The Big Minds Behind LittleBigPlanet

Gamasutra is reporting on a panel put on by the folks at Media Molecule, just hours after Phil Harrison's keynote yesterday. There, they talked about the formation of their ambitious company. They began with just a lot of hopes, and knew hard work was in store for them. Just the same, using techniques they'd picked up in the mod community, they drew up a very successful game concept and got someone else to pay for it. "[Essentially], the company's sole mission at the start was to do the most ambitious game it could produce, asking 'how hard can we make it for ourselves.' 'If we were jumping into the abyss,' said Evans, 'we were going to do it with rockets on our back.'"

XP

[DavidHOzAu]

FTA

Next in the mega plan was to be "totally open and honest with the publisher." Working with SCEE, Healey and Evans said that they made the decision early on to treat the relationship like a partnership. "We're 10 people, they're 10 trillion," so during early visits, Media Molecule told Sony "absolutely everything."

"We didn't want to have a them-and-us attitude," said Healey, adding, "that way if it goes wrong we can blame them."

Healey, too, said that the company would go through quite painful arguments,

Not sure about LBP

[slim]

Maybe I've missed something important, but I'm not sure I see how Little Big Planet is going to succeed.

Sure, all those high-def textures are very pretty. And the physics stuff is very clever. But watching the gameplay video, it's just a 2.5D platformer, and I'm not sure how the super-duper physics simulation is any more fun than the more basic mechanisms used in the previous generation of platformers. ... which leaves us with the community aspect -- which I understand to mean that you can design your own l

Re:

[minginqunt]

Um, have you missed the single most important aspect of the game?

That is, people can collaboratively build levels, publish them online, play each other's levels co-operatively online, rate them, comment them, copy and change them...

Sony's idea is for this to become a Youtube-for-games sandbox.

And I think that's pretty cool.

Re:

[slim]

Um, have you missed the single most important aspect of the game?

That is, people can collaboratively build levels, publish them online, play each other's levels co-operatively online, rate them, comment them, copy and change them...

Sony's idea is for this to become a Youtube-for-games sandbox.

And I think that's pretty cool.

I think it's pretty cool in concept.

But YouTube videos can be endlessly different. Whereas a platformer level is just variations on a theme of moving from point A to point B by running and jumping.

I wish them the best of luck, and will watch with interest... we'll see.

Re:

[LKM]

Yes, that is very cool. However, it is extremely likely that 99% of these levels will suck. Level design is one of the most important parts of designing a good game. If you look at most 2D jump-n-run games, almost all of them have the tech correct. You can move the character, make him jump, attack enemies, no issues there. The difference between the good games and the bad games is level design. Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World were great games because the level design is awesome. The crappy games ar

Most people won't need to be good

[fistfullast33l]

good level design requires a lot of skill and experience, and most people don't have that.

Most people won't need it though. As the GP states, only a handful will rise to the top as the best levels. If the developers are really smart, they'll allow multiple people to work together to build a level and play it. That's really where the fun stuff comes in. If you have multiple people creating obstacles and whole levels, then it really becomes a group challenge and then you have a few mediocre people making

Re:

[7Prime]

That makes me even more suspicious. I was involved in a number of Ambrosia Software communities way back when I was in middle school: Avara and Escape Velocity, specifically. We were doing exactly that, creating, sharing, and critiquing levels. As fun as it was, though, I remember two things: the only people who were interested in it were pretty hard core, not your mainstream gamers, more realistically, your future game designer types (if they were any good). Secondly, it got old, and the turnover rate was

DOOM

[HalAtWork]

Sonic 2 is an excellent platformer. Let's hypothesise that someone hacked up a level design tool that outputs playable Sonic levels, and set up a web site so you could share the levels you designed. How soon am I going to get bored of playing new Sonic levels, most of which were designed by people who are /not/ expert level designers? I reckon, very soon.

Just for the sake of argument... wasn't that the same thing with DOOM? Player-made mods and levels everywhere from everyone, yet the best managed to ris

Re:

[powerlord]

. if I want something less serious to play with a bunch of people, there's plenty of fun games on the Wii.

Um ... why shouldn't Sony try to offer a fun "party" title?

Its actually nice to see them trying to cater to a ( player > 2 ) crowd which has been almost exclusively been Nintendos domain (with the N64,GameCube and Wii).

Yes, the PS2's gametap let four players play at once, but how many people sprung for it, versus, "hey bring your controller(s) over and we'll party"?

Re:

[HalAtWork]

Um ... why shouldn't Sony try to offer a fun "party" title?

Um ... they shouldn't? I was merely pointing out how well Nintendo's already done it for cheap. This, on the other hand, is supposed to be generating hype that in turn convinces people to buy the PS3. It's kind of a wimpy system-seller if you ask me, especially if you don't even want to go online!

Re:

[LKM]

I think FPS are actually somewhat more forgiving than sidescrollers. With sidescrollers, level design is 99% of the gameplay experience. With shooters, especially multiplayer shooters, it's more like 50%, so even mediocre levels can be fun.

Re:

[MBraynard]

Historical reference.

Starcraft's battle.net had a place where you could play player moded games. There were some HUGELY fun modifications made. Once you downloaded someone's mod, you could mod it, too. So you would often see an original work marked 1.0 and then someone else would do a 1.1 or whatever and they would keep getting better, bug fixes, etc.

If the tools are there and it's a fun environment, I think you could find enough people making a few cool maps that would make it worthwhile. Not ALL will be

LittleBigPlanet

[EveryNickIsTaken]

This game appears designed to draw in the kiddie/parent crowd, and the casual gamer. However, Sony needs to recognize that "casual gamers" are not going to spend $600-700 on a console, regardless of how cute the characters on the screen look. Sure, the graphics appear amazing on this, and the physics puzzle play is fresh and original, but you have to wonder... Who are they marketing this to?

Re:

[CronoCloud]

I've been saying this for ages, but the PS3 is not just a console, it's an all-in-one entertainment box.

Games: PS3/PS2/PS1, downloadable demos, the ability to purchase PS1 games for PSP use.

Video: on disc (DVD and BD) and on the HD and mass storage devices

Audio: CD's, SACD's, DVD-Audio. It can rip CD's itself.

Built in web browser.

Built in ability to stream to the PSP

Photos.

Linux, not only does it do all of the above, but it's also a PC. Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Gimp, Gaim

And now the Playstation

Re:

[fotbr]

The problem is other than geeks, nerds, and linux & sony fanboys, most people don't care about having one box that does everything.

Most people ALREADY HAVE a DVD player, a CD player, and a PC to do everything else you mentioned. Most people are not racing to jump on the BluRay/HDDVD wagon. And the PSP isn't exactly the most popular handheld either, especially for casual gamers, so thats not an advantage. The casual gamer is not going to shell out $600 for a device that duplicates functionality they'v

Re:

[Cadallin]

So? The 360 can do most of the non-linux stuff. And I'm not buying a game console to be workstation anyway. Playstation Home seems to me like a huge scam to get people to buy advertising.

Little Big Planet does look awesome, but its going to take a lot more than that to get me to buy a PS3.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

That's nice and all but people don't want package deals that cost so much. Most will buy it for the games and there's no 300€ gamesd only version, you HAVE to pay 600€ to get that game functionality and you'll get the rest whether you want it or not. Sure, if you'll ask the average consumer he'll say yes, he'd like those features but when you tell him the price he won't like it. The consumer wants a Ferrari for the price of a Honda but given the choice he'd rather buy a Honda for the price of a Ho

Re:LittleBigPlanet

[drinkypoo]

Sony's idea is apparently that the casual gamer crowd is also the HD video crowd. It's not a totally misguided idea; there are certainly people in that segment that would play video games if they were the right type. However, it is a mostly misguided idea in that the uptake of HD is not very inspiring. It might work in Japan where product lifecycles are apparently much shorter, but the market outside of Japan is much larger, and Sony is going to have to come to that realization eventually. Everyone else has already.

Not for kids

[fistfullast33l]

I love how the same people that relish Nintendo's creative bent and defend it's games as not being made for kids bash Sony for the exact same reasons.

As for the charge that this is a kid's game, it isn't. Yes, it has pretty graphics and cute music. However, it also has dynamic content and world creation, something that the average 8-12 year old isn't capable of handling or caring about. This game isn't going to appeal to kids, just like Psychonauts didn't appeal to kids otherwise it would have sold more.

Looks like fun.

[MaWeiTao]

Actually, that game seems to me like it's going to be a lot of fun. I think good 2D platform games have been neglected as a genre for far too long. Not every game needs to be full 3D. The graphics are a nice bonus.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised by the tepid response. The guys are doing something a little different that at first glance seems to be fun. I guess it's because it's a PS3 game. If the same game were intended for the Wii I can only imagine that people would be lauded it as yet another example of ho

Re:

[earthbound kid]

I think it sounds interesting, and I applaud Sony for giving it a shot, but I wonder if this kind of game where you have to move things around on screen and customize them wouldn't be better if you could use a mouse or the Wii remote to do it. Moving stuff around with the sixaxis seems like it would be a bit more tedious. Also, the video of it I saw made it seem like there are a bewildering number of options available -- which would turn off non-hardcore players.

So, I want it to do well, I'm just skeptical

Um, mods on crack?

[earthbound kid]

Seriously, can someone explain why I was modded troll? I don't expect everyone to agree with me--maybe you think LittleBigPlanet will work fine on the sixaxis--but I don't see why I was modded troll. I even said I hope I'm wrong and that it does well since it sounds like an interesting idea.

Bizarre modding.

Little Big Adventure

[cibyr]

Why can't it be another Little Big Adventure game... Now I'm all disappointed.