While working on a story about Nancy Smith, president of EA’s super-popular The Sims games, I learned about a new site in the works: Sims Carnival. Just as Sims players can create and customize anything from fashion to furniture, the new Carnival site will let people create games.

Although it’s in a closed beta, a big green button on the site invites anyone to sign up and “become part of The Sims Carnival community.”

Dreaming up games sounds like fun but oh so complicated, especially for people like me with no programming experience. Carnival has managed to simplify the process. The company invited me into its beta test so I’ve been playing around with game creation for a few hours. Just follow the step-by-step wizard to “create” a game. Choose what type of game you want to build — shooter, racing, action and puzzle — and then add features like time limit, amount of ammunition, speed, etc.

The site also offers a downloadable game creator kit. This allows users to customize what actions happen if, for example, players hit the space bar or an object collides with another object. You can use the free art and sound effects or add your own. With the kit, you can also download other creator’s games and see how they did it.

I don’t know a thing about programming a real game, but I created a game, which I deleted because it was lame. I want to do better. Perhaps I will revisit the site and develop my own game. One expected caveat: the game can only be played on the site. (Hopefully, you don’t give up all rights to the game if you happen to create the next Tetris.) It’d also be nice if they let you embed the game into your site/blog. Is that even possible? Sims Carnival is slated to launch “in the next few months,” the company told me.

In the meantime, if you have a hankering for some easy-to-use game creation tools, Sploder.com is another simple, web-based game creator site. Also check out this list of software for non-programmers. If you have others to share, please do. I’d like to check them out myself with all the extra time I have …

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