LittleBigPlanet 2
Finished: XI had a PS3 as a kid, but my sister was the one who mainly used it. One of the only exceptions to this was when I played LittleBigPlanet 2. In retrospect, it was a critically important game for me, and shaped my relationship with games, art, and creativity.
LittleBigPlanet 2 is an absolutely incredible video game. The scrappy arts-and-crafts style is lovely and wonderful and emphasizes the core idea of "joyful creativity" so well. I loved covering the world in stickers and customizing my character in any which way I wanted. It was exciting to download community made levels to see what amazing things that people could make. It was fun and bombastic and larger than life and encouraged me to go and create something of my own.
The game's level editor was one of the first experiences that I've had with creative tools. The game's buttons, levers, and logic gates were my introduction to programming. The music sequencer gave me a taste of what composing music is like. The physics tools like motors, ropes, springs, and pistons got me thinking about how things are put together. The stickers and props let me decorate and design and create art. All of these things could be stitched together into levels that I could create and play. Did I ever actually make some fully playable levels? Definitely not! The most I've made would be the equivalent of very small tech demos, or half of a game mechanic, but it was a lot of fun!
I think that the most important thing that the game did for me was expand my idea of what "play" could be. Play could be like playing a video game, but it can also be a creative act and a learning process. Play can be spawning a bunch of explosives and lagging the game, or glitching out the physics system with max speed motors, but it can also be like tearing something apart and trying to see how it works, watching videos on how to do something, or making things that I could call my own. LittleBigPlanet 2 made these tools accessible to me, and as a result, made the concept of creative acts accessible to me, instead of being something that only the talented could do. That message has really stuck around with me ever since.
I hope that everyone can feel the joy of experiencing the "Cosmic Imagisphere" like I do.