In our second "Playing in the Dark' column for the U.K. magazine Edge, which appeared under the title "Halo 3.0: From Bungie's Lips to Phil Harrison's Ears," we explored the parallels between the approaches to user-created content in Halo 3 and LittleBigPlanet. Of the latter, we wrote:

The slogan for LittleBigPlanet is 'Play, Create, Share', and it captures not only precisely the right elements of where games must go in the future, it lists them in the correct evolutionary order. Because if the act of creation itself isn’t playful, if it isn’t entertaining, then only the most motivated of people will bother to actually make anything....From Media Molecule, I’m hoping that the company will release expansions that offer two other perspectives--top-down and isometric--thereby turning LittleBigPlanet into the complete 2-D game creation tool.

From the first moment we laid eyes on LittleBigPlanet, we've been mildly obsessed about where Media Molecule could and should take its inspired game. So when the developers let journalists go hands on at the E3 Media Festival and we got to see how easy, intuitive and powerful their tools were--right down to its bolt-based system for adding simple physics to the various objects that users could build--it dawned on us that Media Molecule was in the process of building the ultimate side-scrolling construction kit, a belief that was furthered when rumors began to circulate that the creators were also developing a system for enemy behaviors that users could integrate into their level designs. So we said to ourselves, if LittleBigPlanet can do all of this for side-scrollers, how difficult would it be for Media Molecule's engine to support the two other 2-D game perspectives: top-down and isometric?

The implication of this suggestion, which we only flicked at in the Edge column excerpt above, is that LittleBigPlanet could rapidly become the ultimate 2-D videogame creation tool. Think of our LBP 2.0 as the console equivalent of Word, HTML, Photoshop or Blogger. Amateur designers could build up their skills by recreating, in the LittleBigPlanet engine, classic action and action/adventure games from the 2-D era--Pong, Asteroids, Zaxxon, Pole Position, Contra, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy Tactics and more--before turning to brand new visions of their own. They could easily collaborate with one another using LBP's shared creation space. And they could freely exchange their work using the game's level-sharing features. All of the pieces would be in place for the definitive 2-D videogame maker, thereby spreading the principles of 2-D game design and many of the necessary tools to a wider audience through the vehicle of a simple, playful, powerful interface. In fact, it is this simplicity that will be an essential part of driving LBP's success; as we wrote in our Edge column:

Another insight both [Media Molecule and Bungie] share is that amidst the massive flexibility on offer, each made a wise decision that narrowed the scope of what users can create, for the better. For LittleBigPlanet, which actually lets you design levels, it’s that while the objects and the world are 3-D, the perspective it’s all viewed from is 2-D. Creating 3-D worlds well is a very, very hard thing to do; after all, if it were easy more of us would be pulling down architects’ salaries. By restricting the game to a 2-D perspective, LittleBigPlanet eliminates the need for us to mess with a camera, which prevents us from being disoriented and which in turn makes the game accessible to a much wider audience.

With the prevalence of 2-D console games continuing to diminish, a more robust LBP 2.0 that encompassed the full range of 2-D perspectives could help foster a grassroots DIY phenomenon, propelling 2-D game design beyond the ranks of the AAA professionals or the dedicated indie game creators and into the ranks of the motivated amateurs . Because if we could make a game as easily as we can write an essay, create a Web page or stitch together a slide show, what kinds of games might we see?  Would they be more topical? More experimental? More political? More nostalgic? We won't know until the game ships, but we're dying to find out.

As for the Level Up faithful, we'd like to hear from you. What kinds of games would you make in LBP 2.0? What kinds of games would you want to play? Let us know in the comments below.