Available Tuesday 5/25…

…for LBP (PS3):

• ModNation Racers ($1.99) – To celebrate the release of ModNation on Tuesday, May 25th, we’ll be releasing a special ModNation Racers “Tag” costume for your Sackboy w/ some extra stickers to make your level tributes to ModNation!

…for LBP (PSP):

• SackCircus Costume (FREE) – Who doesn’t love clowns! Especially Free ones. Head on over to the PSP store and grab this free costume from the Sack Circus Extravaganza Pack
• Sack Circus Extravaganza Pack ($2.99) – Available this Tuesday, download a new set of costumes and CREATE materials to create your own LittleBigPlanet PSP Islands levels! The extraordinary Sack Circus Extravaganza Pack offers 4 fantastic costumes, and 12 great new stickers to give your levels all the razzmatazz they need.

Also, if you missed the announcement last week, don’t forget to check out the super-duper cool Turbo! Level Kit available for LBP PSP. Tons of great new vehicles to fill your LBP PSP worlds with.

LittleBigChallenge

Need a bit of help from our LittleBigCommunity. Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere – we’ll still be here to provide community updates on all things LittleBigPlanet. Whether its community, new items, random internet findings, we plan to bring it to you…but as our audience gets bigger and bigger, and with LBP2 on the horizon, even bigger and broader, we’re looking to re-name our “Sack-it-to-me” posts to something better!!! Any ideas? If you do, add them to your comments below…

Here’s you chance to win a PlayStation PSP 3000 system!

• The MacArthur Foundations’s LittleBigPlanet Kids Competition has been extended to May 28th. If you’re below the age of 18 and want a chance to win a new PSP. Click on over for more details

• PlayStation HOME – We’ve been having so much fun in the new LittleBigPlanet HOME space, we wanted to make sure everyone knew to drop by PlayStation Home to check it out. Make sure you jump in and play the “Snap Happy” challenge and make your own XMB wallpaper!
• Sackboy in ModNation Racers – We just got copies of ModNation Racers in the office and can’t wait to start Racing, Creating and Sharing. I’m sure you all know that in specially stickered copies of ModNation, you get a free voucher code inside for a Sackboy costume + Craftworld Kart. And while opening our copy, we realized there was one more freebie not mentioned…the actual sticker from the wrapper :)

• Mm Doodling – the MediaMolecule staff is a sneaky bunch and managed to capture fellow Molecule, Rex, in the doodling zone. Love the video!

Happy third birthday, LittleBigPodcast! Three years ago, our friends Daniel and Austin started a small podcast dedicated to LittleBigPlanet. And now, 146 episodes later, The LittleBigPodcast has a special birthday episode, and a special “Sack-it-to-me” video just for us…

Latest Media Molecule Picks

This weekend, be sure to play the lastest “Mm picks” chosen by Media Molecule themselves..

FreeFallin’ (3D Skydiving)
Add it to your Queue: http://lbp.me/v/7vdd14

Losing Things
Add it to your Queue: http://lbp.me/v/0e6hdm

Dark Force (Co-op sword action-RPG)
Add it to your Queue: http://lbp.me/v/06y4zb

And thanks to aoinko2012, MrShuanji and GameplayFlicks for capturing these vids.

Speaking of picks…

Check out LittleBigPicks’ latest guide on other new levels you have to play this weekend. Great stuff, guys!

A Vote for Sackboy is a Vote for Victory

Be sure to support LittleBigPlanet 2 in this season’s GAME OF THE YEAR nominations (but only if you think we deserve it…)

Spike VGA’s Best PS3 Game.

MMGN’s Best PS3 Exclusive of 2011.

Actiontrip’s Game of the Year 2011 – People’s Choice

TIPS GALORE!!!

With a new batch of gamers getting the Game of the Year Edition and getting their feet wet into LBP‘s create tools, Mm just introduced a new Tips video on their site to help you maintain your Thermometer:

And for those of you that missed it, here are links to the previous two tips videos:

Switches

Survival Challenges

COMMUNITY LEVELS!!!

First off, apologies to a few people for miscredits on Monday’s SITM:

- PSN ID: CuzFeeshe deserves proper credit for his brilliant level highlighted on the last post – If you haven’t checked out “Destiny!” yet, do so now.

- Also, last Monday’s level highlights were provided by our community at LBPCentral! Thanks again guys for Monday’s (and now today’s new) levels.

This week’s levels come from our friends at LBPForum.net.

Lightbringer by Trindall

“Lightbringer! a wonderous adventure level set in a bygone epoch. From the moment you wash up on the strange haunting shore, right through to your final confrontation with the Nemisis that has ravaged this once picturesque land, you will be enthralled and intrigued. Great atmospheric design, evocative inspiring dialogue combined with accessible puzzles and a unique gameplay mechanism wherein you advance by relaying the light to combat the forces of darkness and desolation….this level will stay with you forever.” – EnochRoot.

Lightbringer part 1.

Lightbringer part 2 and part 3.

PS3 GAME OF THE YEAR – USER SPOTLIGHT

Now that the Game of the Year Edition is available, many of you are discovering the amazing levels that are created and shared by users just like you. Over the past few weeks, we spent some time with a few of the users (whose levels are featured in the GOTY edition) and wanted to start spotlighting them. Here’s the first:

Thanks Tony (for both the level and the interview time)

LBP PSP UPDATES

• IGN: PSP Games of Fall 2009
• Kotaku LittleBigPlanet PSP Preview: PSP Platforming At Its Cutest
• Destructoid Preview: LittleBigPlanet PSP
• IGN: LittleBigPlanet PSP Character Design School

SACKBOY IN THE NEWS!

TGS 2009:

• PSX Extreme: “29 Years” Required To Complete All LBP Content
• Examiner: LittleBigPlanet to Support New Motion Controller

GOT FREE DLC???

Our friends at Sony Wonder are celebrating the launch of their new website highlighting hundreds of entertainment options including new movie trailers, info on the latest Blu-ray and DVD releases and fun games and activities for the whole family. As part of the celebration, they’re giving away FREE voucher codes for the LittleBigPlanet Norse Mythology Pack.

When you get a chance, check out what’s new over at Sony Wonder and get your hands on some new Sackboy Costumes. Sorry World, these codes only work on the North American PlayStation Store (US + CA).

Enjoy!!!

ATTN: North American WATER BETA PARTICIPANTS

Finally, for all you lucky North Americans that were accepted into the Online Water Beta and eagerly waiting for your invite….check your mailbox early next week, we had to settle a few technical issues, but its sorted out and we can’t wait for your participation.

Well, we just returned from CES and it was great talking to all of you that attended and came by and chatted with the LBP team – myself, Leo, Eric & Chuck. We had a blast playing some of your levels and talking real-time. We’re also glad you enjoyed the Metal Gear Solid packs and new Street Fighter characters as we love hearing that feedback. We’ll spotlight a few levels that we found / you told us about while at CES on another post…

Sack it to me – 1/14/08

Mm blog updates
Level Rankings – Now that the in-game level rankings are working, Mm has provided a quick guide on ranking protocol.

Mm Picks – is continuing with their weekly highlights of levels they’ve found. Check out the latest batch.

Viral Crazyness
First our LBP fans created the commercials, then a slew of dancing videos, then their own versions of popular machinima videos, unique ‘top ten ways to die in LBP’ and now…their take on popular viral videos!!! As LBP fans ourselves, we’ve been beside ourselves with all the user-generated videos / machinima appearing on the web. Extremely funny stuff…keep it up, keep it clean and keep it legal…and you may find a Prize Crown in your in-box…

Great new fan sites & communities
Thanks to all of you making fan sites for LBP, we’re honored. One site has really grabbed our attention, LittleBigPlanetoid. They have tons of updates & feature articles, including a very thorough DLC FAQ. Great stuff.

Also, in addition, to our own LittleBigPlanet forums, another active community is quickly growing over at LBPforum.net. We’re glad to have you.

“Full Profile”
We’re still seeing comments about this on the forums and thought it was worth mentioning again. For those of you experiencing the “Full Profile” message – because the issue revolves around the amount / complexity of the community objects in your Popit tool, your best bet to avoid this message is to delete a chunk of unwanted objects from your inventory to free up your profile.

Upcoming DLC
We’re getting ready to start another year of DLC on the PS Store at the end of the month – we’ll have a better update next week. Again, thanks for your patience – we needed the rest over the holiday break. Also, we saw all your comments asking for the previously shown Killzone “Helghast” and Final Fantasy VII “Sephiroth” costumes. Don’t worry, it’s on its way…BTW…when does Killzone 2 come out?

Upcoming Updates
As mentioned last week, Mm is hard at work to continue to improve the online experience in 09. We’re testing the newest update now and will let you know more as we near release. Also, wanted to assure you that we didn’t forget about “Online Create Mode” and the Play / Create / Share counters – it’s on our list to “check off” (hopefully soon)

Its been a while, but we’re back with our normal Sack It To Me programming with all your LittleBigPlanet news…

WHEW…what a week! As many of you have already heard, we’ve officially announced LittleBigPlanet 2 with a Sack-tacular event in MediaMolecule’s neck of the woods and the media response has been tremendous. And by looking at all the comments and responses by the community, we can tell you guys are just as excited as we are.

Some of our favorite quotes from the press…

“And, when the game ships and we start to see what the game’s dedicated community comes up, we’re prepared to have our minds truly boggled.” – IGN

“Our goal is to melt all of your brains,’ said Evans at the start of his presentation, and given the wealth of new content and features Media Molecule showed off, he just about met that goal.” – GameSpot

“…it almost seems unfair to call it a sequel. It’s a full-scale evolution in the world of user-created content.” – Game Informer

And finally…“Here’s my advice: watch the following trailer then close your Web browser because the Internet won’t get any better today. It’s the debut trailer for LittleBigPlanet 2 for the PS3.” – CrunchGear

And some from our fans on the PlayStation Blog…

“Great, now I have to pick up all the little pieces that were my brain off the living room floor. This is going to take a while” – thepatriots

“Wowzers is the only word that is appropriate” – Imputed7-14

“For some reason I felt tears were about to be shed from my eyes.” – spazjin

And the LOL comment…”There in our base, killing our DUDES!!!!!!!!” – DZORMAGEN

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…..

More Animals! Costume Kit for LBP PS3 ($2.99) – You loved the first round of our Animals costumes so much that you’ve demanded more, and we listened! Grab the costume kit to get all 4 costumes (Hippo, Turtle, Peacock, and Fly) and save. You can also grab each one individually for $0.99 each.

Wilderness Costume for LBP PSP (FREE) – Get a sneak peek of what’s in the Wilderness Theme Pack with this FREE costume!

Wilderness Theme Pack for LBP PSP ($2.99) – Download a new set of goodies to create your own Wilderness themed levels. The Wilderness Theme Pack includes 5 Costume items, 13 CREATE Materials, 15 Stickers, 1 Music kit, and 1 Background.

Jungle Sackfari Explorers Costume for LBP PSP (FREE) – Get a sneak peek of what’s in the Jungle Sackfari Explorers Theme Pack with this FREE costume!

Jungle Sackfari Explorers Theme Pack for LBP PSP ($2.99) – Download a new set of costumes and CREATE materials to create your own Jungle Sackfari levels! The Jungle Sackfari Explorers Pack includes 4 Costumes and 12 Stickers.

NEW THIS WEEK……

Turbo! Level Kit for LBP PSP ($5.99) – Put the pedal to the metal with this massive vehicle-based pack. Race, battle and bounce your way through six completely new levels. And the fun doesn’t stop there, with hundreds more bits and pieces to fill your Popit, you can create turbo-powered vehicular contraptions of your very own.

Download a new set of levels to PLAY, as well as all of the CREATE materials you’ll need to create your own Turbo! levels! The Turbo! Level Kit includes 6 Levels, 121 Collected Objects, 28 CREATE Materials, 112 Stickers, 20 Sounds, 6 Music files, and 1 Background.

Digital Media and Learning Competition – WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

A while back, the MacArthur Foundation announced their competition to reimagine learning of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math to young people across the world. In recent days the winners have been announced so click on over to learn a little bit more about the winners. CONGRATS GUYS!!!

Calling all Kid Creators

Also recently announced – The Game Changers competition! If you know some brilliant young LBP’ers, please spread the word about the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition. Gamers up to 18 years old are invited to submit a new level and a chance to win a special prize. Click on over for more details…

Finally, wanted to send out a big THANK to everyone helping to spread the LittleBigExcitement. So here’s a quick THANKS list – w/ links so the rest of you can catch up on all the online reading…

“THANKS!” – New York Daily News, USA Today, TIME, MTV, 1UP, CNET, Wired, PC World, UGO, Destructoid, Game Informer, GamePro, IGN, GameSpot, GameSpy, G4TV, GiantBomb, Paste Magazine, Joystiq, Kotaku, GameTrailers, GamaSutra, CrunchGear, Family Friendly Gaming, Monsters And Critics, Crave Online, Attack Of The Fanboy, Blast Magazine, GeekSugar, Gaming-Age, VG247, PlayStation Lifestyle, Total Video Games, Digital Chumps, Worth Playing, Kombo, PSX Extreme, Ars Technica, 411 Mania, Push Square, Gaming Target, Siliconera, Cinema Blend, Gaming Union, Examiner, VGRevolution, and the many others not on this list!

Also THANKS to our many fansites for help spreading the word like, LittleBigLand, LBPCentral, LittleBigNetwork, LittleBigPlanetGalaxy, LittleBigPodcast, and the rest of our community leaders.

Til’ next week…

Hey everyone, Mick Perona here…just wanted to say hello, introduce myself, and welcome you to this week’s Sack It To Me post, The “Community” Edition. And speaking of community, as part of the LittleBigPlanet marketing team here at SCEA, I’ll be guiding my Sackboy as he bravely traverses the interwebs so we can bring you all of the bits and bytes no proper SackPerson should be without! So without further adieu (get’s out Popit and fastens a “Ta-Da!” sound to this level)…

Community Levels

HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Contest Update

As part of our collaborative effort with HASTAC and the MacArthur Foundation to encourage students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math in new and revolutionary ways, we thought you’d enjoy checking out the latest entry for the “Game Changer’s” category. This nifty community creation was submitted by the same LBP community members that made the popular “LittleBigContra” levels. It’s titled, “To the Moon and Beyond,” and to announce their project, they’ve released a trailer to give us all an insight of what’s to come:

User Spotlight

PSN member gevurah22 has another great level to share with the LittleBigPlanet community. He’s just finished a proper sequel to “Azure Palace” but this time, with water levels!
The first part is called: “Knights of the Azure Palace – Part 1.” Check out the trailer here.

Not only can you play this level, but additionally, LBPCentral is also hosting a contest for all you Sackboys and Sackgirls that includes the chance at winning these cute little guys:

Click on over to LBPCentral and check out the contest details.

Workshop of the Week

Every month, the LittleBigWorkshop forums hold a themed level create contest, and the winner is bestowed with the ultimate desirable, the one and only Rare PrizeCrown. There are still two weeks left to enter February’s contest, which is themed around Valentine’s Day, and requires entrants to build a two player co-op level. And even if you don’t win, what could be more fun than sacking about with your Valentine?

Not to worry though, if you want more time to build something SackTastic, the contest will start all over again on March 1 with a new theme, and again every month after that.

Sackboy on the ‘net

Over on LittleBigPlanet.com they’ve posted some great concept art that went into the making of LBP. Below are just a few of our favorites, click on the pics to visit the full gallery and enjoy!

I thought it would be fun to kick off the year by celebrating some activity on our fan sites:

Over at LittleBigPlanetGuide.com & LBPCentral.com – a bunch of us refreshed our desktops with new Sackboy wallpapers created by the fans.

Our friends at LittleBigLand.com just concluded their Pod Decorating Contest – congrats to Sackguy96 for winning!

At Sackcast.com, the LittleBigReviewers have just announced two new contests, which could reward you their cool-looking LBR trophy.

Check out the January contest details in this quick video.

LittleBigPodcast continues in 2010 with their “New Year’s Edition” (short and simple to kick things off).

Do you have snow nearby? Check out the Sackboy Snowman created by someone over on the EU PlayStation forums. It might give you an idea or two if you’re out and about in the snow…

Haven’t gotten the Pirates of the Caribbean DLC yet? Check out this ‘talkthrough’ of the Water level from BludgaBoy to get the rundown. Then head on over to the PlayStation Store and download it today!

First off, wanted to introduce “Sam_Protagonist” to everyone. He’s our global community manager for LittleBigPlanet and our eyes and ears for all things community. You can find him interacting on the EU and US forums providing updates to the community. Keep a look out for his forum posts and occasional LBP News Site posts for the latest updates.

So for our first installment of ‘SACK IT TO ME’ – we’ve decided to summarize some of the major topics the community wants answered…

Moderation
The level moderation process is something we’re continually improving. The small percentage of levels moderated have been done so after the community has reported them using the Good Grief tool. We never moderate levels that have not been reported in this way. The vast majority of moderated levels were due to offensive material, however we are evolving the way moderation happens to ensure that creators are made aware of why their level was blocked. More to come shortly.

Servers
We hope you’ve noticed that over the past few weeks, we’ve been working away and our servers are now much improved – from the updated scoreboards to the connection speeds. Just know we’re constantly looking to improve the experience and your feedback has been very helpful. Additionally, below are a few online stats for your viewing pleasure:

• # of user generated (UG) levels = 177,657
• # of comments = 1,093,491
• # of times Story levels have been played online = 36,661,881
• # of times UG levels have been played online = 22,463,892
• # of levels played online = 59,125,403

Play Create Share stats & Search Functionality
Now that the servers are stable, we’ll continue to improve the “Share” experience. We’ve heard your requests to get better search functionality to find levels and getting the PLAY, CREATE, SHARE stats up and running on the Info Moon and have put this on the top of our list. So stay tuned for a few announcements

In the meantime, there are a few ‘other’ ways to find some cool levels:

• LBP Review League (US Forums)
• LittleBigPlanet Stages (an un-official list on Facebook)
• “10 LBP levels you have to play” (GamesRadar.com)
• “Top 50 User-Created LBP levels” (UGO.com)
• Search for LBC1 levels and help judge the first LittleBigChallenge: PS3 Second Anniversary

LittleBigChallenge: PS3 Second Anniversary Updates
We’ve been excited to see all the posted “LBC1″ level submissions for our first in-game LittleBigChallenge, so much that we wanted to share a few of the ones that caught our eye. After reading the forums, looks like we struck a nerve with a few of you thinking these updates are unfair publicity to the selected. Wanted to re-assure you that our intention to highlight a few of these levels, is to celebrate the creation of a variety of levels from a variety of creators – NOT to indicate any frontrunners or winners. Judging is completely separate from these updates and the evaluation of these levels will take into consideration a creators creativity, game design, innovation, use of tools, etc – NOT just “hearts” and “plays”.

As an insight to the evaluation process, we plan to first collect the formal e-mail submissions, list out the levels w/ various stats (on the server side), then have our judges spend a few days to play thru and judge levels and award the top 5 creators for this challenge.

Also, check back on Friday where we’ll list out the submissions-to-date, so you can spend the weekend playing the Challenge levels.

Day 1 T-shirt
Finally, some of you are wondering what happened to the Day 1 T-Shirt mentioned in the past. This was available in other countries for (equivalent of) $4.99, but we decided to hold back its availability in North America as we evaluate if such a unique item (RARE + $4.99 + time-based) is appropriate for our PS Store. There may be other RARE items like this in the future, so check back on future DLC announcements.

… We hope this answers your current batch of questions. Comment away below and let us know what else questions you want answered for next weeks batch…