On Cinco de Mayo (May 5), United Front Games invited the media to its studio in Yaletown to take a look at ModNation Racers. It was fitting, given that the kart-racing game, which will be released on Tuesday (May 25) for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable, is partly inspired by Mexican wrestlers like Blue Demon.

Equally inspiring, producer Dan Sochan explained while leading a tour of the studio, were vinyl toys, the figures that are examples of urban pop art. Vancouver artist Dacosta helped stylize the game’s final design template and ensure authenticity.

In the studio’s comfy lobby, character designer Eman Soupidis showed how simple it is for players to create their own characters in ModNation Racers.

“The spirit of vinyl culture,” Soupidis said, “is trying to create something that reflects your spirit, your attitude.”

Being able to show off and share that attitude is central to ModNation Racers, which was designed not only to offer pick-up-and-play racing for the entire family, but to make the tools of the game’s creation available to players.

The game’s central hub is the Mod Spot, a town square of sorts, which is populated by up to 23 other racers who are on-line at the time. That’s where gamers can access the Creation Station to craft their own characters, vehicles, and racetracks.

In just a few minutes, designer Nick Letizia built a track from scratch. He explained that the game was made to appeal to everyone.

“You want your five-year-old to be able to play, but you also want the advanced user to enjoy playing the game,” Letizia said. To do this, he explained, United Front first developed the “basic, fun experience, then layered on advanced features for the power users”.

Everything created by ModNation Racers’ user community will be made available to everyone else free of charge.

Sochan told the Georgia Straight after the demonstrations that the United Front developers were impressed by how YouTube promotes popular videos and how Facebook enables the easy adding of friends and favourites, and built similar tools into their game. It’s this dimension, he said, that will give the game longevity.

As we’ve seen with titles like LittleBigPlanet, the 2008 platforming game that had user-generated content as a core feature, people never seem to tire of making another wacky character or coming up with a different level.

In creating a game that relies on the players to create and share content, United Front met with Media Molecule, the U.K.–based studio that developed LittleBigPlanet. Sochan said that Media Molecule staff have turned the marketing tag line for LittleBigPlanet—“Play. Create. Share.”—into a design philosophy.

“They wanted us to be in that same mind space,” Sochan said, “and to succeed.”