02-25-2008, 06:33 AM
LittleBigPlanet is now fundamentally complete, in pre-alpha bug-testing and due for a closed beta trial in early summer for some final tweaking. After that, the real work begins – ours. That might seem glib, even a little like an advertising line (something similar will doubtless market the title) but it’s fundamental to any assessment of the game that hopes to play bridesmaid to the next level of user-generated content on home consoles.
In fact, previewing LBP might be considered an exercise in futility – it’s a game that can only be accurately assessed months (if not years) after release, rather than months before completion.
But that would be rather too precious. What can be seen of LBP is the structure being created to contain and inform this experimentation, and it looks to be as comprehensive as anything yet seen in a console title. The Pop-It menu essentially allows you to cut, paste and resize at will with any shape you choose or create, and can be accessed at any time in the game (barring certain sections of the ‘story’ levels where it would obviously render the challenge impotent).
This makes building what looks like a relatively complex object very simple indeed – the game’s producer has a party piece of a tree that can be built in around a minute by simply copying, resizing and stamping a basic shape over and over, before attaching leaves with drawing pins. The flexibility in manipulating, resizing and rotating the basic building bricks seems limitless, and the accessibility of the interface hides the depth behind a sheen of simplicity.
The more conventional side of the game is the ‘LittleBigStory’, with a basic narrative connecting over 50 levels to be played through with one to four players. Those players can be any mix of local and PSN sackboys, and each level only begins when each member is at the starting gate – it seems clear that, when the fundamentals are mastered, LittleBigPlanet’s basic levels put the emphasis on players racing each other to fluff (the basic pick-up for content creation in LittleBigStory) and to the next challenge.
The levels also now incorporate hazards that can ‘kill’ your sackboy, but death within the game is countered heavily by frequent respawn doors – it’s rare for all four players to fail at a single obstacle, so dying is more of a temporary inconvenience than an endpoint.
A new level was shown off at the recent CES, with an Indian theme running throughout, manifested most obviously in an LBP version of Ganesh and some bizarre sitar music. The former is as much part of the level’s architecture as it is the background, a recurring feature thus far. And although everything is made out of substances with particular properties, the developers are keen to emphasize that objects are not necessarily made out of what you’d expect – a tree is as likely to be sponge as it is wood.
These story levels also help fully unlock LBP’s content creation. “All the time you’re playing through this mode you’re earning stuff to help you create,” says Pete Smith, LBP’s producer. “So at the start you might have all of the tools but only have sponge and wood and brick in terms of properties you can imbue objects with – then after the first level you might get glass, because we really want to channel people towards the creation side and experimenting.”
The philosophy behind the content creation has stayed pure. LBP isn’t about a huge set of complex tools that each have a niche purpose – it’s about really basic tools that can be combined to form complicated objects. Players can make complex dynamic objects from the shared and simple starting items, and others can then take those objects and build on them.
“We’re not going to limit people,” says Smith. “We’re providing basic properties to combine, and the possibilities are pretty limitless. That’s not to say there won’t be quite a few basic tools to play with, and more as they’re needed by the community, but it’s amazing what people can create with just a cog and a piston.”
That emphasis on the community will also dictate the direction of LBP’s DLC. “We’ll be feeding the community our own content just as they supply it themselves – but we’ll be able to create specific stuff,” explains Smith. “The pistons and pulleys, for example, are the kind of thing only we can provide, and based on feedback from the community we can look at what they want and hopefully provide it.”
Beyond that, the tools exist to simply create things without a specific purpose – there is no need for it to have an in-game function or be part of an obstacle course. “I don’t believe that everyone who’s creative will, or will want to, build a level,” adds Smith. “They may just want to make a cool thing, and that’s great.” And in terms of distributing these items, you can simply create a room for people to enter and pick up the item.
Most excitingly, Media Molecule anticipates levels that act as hubs and simply point people in the direction of the best user created content: imagine a room with five doors, each one with a little screenshot and description of what’s through it. Those hubs will then become highly rated themselves and people will gain a reputation as good ‘sifters’, and become as important for the community as the creators themselves.
LBP has always looked like knockabout fun. But the clearer the structure being built around it becomes, and the commitment of Media Molecule and SCE to redefining how a console can work with user-generated content grows, the more obvious it is that LBP has the potential to become something remarkable. At the very least, LBP will be a novelty that is continually freshened. At its very best, it could set a new standard for involving a community in a game – and see an overdue return for Sony to the frontlines of videogame innovation.
source
It's a read, but it answers some questions we've had about the progress of the game and how complicated it might be.
In fact, previewing LBP might be considered an exercise in futility – it’s a game that can only be accurately assessed months (if not years) after release, rather than months before completion.
But that would be rather too precious. What can be seen of LBP is the structure being created to contain and inform this experimentation, and it looks to be as comprehensive as anything yet seen in a console title. The Pop-It menu essentially allows you to cut, paste and resize at will with any shape you choose or create, and can be accessed at any time in the game (barring certain sections of the ‘story’ levels where it would obviously render the challenge impotent).
This makes building what looks like a relatively complex object very simple indeed – the game’s producer has a party piece of a tree that can be built in around a minute by simply copying, resizing and stamping a basic shape over and over, before attaching leaves with drawing pins. The flexibility in manipulating, resizing and rotating the basic building bricks seems limitless, and the accessibility of the interface hides the depth behind a sheen of simplicity.
The more conventional side of the game is the ‘LittleBigStory’, with a basic narrative connecting over 50 levels to be played through with one to four players. Those players can be any mix of local and PSN sackboys, and each level only begins when each member is at the starting gate – it seems clear that, when the fundamentals are mastered, LittleBigPlanet’s basic levels put the emphasis on players racing each other to fluff (the basic pick-up for content creation in LittleBigStory) and to the next challenge.
The levels also now incorporate hazards that can ‘kill’ your sackboy, but death within the game is countered heavily by frequent respawn doors – it’s rare for all four players to fail at a single obstacle, so dying is more of a temporary inconvenience than an endpoint.
A new level was shown off at the recent CES, with an Indian theme running throughout, manifested most obviously in an LBP version of Ganesh and some bizarre sitar music. The former is as much part of the level’s architecture as it is the background, a recurring feature thus far. And although everything is made out of substances with particular properties, the developers are keen to emphasize that objects are not necessarily made out of what you’d expect – a tree is as likely to be sponge as it is wood.
These story levels also help fully unlock LBP’s content creation. “All the time you’re playing through this mode you’re earning stuff to help you create,” says Pete Smith, LBP’s producer. “So at the start you might have all of the tools but only have sponge and wood and brick in terms of properties you can imbue objects with – then after the first level you might get glass, because we really want to channel people towards the creation side and experimenting.”
The philosophy behind the content creation has stayed pure. LBP isn’t about a huge set of complex tools that each have a niche purpose – it’s about really basic tools that can be combined to form complicated objects. Players can make complex dynamic objects from the shared and simple starting items, and others can then take those objects and build on them.
“We’re not going to limit people,” says Smith. “We’re providing basic properties to combine, and the possibilities are pretty limitless. That’s not to say there won’t be quite a few basic tools to play with, and more as they’re needed by the community, but it’s amazing what people can create with just a cog and a piston.”
That emphasis on the community will also dictate the direction of LBP’s DLC. “We’ll be feeding the community our own content just as they supply it themselves – but we’ll be able to create specific stuff,” explains Smith. “The pistons and pulleys, for example, are the kind of thing only we can provide, and based on feedback from the community we can look at what they want and hopefully provide it.”
Beyond that, the tools exist to simply create things without a specific purpose – there is no need for it to have an in-game function or be part of an obstacle course. “I don’t believe that everyone who’s creative will, or will want to, build a level,” adds Smith. “They may just want to make a cool thing, and that’s great.” And in terms of distributing these items, you can simply create a room for people to enter and pick up the item.
Most excitingly, Media Molecule anticipates levels that act as hubs and simply point people in the direction of the best user created content: imagine a room with five doors, each one with a little screenshot and description of what’s through it. Those hubs will then become highly rated themselves and people will gain a reputation as good ‘sifters’, and become as important for the community as the creators themselves.
LBP has always looked like knockabout fun. But the clearer the structure being built around it becomes, and the commitment of Media Molecule and SCE to redefining how a console can work with user-generated content grows, the more obvious it is that LBP has the potential to become something remarkable. At the very least, LBP will be a novelty that is continually freshened. At its very best, it could set a new standard for involving a community in a game – and see an overdue return for Sony to the frontlines of videogame innovation.
source
It's a read, but it answers some questions we've had about the progress of the game and how complicated it might be.