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Planet Moon Blazes Trail Onto PSP For Smaller Developers?
Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with Aaron Loeb of developers Planet Moon Studios, the quirky developer that "was founded in 1997 by the Shiny Entertainment team that created MDK", has gone on to make console/PC titles Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Armed & Dangerous, and is now "devoting itself to the [Sony] PSP exclusively." Loeb justifies this arguably risky move to the "unproven terrain of PSP development" by suggesting: "The PSP will enable a developer like us to make cutting edge games quickly, alleviating the challenge all small developers currently face", and argues the kind of games that will be successful on the PSP are "Games that focus on opportunity game play. Games that are really fun to play right away. You get them immediately, they're cool, you play them for 15 minutes and you've got a very satisfying experience."
If this were Irrational speaking, or Bioware, or another proven creative team I'd believe them. But while Planet Moon hasn't really bombed on anything, they haven't exactly done anything groundbreaking either. Their two games in house, Giants and Armed and Dangerous, actually exhibit a progression away from creativity. A&D is fun and funny- I'm playing through it right now - but it's essentially the action levels from Giants stretched into one big game. Nothing in the game screams "creative" although I see no reason why it couldn't have.
I think what Loeb and Moon want is more chances at bat. They might get that, of course, but I think they're going to be surprised to find that creativity might as hard to pull off on the PSP as the Xbox and PC. If Sony locks in the specs they've been touting, it's not much less powerful than a PS2, so in terms of graphic design and what have you we're still working with a system that will require extensive development time. And, the PSP is portable. Right now anyway, the gameboy library is far more licensed than any of the console games. Creative games get passed over routinely because they're lost in the morass of subpar Mary Kate and Ashley and Finding Nemo games. What's more is that they may find the PSP a little more crowded than they're obviously hoping for. If it's the GBA kids that the PSP pulls, they'll want to play Finding Nemo 2. If it's the home console owners, they'll want to play Madden. There's little room for creativity no matter where you are in video games right now, but Moon seems intent on convincing themselves otherwise.
So, what I'm trying to say is that this seems like Planet Moon has talked themselves out of the possibility that they just might not be able to make groundbreaking games,. What Loeb is saying, essentially, is that it was development costs that stopped them from making their great game, not that they can't make great games.
Well, best of luck to them. I think that if they had that special creative spark within them, it would've shown up already.
Endnote: I'm not sure we can count MDK as some kind of creative track record. Dave Perry and Shiny worked on that as well and went on to work on the glorious testament to non-creative-ness that is Enter the Matrix.