LittleBigPlanet jam

by ERIK LEIJON

LittleBigPlanet is a community-driven platform game for the Playstation 3 where anyone can create their own levels using the same tools the developers did and share them online. The game was developed in suburban London, England by Media Molecule, a small studio staffed by a couple dozen employees (the larger Montreal studios employ hundreds).

Last month, LittleBigPlanet’s executive producer Siobhan Reddy and art director Kareem Ettouney visited Montreal to talk to local developers about Media Molecule’s “jamming” style of working—where the designers brainstormed and fleshed out the game’s content in music jam-style collaborative sessions. With LittleBigPlanet’s selection of user-created levels growing continuously, Ettouney says the small team is now “jamming with the community.” Reddy and Ettouney jammed with the Mirror.

Mirror: Was it difficult designing level creation tools that ordinary people could easily use?

Kareem Ettouney: It was a case of reverse engineering because we created the tools for making levels before making the game. We wanted to make not only user-friendly tools, but we wanted to make the creative experience fun and the process un-intimidating. We wanted to invite people other than modders and the hardcore fans. First we created the tools, then used them in applications with our level and art designers, and gave feedback to the tool design department. It was a cycle: by using the tools to create the game, they could be refined for the time when LBP players would get to use them.

Siobhan Reddy: We knew from our own experiences, from QA and from our friends who had tried it, but we didn’t really know until the beta trials how the rest of the world would react to the creation tools. When the game went live, it was the most nerve-wracking evening, watching the number of players going up, and when created levels began to appear. Within the first 24 hours, there was good content and it’s gotten exponentially better since then, but right up until the end, it was a question.

KE: We like to think of LBP as a platform. It’s not a game that you release and bye-bye. It’s a community that we’re growing. The idea of jamming together to create LBP expanded to become a jam between Media Molecule and the community. The community makes levels, tells us what they like and what they want, and based on their suggestions, we try new things and the jam expands.

M: Are you shocked by what people have created thus far?

KE and SR: All the time.

SR: I’ve been amazed by the little things. People have found bugs in the game, like one where the stitching patterns [a type of background design] tend to disappear in the fog behind it, looking like they had been sketched on. Someone made an entire level out of it, which looks incredible, like a pencil drawing.

KE: There are a huge chunk of levels that I look at and I don’t even know how they did it, and we made the game.

SR: Our levels are examples of what people can do with the tools. The community has interpreted it in a totally different way than we did.

KE: Expressionism to me is like Lego. If you follow the instruction manual, you get a boat. Then one day Michel Gondry takes Lego, does stop motion animation with it, and suddenly there’s no limit to what you can do. What makes every single user of LBP relevant is the personal aspect. There are people who’ve made marriage proposal levels or homages to their girlfriends. It doesn’t have to be an incredible piece of gameplay. It’s yours and it’s important to you.