ManiaPlanet Impressions

User-powered games are all the rage now, as we've seen with such empowering games as ModNation Racers, Little Big Planet, and Spore. TrackMania has also been a bastion of content created and driven by its user base. According to Ubisoft, over the last seven years, more than 10 million people have signed up to take advantage of that popular PC racing game and its iterations, which makes it the most played racer on the platform. And as Ubi showed us from the stage of its E3 2010 press conference, the brand is expanding into an entire game-creation, game-sharing platform.

This platform is called ManiaPlanet, and it will apparently allow users to create and share content they create in three genres: racing, shooter, and role playing. (These branches will be called, respectively, TrackMania, ShootMania, and QuestMania.) We didn't get to see this platform in action, but the trailer voice-over summed it up thusly: "One place: real games for real gamers." Whether you want to create an role-playing game, a shooter, or a racer, ManiaPlanet will give you the tools to see your imagination come to life. You will use a single map editor for creation purposes and form single-player, multiplayer, and cooperative scenarios. While it's too bad we didn't get to see this product in action, the trailer ended with some important dates imaginative players might want to keep in mind. The TrackMania beta will start in the fourth quarter of 2010; ShootMania beta arrives in 2011; while QuestMania is simply "coming soon."

The trailer was short, so we know little else of this intriguing gaming/creation platform. We'll bring you more on ManiaPlanet and its associated tools as information becomes available.