LittleBigInterview

The Guardian Gamesblog has up an interview with Leo Cubbin, a Sony point man on the LittleBigPlanet project. They discuss the aim of the game, some of the challenges of balancing game fun and community participation, ways of ensuring that players contribute, and the future of the Game 3.0 economy. "The idea of creativity can be quite daunting to a lot of people. You give a blank piece of paper and a pen and say, "Be creative!" What do I do? People are looking for inspiration. With LBP we want to create a fuzzy felt experience, where we give the component parts to trigger the creativity. I don't think any of us as kids had a problem with cracking on and creating something when we were given a Lego set; it didn't really matter how it ended up. We're trying to give people the bare bones, and then we'll let them go." For more on the felt-and-imagination fueled title, Stephen Totilo shares impressions from Sony Gamer's day of the game. Complete with virtual puppet-slapping.

Comments

Game 3.0 economy

[Monokeros]

Game 3.0 economy???
Jesus Christ.

Game 3.0?

[Sparr0]

WTF is the "Game 3.0 Economy"? Did someone hear "Web 2.0" and think it was a cool buzzword to hijack?

Re:Game 3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you watch the video from when they announced this product, that's actually admittedly exactly what happened.

Re:Game 3.0?

[biovoid]

...that's actually admittedly exactly what happened.

Could you be more precise?

Poor pun

[faloi]

I want to make a comment about Sony being on the "Vanguard" of the Game 3.0 economy. But I know that would be wrong. Not enough to stop me, though.

Re:Poor pun

[aichpvee]

It's kind of sad that this is coming out for PS3. At least from the developer's standpoint. It seems like they want to get a lot of people using it, including more than just "traditional" gamers. But the PS3 install base is just too small. In fact, I don't see many of the people who would really get into a game like this even considering dropping $600 on a game console to play it.

Re:Poor pun

[DrEldarion]

Actually, I've seen quite a few people say, "There's not much for the PS3 that I want now, but I'll probably get one when LittleBigPlanet comes out."

Re:Poor pun

[cthellis]

How come so many people are of the "if this one game isn't enough to make you want to pay for the system..." ?

Single games rarely make someone buy a system. Is $650 too much to pay for LBP? Yes. Is $450 too much to pay for Gears of War? Yes. Is $300 too much to pay for Super Paper Mario? Yes. It's hardly ever one game that sells you on a platform, but is often one game that tips you over the "price-to-enjoyment" line, or sells you on the fun now, and promise of similar content later.

You have a BIT more of a case with LBP since it seems to run perpendicular to the usual "hardcore gamer" type the rest of the boxed games are selling to, but there are a heck of a lot of them who are interested in such games as well. And you'll be getting LBP and Home at basically the same time, which run along closer lines of interest. The PSN is filling up with more good, casual games and will continue to do so. It also, just simply, adds to and fleshes out their fall/holiday lineup, which is as strong as their current crop has been shruggable (excepting a few gems). That's good for everyone, no matter their gaming type. Heck, it might even attract many NON-gamers, who are more interested in getting an HD DVD player, and are more attracted to the PS3 because of it.

Basically, it's never important that "one game be worth the money," because it's so rarely the case. They'll usually "sell you into buying now instead of waiting later for more games to be out and price drops to be had, because that game is interesting enough to tip the balance."

How many people can honestly say they had ZERO interest in a platform and ZERO interest in anything but playing that one game when they make their purchase? It's all a part of a larger equation, which is usually bigger than people give it credit for, or even think about.

Re:Poor pun

[LKM]

I think you're wrong. It's often a single game that acts as a catalyst to get people to buy a console. For me, Wii Sports sold the Wii, and I bought a PS3 after I saw the first Little Big Planet demonstration.

The fact that I can also play Excite Truck and Zelda and Motorstorm helped sell the consoles, but in each case, a single game convinced me to get the console.

Re:Hey Zonk:

[joelkillspeople]

I lol'd

unfortunate!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was going to have something to do with Twinsen's Little Big Adventure!

doesn't look like it does.

Re:unfortunate!

[LocoMan]

Wow... I though I was the only one... I loved those games...

Re:unfortunate!

[nightgeometry]

I just have to add a big 'Me too!" here.

Re:unfortunate!

[fractoid]

Good day, I'm looking for a friend! She is escorted by two Grobo-Clones.

LittleBigPlanet vs LittleBigAdventure?

[AceJohnny]

I wonder if the name has anything to do with the old game Little Big Adventure (1994! I'm old!).

That was a great, cute, fun adventure game, and Activision had the bright idea of renaming it "Relentless" for the USA.

Hm. Burn, burn, Activision!

Re:LittleBigPlanet vs LittleBigAdventure?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

As an Little Big Adventure and operator of the Magicball Network I can tell you that Little Big Planet has nothing to do with Little Big Adventure.

Re:LittleBigPlanet vs LittleBigAdventure?

[Anonymous Coward]

I too thought it would be about Little Big Adventure. I've been let down completely. This story does not deliver!

Re:LittleBigPlanet vs LittleBigAdventure?

[Delta-NC]

As did I, gutted!

When will they give us LBA3!

Re:LittleBigPlanet vs LittleBigAdventure?

[ggambett]

Damn, I thought of Twinsen too.

By the way, any ideas about how to contact the current owners of the property? I'd love to port the engine to modern architectures. I did search a while ago but found nobody.

How about some actual commentary on the game?

[SuperKendall]

First of all, note it's not the Sony guy who used the Game 3.0 term...

I'm pretty excited to see Little Big Planet, I would love to see a lot more games embrace user generated content this heavily. It's fun to play with a really good physics engine with a good UI around it. The ability to import your own images or video for use in level creation sounds like it has interesting possibilities, and it sounds like they are thinking through the social aspect of the game very heavily.

The brief description of Home linked to also sounds interesting, but if there's no way to script it I'm not sure how interesting it can ever really be even when fully expanded and polished.

Re:How about some actual commentary on the game?

[JordanL]

No kidding... Slashdot is turning into Digg... a bunch of teenagers jerking to the idea of Gates in cellophane wrap and Sony being the most utterly pathetic thing ever that does things right even less than Microsoft. Even when they get it right.

If Slashdot and Digg both go the way of MySpace, where am I going to get REAL news discussion?

Re:How about some actual commentary on the game?

[bateleur]

If Slashdot and Digg both go the way of MySpace, where am I going to get REAL news discussion?

If you're worried about a tide of braindead new users turning up here just write a GreaseMonkey script to strip out all comments from users with seven digit SlashDot user numbers!

Of course, the resulting threads might not make a lot of sense... but that won't be anything new.

Twinsen!

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap, and here I thought we were in for a next-gen incarnation of Little Big Adventure.