has a set of parts, like wheels, planks, pivots and girders and they have to build a contraption. - 4) Pick-up party - solve the challenge but try to pick-up Create Sparks en-route - 5) Complete-it challenges - a portion of the solution has been set-up and the player has to complete the Challenge.

There are hundreds of objects in the game all with different properties that the player can use to solve challenges. And there are a lot of Challenges!

El33tonline: Players will be able to create their environments by mixing and matching from different themes and art styles. Are there any particular artists that inspired the concept behind the game and will we be able to recognise any of these art styles, for example, Impressionism or Modernism?

Justin Manning: The player will mix and match from different Themes. Create isn’t about specific art styles, and not about traditional painting. We are using the consoles for what they do best, which is to bring things to life in an accessible way. There are tools which allow the player to build a scene up from background to foreground and add all the details in between.

For example, you can choose a sky as a starting point changing the lighting and mood of the scene as you go. You can then add your own details like clouds, birds and aeroplanes and set them all in motion. You could paint on top of that if you wished to add more detail and make it unique to you. You can also add texture to the world, and then add further details through our stickers, scene props, creatures and decorator brushes. For finishing touches you can also add some full screen effects like rain or blowing leaves.

El33tonline: It would be great to be able to save the creations a player makes and print them out – will this be a possibility in the game?

Justin Manning: We are not supporting physical printouts. For us, the whole game is about sharing on screen and virtually.

El33tonline: Can you give us a few examples of the stickers, brushes, textures, elements and animating objects that the game will include?

Justin Manning: Sure – all of the items in the game fit into themes, for example, Extreme sports, Gothic, Space, Future World, Ancient History, Transport, Landscape, Theme Park, etc.

For stickers we have those that work on the sky and those that work on the world itself. In the sky they can be anything from flying robots, clouds, aircraft to birds, Theme park rides or even space stations. Anything that might appear in a background, on the horizon or in the sky can be a sky sticker. For the world they can be things like graffiti, stencils, fairground bunting to extra details like grime and cracks for rocks.

Textures are anything that we as game developers would decorate the world with, such as rocks, grass, road surfaces, different types of brickwork, wallpaper – really anything that textures a world!

The scene props/animating objects can be small things or large. We have futuristic builds to bathtubs, pot plants to satellites, fairground rides to freight trains. There are a myriad of items big and small.

El33tonline: Are there plans to provide more of the above tools and challenges by way of downloadable content in the future (in addition to the unlockable rewards) to keep the game fresh?

Justin Manning: We are focused on this current release at the moment.

El33tonline: Create’s target audience is the younger generation - what age group in particular do you think will find this game appealing?

Justin Manning: We have been making the game to appeal tothe whole family, from kids to teenagers to parents, basically anyone who has creativty, imagination or an interest in gaming. It is a game that offers a deep experience for the single player but also works extremely well for groups. We have found that people will walk past someone playing and then start making suggestions for solving challenges and naturally get involved.

El33tonline: The game will feature various levels of challenge so that the whole family can enjoy it – will there be different difficulty levels and can you let us know what we can expect here?

Justin Manning: There are different types of challenge in the game that appeal to different kinds of solution. The important thing is not the challenge itself (or the difficulty) but the creative solution the player brings to it. I have spent an hour in a challenge just playing with new ideas and ways of chaining events together – it is a huge game in that respect. So a more advanced player can build a more advanced solution as opposed to the game offering more advanced challenges.

El33tonline: You’ll be able to share your creations with other players online. How big a component of the game do you see this becoming and will there be packs in the future to help players generate new creations?

Justin Manning: On the PC, PS3 and XBOX 360 platforms you can upload your creations, challenge solutions and any challenges you have created yourself. One of the first compulsions we have seen with people playing the product is that they are proud of the solutions that they have created and want to immediately share them with others. Added to that sharing player create challenges and visual creations, we think that this will be a big component of the game.

As mentioned above, we are focused on this release but we will follow what people are doing and creating with the product. Who knows what the future holds?

El33tonline thanks Justin Manning for taking the time to answer our questions!

Create will be available for the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, PC and MAC this November. You can find out more about the game by browsing through our previous coverage, which includes the debut screenshots and trailer.