Among Us map editor may help it become a creative outlet
While most of us are content to just play our games, a significant amount of the gaming community uses their games as a creative outlet, producing content for whatever game they can with either in-game tools or through external mod production. If the Among Us developers have their way, Among Us will get its own map creator in the future.
How Among Us can serve as a creative outlet for gamers
While the developers have been keen to admit they have many plans for the future of the game, the reality of working on a game with a development team of just three people means that work is often done slowly and in an order of priority.
Many creative players have already taken to developing mods for the game, eager to see certain interesting or unique features included within their own Among Us playgroups. These can extend to simple color swaps, skins, or outfits, to outright changing how the game functions with regards to lobby sizes and so on.
But if Among Us does get a map editor/creator added to the game it will allow for many more people to get in on the fun, especially those who aren’t quite as knowledgeable about programming.
How might a map creator function in Among Us?
When and if one does get added to Among Us, it will probably function in a way that allows players to place simple tiles down. The tiles will likely have a texture and predefined barriers which may have some degree of editability built in.
Afterwards, the player will likely be able to place tasks throughout the map, likely with a minimum number of tasks required to be present before the map can be considered playable. This will likely extend to sabotage locations and vents as well.
If this does get implemented, it’s not known just how much such a tool would guide the players who choose to use it. On the one hand, the more it directs the player’s hand, the better average quality the maps will have. On the other hand, anything which limits the player’s creative freedom may be met with resistance.
Also, there’s no way to know how sharable these kinds of maps will end up being, or if players will be able to rank and download maps made by other players.
Why a map creator might be helpful for the developers of Among Us as well
Part of the reason to develop a map creator or editor is that it will allow the developers themselves to build and test maps quicker as well. This comes with the caveat that the developers will also be able to edit the editor as well, if they decide to play around with an idea or feature that the editor can’t handle on its own.
Many game development studios end up producing their own in-house tools that often benefit their communities as well, sort of like how the Source Film Maker was developed to help Valve produce their own videos, but ended up being released to players later on.
We don’t know how long it will take for Among Us development to get back up to full speed, but given this team’s commitment to the game even years before it found success I’m sure we can expect long term support for Among Us in the future.