Media Molecule's Alex Evans demonstrating LittleBigPlanet during E3 2008 

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote a piece for the "Global Literacy 2008" special edition of Newsweek magazine. In it, we argued that the Internet is the new sweatshop, by looking at properties ranging from YouTube to Spore that are being built on top of use-generated content. Since we could only use brief snippets of these email interviews in the print edition of Newsweek, we thought you might appreciate reading the game-related Q&As in their entirety. We previously heard from Spore Creator Will Wright and Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter; we conclude our series with Media Molecule technical director Alex Evans, whose upcoming game LittleBigPlanet is expected to ship in October.

What convinced you that it might be possible to create a successful console game primarily around user-generated content?

Games that involve/include some form of creativity have a rich heritage, and there are some great examples if you look back over the history of video games. Going back to the 8-bit home computer era, Shoot-em up Construction Kit was a great piece of software, and in the 16-bit era we had a whole genre of ‘God Games’ that used creative tools as a key game mechanic (Populous, Sim City, Theme Park etc)--the main thing that was lacking from these titles at the time was an easy way to share your creations with other people--which is where we have really gone to town in LittleBigPlanet.

The best thing about it is that you don’t have to create a single pixel to enjoy the experience--in the same way that you can enjoy websites like YouTube as a consumer of content, as well as a creator--just load it up, explore, and maybe, just maybe, get inspired to add your own creation into the mix. The cycle of people creating, and others playing, was something we were sure could translate into a console experience.

Based on your research and experiences, what are some of the factors that motivate people to create content and share it freely with others?

As mentioned before--YouTube is the perfect example--there are a lot of people out there, and a lot of creativity, add to this the fact that many people like to show off, others just like to have an audience or find likeminded people in the world and then provide a super easy way to share things, you’ve got a pretty hot mixture brewing. Another factor of course, for some people, is money--shared free content has been commonly used in many walks of life as a way to hook people in, get them addicted, and then start charging. When people ask us to define UGC (user-generated content), or what the audience for LBP might be, I always answer that anyone who has ever drawn on their school bag, or worn a pin on their lapel, or written a blog entry--all of these people are ‘creating’ in some sense, even if their motivations may be slightly different. LBP gives a unique chance to add interactivity to those ways that people can be creative, but taps into the same basic desire to express something.

Electronic Arts announced that within just a few days, 500,000 creatures have already been created using the Spore Creature Creator? Does this surprise you? Have you shifted your estimates on initial LittleBigPlanet based on this response?

They obviously got something right with the tools! It goes to show that if creating things is made easy enough, there are plenty of people willing to try it out--that’s exactly what we’ve been working hard on - getting the perfect balance between ease of use, and flexibility--if that many people have a go at publishing something in LittleBigPlanet, then I’m sure there’ll be some real gems amongst them. It’s going to be very interesting to see what people come up with--we’re getting surprised everyday with what people make in-house--things we just didn’t think were possible. So when it expands out to the community, there’s going to be some wonderful stuff emerging, I’m sure of that. We are hoping for a similarly large number of creations, so it’s a nice confirmation of the power of UGC rather than a surprise to hear about Spore.

Our particular take on user-generated content in LBP focuses on making the act of creation fun, in itself, which is something that websites like YouTube and Flickr have yet to tackle directly. YouTube doesn’t help you to make a video--it just provides a means of distribution. That element of creative fun is one of the reasons that I think a higher proportion of our players will upload original content, compared to the web 2.0 examples.

Are there any other advantages to building LBP around user-generated content besides the sheer volume of content that players will create? Do you have any plans for this content outside of the core game?

There were unexpected benefits, and obstacles, to the actual process of in-house development. The games industry consists of professionals trained effectively to ‘cheat’--to make it look like much more is going on than there really is, given the technical constraints of the game platform. The mark of a good artist, for example, is to make the minimum number of polygons convincingly convey a character’s face, or a building’s detailed architecture.

With user-generated content, our mantra had to be 'don’t cheat'--in other words, we can only build things that users could also build. Although this is a surprisingly hard constraint to stick to, it has the huge benefit that our internal toolchain--tools being the make-or-break ingredient as far as game development goes, and the reason for the flourishing middleware market--were necessarily very simple and fast to iterate.

In fact, we treat all of 'our' content as user-generated content--with all the attendant benefits. We can edit everything in-game, live, with no expensive pre-lighting or visibility computation or ‘compile’ steps that would typically take hours in a traditional pipeline. So we actually ended up being a more agile team, better able to deliver lots of content even with a very small team.In terms of plans outside of the game, well, we will have to wait and see. I think Sackboy as a character, for example, has been fantastically well received and I would love for him/her to become an iconic character on the PS3. That certainly would help us find interesting ways of expanding the LBP universe and the content within it.

How important are tools and taxonomy to successful user-generated content?

Absolutely vital! Lots of answers to this question :-) We can’t really comment on Spore in detail, but certainly there were lessons learnt during the massive iteration we did on our tools. As games creators we can choose to implement UGC in a variety of ways--a whole spectrum that balances simplicity with flexibility. By analogy, it’s the difference between Apple’s Garage Band and Logic, or Photobooth vs Aperture. As game developers, we subconsciously err towards the complex and flexible; but the lesson we kept re-learning during development of LBP was that the sweet-spot--where the tools are just complex enough to allow that explosion of possibilities and creativity , but simple enough that they are fun and accessible--is further towards the 'simple' end than we first thought.

What similarities and what differences have you observed between the tools in Spore and the tools in LBP?

Despite the fact that Spore approaches UGC in a different way from us--both in terms of what you can create, and the platform it runs on (mouse vs controller is a world of difference!), even the audience it targets--despite all of those things, I’d hazard a guess that they’ll have been through a similar process of simplicity/flexibility balancing. Regarding taxonomy, well, this applies in a number of areas but our take is that there are lots of mechanisms that the web successfully uses to help users find the content they love. We’ve chosen tagging, user-based rating and automatically generated 'related' and 'recommendation' suggestions to keep a stream of fun content in front of the user at all times.