Archive: 5 posts

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A few interesting tidbits of info I thought I would pass along. Ceativity Feb. 10, 2009 (http:////creativity-online.com/?action=news:article&newsId=134482§ionId=creativity_50) U.K.-based Media Molecule's first game, Little Big Planet, created exclusively for the Sony PS3, caused such a stir at the 2007 Game Developers Conference that Sony decided to give it full-on flagship status. Why the ruckus? Essentially, Media Molecule's new game placed development in the hands of gamers. LBP revolves around Sackboy, a Mario-like character if the chubby plumber were sewn by your grandmother with yarn. The idea is simply to collect as much as possible and explore. The key to the game's success, though, is that users are able to design, play and share their own levels. User-generated levels are shareable online, giving the game a seemingly infinite number of possibilities. And it's not just adding player-created window dressing into existing gameplay. The UG-levels can actually change the way the game is played. Another innovative approach the studio used was not to give gamers a B-grade set of design tools, but the same engine from which it developed the game. As for the game's innovative style and platform, it helped that "the five founders all come from different creative backgrounds, and thus from different angles whenever it came to creative direction," says Alex Evans, co-founder of the three-year-old company. "It's the intersection of those ideas that makes LBP what it is." Evans says that the company's biggest achievement was assembling LBP's 30-person team and actually delivering the offbeat game in its current form. "The number of games that are started and never finished to quality is depressingly high," says Evans. "It took a lot of agonizing re-thinking, throwing away and recreating to actually get the thing shipped. And many, many people inside and outside of Media Molecule?most notably our EP Siobhan and our producers Pete and Leo from Sony's Ex-Dev group, helped us keep sight of that finish line." After a hype-filled build-up, the game was released late last year to critical raves and multiple plaudits at gaming industry shows. Next up, Evans says MM will only continue to broaden the LBP platform by putting even more power in the hands of gamers, "producing expansions and content, some of which we know will be quite large and hopefully even shocking?which appeal both in a 'macro' way, to players, but also in that 'micro,' leg-brick way?as fuel for creativity of the LBP community. LBP is going to evolve, a lot." Evans, on where he'd like games to go: "We founded Media Molecule around a very clear vision of future games: the idea of 'creative gaming.' I think games, over the next few years, are going to broaden?both in terms of audience, but also in terms of what they try to do creatively. So, the scope for us to explore 'games that beget games,' or that lower the bar for people to express themselves through their console or PC, is just going to get ever richer. Of course, that is in parallel with the break-neck evolution of the hardware and (most importantly) the integration of games into more social forms of technology, like the web, or services like PSN, Playstation Home, or Xbox Live." IGN (http://ps3.ign.com/articles/955/955859p1.html) DICE 2009: LittleBigPanel Media Molecule's Alex Evans gives us an inside look at the creative process behind LittleBigPlanet. by Chris Roper February 20, 2009 - LittleBigPlanet was a huge winner at the DICE awards this year, and Alex Evans was not only on-hand to accept all of the awards but give a talk on Media Molecule's design process and what the studio went through during its work on the game. He began by talking about how when the studio began its work on LBP, it didn't have a good way to describe the game. Even pitching it to Sony was difficult, though a rough but playable technical demo was able to convey the game's basic controls and physics-based interaction. As Media Molecule worked on the game, it made it a point to film the various team members playing with the game at each major milestone. By the time the game was fully up and running, it had a ton of ideas to go back and look at and then implement into the game. While Evans still doesn't have a very definitive answer as to whether using middleware is better than coding everything internally or vice-versa, he said that having the engine built internally rather than licensing something made it so that the team was 100% familiar with how it worked and what it was capable of doing. He also mentioned that Media Molecule has been kept small even to this day in order to foster a tighter culture. Communication and sharing ideas was a huge component of what made the game great. Evans talked about the importance of being able to reset and restart entire elements of an in-progress game to eventually arrive at what works. For example, the creation tools underwent a number of massive changes before the studio finally settled on the Popit mechanic. The original bit had you using tools in the game to build and edit - a shotgun blew holes in objects, a hairdryer melted things, etc. Evans said it was fun, but not nearly precise enough so it was scrapped. The next iteration that was shown in early GDC demos utilized a Cross Media Bar-esque interface, but that proved to feel too patched together and awkward to use. After scrapping that, the Popit was born. Evans closed out the panel by stressing the importance of creating something that your team loves as it will help drive them, and to make sure you have utmost belief in what you want to create and do whatever it takes to get there, regardless of how difficult the process might be. G4 Live Blog (http:///g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693400/Live-Blog-DICE-2009---Alex-Evans-Media-Molecule.html) Live Blog DICE 2009-Alex Evans- Media Molecule Posted by Brian Leahy - Friday, February 20, 2009 12:17 PM Time to hear from Alex Evans, the co-founder of Media Molecule, about LittleBigPlanet. Alex snagged eight awards last night at the AIAS Awards. He'll be talking about what they did with LittleBigPlanet and the "experiment that continues." He's upset that he has to follow Todd Howard's awesome talk. 12:17 PM - Alex was asked about how he pitched the game to Sony despite the fact that he couldn't explain the game. The member of the press suggested that they refer to it as an experiment. Alex will cover the chaos of Media Molecule's origin, the lessons learned from shipping the game, and its experiences with user-generated content. An early name for the studio was "Brain Fluff." Alex and his team didn't know if it could succeed, but they were arrogant enough to know that they had to try. Alex will now show the original demo video that was presented to Phil Harrison. It's very rough with hand drawn graphics, but it's the essence of LittleBigPlanet. Alex still finds it hard to explain the game to people that haven't yet played the game. At the end of development, the guys at marketing had to figure out how to sell the game to consumers. In Europe, they used the game itself to create the advertisements. The commercials work because people that aren't gamers are interested by the title. 12:24 PM - Now it's time to build the team to make the game. During early development, the team would film their experiences to chronicle the process. Time to watch a montage of this footage. Sorry guys, this is turning into another visual presentation. During development, Alex found that they reinvented the wheel too much. Media Molecule refuses to use middleware and other technologies that are not built in-house. Alex believes that middleware integration is only as good as the quality of the team's organization. The reason that programmers keep re-coding things and re-inventing the wheel is that code is easier to write than to read. Interesting. What went right with LittleBigPlanet? You have to remember that you're making a fun game. It's not enough to have the game be playful. The game has to be made in a fun and playful way. This comes across in the game and you feel like the team enjoyed playing the game. Alex knew with a small team they couldn't compete with larger teams to make a epic, story-based narrative. The team decided to code everything from scratch and do it all themselves. This allowed the team to stay small and focused. 12:33 PM - Media Molecule segmented its team into aspects. One team was for the engine, another was character design, etc. Alex then decided to take something from Valve Software and made sub-teams to cross-pollinate ideas. This works with a team of 30 people, but not with larger teams. It gets very chaotic. Alex doesn't consider UGC a new idea. This started back on arcade cabinets with spray paint. You have SimCity. You have the game creation kit on the Commodore 64. All these were big inspirations for Alex. Alex saw themselves fitting in with games like Line Rider, Spore, and Boom Blox. Alex would swing between "Is LBP a game? Is LBP a tool?" Sony told them that there needed to be a core game experience before leaving it up to the users and their own content. A big turning point really came with the creation of the Sackboy that is currently in the game. After Alex shipped the game, they received an e-mail from a children's hospital that was using the game to have children express their emotions with the in-game Sackboy (using the controllable facial expressions). 12:39 PM - Conclusion time: Whatever you do, follow your instincts. "The only way to motivate your team is through the project that you & they work on." - Christophe Balestra, President of Naughty Dog Studios. Keep it simple. At points during development, there were several items for Sackboy to use, such as guns and similar things. The stamping and Popit came about because testers really enjoyed the sticker mechanic in the early game. The team developed the levels and content on the actual PS3. They had PC tools to help out, but they had a goal that any changes made on the PC in code, art, etc. had to update live to the PS3 in under a second. They kept it very simple. During the hiring process, they wanted to hear potential employees critique games. During interviews, they were asked to pick a game off of the shelf at the office and destroy it or love it. They were judged on their understanding of that game. What does user-generated content give you in the end? "Epic pain." Although Alex found that players put a lot of personal investment into their UGC. During the public beta, they saw high-quality levels within 24 hours. They always planned to ditch the content, but 89% of players wanted to keep the content. In the end, "have powerful people who are willing to put their head on the block to take a risk on an idea that simply satisfies their instincts. Alex's patent pending plan for guaranteed AIAS award winnage: 1. Make a (hopefully) great game where all the judges of the academy play it with their kids. 2. ?? profit! 3. ?? 4. Replace those question marks with: DO SOMETHING YOU AND YOUR TEAM LOVE.

2009-02-22 14:43:00 Author: BurlapSackBoy Posts: 310

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Thanks for these, there are a lot of cool things I didnt know! The original bit had you using tools in the game to build and edit - a shotgun blew holes in objects, a hairdryer melted things, etc. Lolz I like the sound of that but I dont see how It would have worked either. Alex will now show the original demo video that was presented to Phil Harrison. It's very rough with hand drawn graphics, but it's the essence of LittleBigPlanet. I really want to see that video! Maybe its that yellowhead thingy. After Alex shipped the game, they received an e-mail from a children's hospital that was using the game to have children express their emotions with the in-game Sackboy (using the controllable facial expressions). D= Wow!

2009-02-22 15:22:00 Author: Leather-Monkey Posts: 2266

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I have kinda have an idea I want to sketch and send them. I bet they get hundreds of ideas sent in so why not?

2009-02-22 22:17:00 Author: BasketSnake Posts: 2391

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I really want to see that video! Maybe its that yellowhead thingy. D= Wow! Here it is: HQLDNmllbiU&feature=related

2009-02-23 14:18:00 Author: BurlapSackBoy Posts: 310

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Yeh it was what I thought, thanks for posting that vid, I havnt seen it in ages!

2009-02-23 15:34:00 Author: Leather-Monkey Posts: 2266

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