LittleBigPlanet, developed by Media Molecule and published by Sony Computer Entertainment
After the results of the Game Critics Awardswere
announced two weeks ago, we reached out to several winners for
their reactions and some updates about their games in progress. Media
Molecule's LittleBigPlanet triumphed in two categories: Best Console
Game and Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game. We emailed some questions to
Mark Healey, creative director at Media Molecule. Here's what he wrote
back:
Last year, LittleBigPlanet won Best Original Game. This
year, it won Best Console Game. Do you feel as though you've graduated with
this year's win? Were you surprised that LBP beat Rock Band 2 and Guitar hero
World Tour for best Social/Casual/Puzzle game?
It's always nice to win
things--and these two awards are especially cool--but the fact the these are
awarded to an unfinished game is quite scary--it shows that there is a lot of
expectation for LBP--but luckily we're all really proud of what we've created
here at MM, and I'm sure we'll more than meet people's expectations. Once it's
out there, and it starts evolving, that's when the fun really begins...
How have you gone about recruiting other developers inside and
outside of Sony to create levels in LittleBigPlanet?
Well, internally, everyone
here is constantly dabbling with the creative tools--it's hard to get any work
done sometimes, as it really is a lot of fun--there was a whole day when
everyone was trying to outdo each others ‘tanks' - the final winning beast was
an incredible feat of engineering. As for people outside making stuff
pre-launch, there's lots of exciting things happening, Sony have been great at
organizing this stuff--I can't spill the beans right now, but there are some
pretty prestigious people getting involved!
Journalists and developers alike have been excited for
LittleBigPlanet since its inception. What do you need to do to build similar
excitement among traditional gamers? What about non-traditional gamers? Will
there be a demo?
It's always been hard to
describe LBP to people, and the way to win people over has been to let them
play it, so a demo is essential in my eyes. We hope that simple word of mouth
will play a big part--once the community starts getting stuck into what is
possible with the creative tools, I think it will be hard for people to resist
coming to check out the LBP universe...
What is left to be done before LittleBigPlanet ships, and
how do you plan to approach post-launch support for the game?
Before
it ships, we have to find all the bugs we can--it's an incredibly complex and
powerful piece of kit we are unleashing, and we want to be sure everything
works as it is supposed to! Post launch, we want to nurture and contribute
towards the community as much as possible, and expand LBP in whatever direction
it feels like it wants to go. It's really quite a big experiment. I can't wait
to see what happens.
