Interview With a Prolific LittleBigPlanet Content Creator

SlappingOysters writes "Ole-Marius Lakselv is going to be making games for a living, sooner or later. Under his PSN moniker of Geosautis, he has become arguably the most popular and famous LittleBigPlanet level maker in the world. His works, such as World of Colour and Haunted Mansion, are shining examples of what a talented user with a bit of time on his hands can build using LittleBigPlanet's powerful creation tools. Gameplayer has just interviewed him to get the full story on being an amateur developer making waves in LittleBigPlanet. The site has also awarded the game The Best Exclusive of 2008."

Comments

Good money?

[Bangmaker]

I have often wondered... Do these internationally known gamers that add to their games so much (the most amazing line rider maker comes to mind) get anything other than fame for their hard work?

Re:Good money?

[skreeech]

In the shooter game market some got good enough resumes to get paying jobs out of their free work. I do not know if anyone has made significant money retroactively for what they did for free.

Someone doing work that is wholly their own can get some success if people will buy it but someone working on LBP or in the mod community has no legal revenue stream from that work.

Re:Good money?

[Jabbrwokk]

Yeah, whatever happened to Minh Le? The guy creates the most popular Half-Life mod ever, which helped sell a LOT of copies of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 (people buying it for the Source version), and now appears to have vanished from the gaming scene.

I think that helps prove your point.

Re:Good money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Satisfaction, maybe? Happiness, perhaps? More than you can say for most real jobs, I'd wager.

Re:Good money?

[Thanshin]

To early to start checking and finding references but, weren't the people who made the counter strike mod payed to make the new counter strike source?

(or something to that effect)

Re:Good money?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the wikipedia page you posted yourself, it mentions that Le was then hired by Valve. I think that helps out someone's point.

Re:Good money?

[Chih]

As a moderator on the biggest Line Rider site on the net, I can assure you that the rider in question did get contracted by inXile to work on Line Rider: Unbound, recently released for the DS, Wii, and PC. I wouldn't know about the money, though, heh.

Re:Good money?

[joocemann]

In the shooter game market some got good enough resumes to get paying jobs out of their free work. I do not know if anyone has made significant money retroactively for what they did for free.

Someone doing work that is wholly their own can get some success if people will buy it but someone working on LBP or in the mod community has no legal revenue stream from that work.

Counterstrike started out as a free mod for half-life, which was originally developed by the guys who made the free mod for Quake 2 called Action Quake 2.

Both were awesome, and almost better than the actual orginal games! As you probably know, counterstrike took off to become a big commercial product and if those guys weren't picked up or paid off, it would be a damn shame.

Re:Good money?

[sortius_nod]

That was AFTER they made CS.

Re:Good money?

[skreeech]

I believe the largest contributor was picked up and probably got paid some for retail/steam CS because valve could change the terms the agreement that the mod was made under. I think Gooseman was the only crossover between AQ2 and CS though and really he just gifted gun models to AQ2 and that team went on to do other action mods for free.

Anyone else I can think of(Team Fortress people, Threewave, Splash Damage, mappers/modelers) would not have been paid for their hobby works that got them the job.

When you get in to smaller made from scratch games the success stories can get more interesting because the owner can decide to sell their product at any time. Apparently line rider, N+, and Flow would fall into this category where a free PC flash game was sold on consoles or handhelds. They could actually sit back and collect royalties without more work if they wanted.

Re:Good money?

[Canazza]

They all went on an made Left 4 Dead

Re:Good money?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Unless you're talking about Second Life, but that is ultimately a huge pyramid scheme where a few people at the top make money (those, and Linden Labs), while everyone else pays.

Re:Good money?

[dontPanik]

Well you see these people receive what is known as "internet moneys",
which they then must turn in for real-world money.

Re:Good money?

[elrous0]

But they've made millions and millions of theoretical dollars. Those are just as good as regular dollars...right?

Re:Good money?

[elrous0]

I used to think so too. Then I found out that my landlord stubbornly refuses to take satisfaction in lieu of cash.

Re:Good money?

[tlhIngan]

I have often wondered... Do these internationally known gamers that add to their games so much (the most amazing line rider maker comes to mind) get anything other than fame for their hard work?

Well, usually no money, just fame and personal self-satisfaction.

However it can add to one's portfolio of game development, if one plans on designing games later on. While people can do games by themselves in a garage and have it be successful, sometimes you need the resources of a company to do it, and this is a much better way to get the position you want, rather than start as a "QA Tester" or "code monkey" at the big guys. And Small indie game developers won't hire you unless you can show them your work. (Thus the rub - you can't do it all yourself (say, you suck at programming, or art, or sound, or whatever), but to show them your work, you have to do all that. Mods and created levels let you do that without all the other heavy lifting you may not be able to do.

The biggest complaint I have with LBP is that stupid "Copy" flag. Naturally no one sets it, understandably. However, it would be really, really, really nice if that was changed to an "Edit" flag, thus allowing people to cache a level locally. There are a number of good levels out there, and it would be a shame if Sony wound up deleting it. Being able to copy it locally would help, and the "Edit" flag would tell you if you could edit it. Also helps get rid of the delay starting it since it won't have to be re-downloaded over and over again.

Re:Good money?

[krakelohm]

Try not using your teeth next time.

Are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this guy more famous than the guy who made The Azure Palace? This is a crime against nature.

Content altering

[Parz]

The worst thing for LittleBigPlanet is the way that Sony have gone through and removed peoples content - many of which would have had hours of work and love poured into them. That is such a quick way to ruin user incentive. Even this guy, who is now indirectly acting to promote the game, has had his stuff altered and he doesn't even know why. That's terrible.

Re:Content altering

[skreeech]

The loss of effort spent certainly is a downside. Possibly in future creation based console games creators will at least be able to put their stuff onto a memory stick and share it that way.

Re:Content altering

[Sark666]

are you telling me you can't save your creations locally?

Re:Content altering

[necronom426]

You can save locally, and back your profile up to a flash drive etc. He said in the article that he doesn't even have a copy on his moon. Your moon is your local copy. Why he would delete it from his moon is beyond me, though you do only have a limited number of spaces.

Re:Content altering

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the worst thing for this game is Sony, period. Yes, the "delete with no recourse" thing is crap - apparently the official policy is that if anyone, anywhere, complains that it's offensive, it will be removed with no ability to respond. Which really isn't terribly surprising, considering they recalled the game because a few people complained about some words in a song.

But the fact that it's on the PS3 and not something like the Wii prevents me and pretty much everyone I know from being interested in this game. If it were available on the Wii, I'd get it in a heartbeat.

But it's not. It's stuck with Sony. And because of that, rather than getting cool downloadable content for free, you're expected to pay $2 to buy a costume that advertises another PS3 game. You pay $3 to get new level content to use in creating YOUR OWN LEVELS - they expect you to pay to create the very content they use to sell the game!

Its sales have suffered due to its ties with Sony. If anyone else were publishing the game, I might be interested, but as long as Sony is involved in any way with the game, forget it. It's not worth the pain.

Re:Content altering

[Gizzmonic]

This is a great comment. It's a shame that it not modded higher. By the way, if you can get everyone's stuff deleted, why doesn't someone abuse the system and request that everything gets deleted?

Re:Content altering

[Anonymous Coward]

By your logic, Nintendo is evil in my eyes because they wouldn't port Mario and Zelda to other platforms. How is that any different?

Re:Content altering

[fractoid]

The difference here is that World 3-2 didn't just disappear one day because someone 10,000km away from you complained that it was offensive.

Re:Content altering

[Anonymous Coward]

No ones complaining about Media Molecule levels disappearing, so your analogy isn't even close to useful.

If anything Nintendo would probably be more nasty with user created content than Sony is, given they're going for the 'family friendly console' thing.