Starhawk fans, we’d like to thank you once again for your support in keeping the battle for Rift Energy thriving online. The team is committed to keeping the servers maintained, and ensuring the war rages on.

If you’ve been following or participating in our Starhawk MLG tournament, you may be aware of the grand final that is going down today at 5:00PM PST. It’ll feature the Top 16 players from the PlayStation Hall of Play leaderboard, going head to head in a fierce “Best of 7″ match for their share of the prize pool — a cool $12,000 — just in time for a Holiday gaming shopping spree, no doubt. Second place will walk away with $6,000 — yes, it pays to join these tournaments!

Our good friends at UrgentFury.com will be hosting the live stream on Twitch at 5:00PM PST here.

This is going to be a battle worth watching. If you’re a Starhawk fan, be sure to check out the stream. Anything can happen…

Last week we released our massive Starhawk 1.04 multiplayer update, a ton of badass new free DLC, our multiplayer digital download edition, and our epic single-player campaign as a free download to PlayStation Plus subscribers including all of the multiplayer DLC free. If you haven’t signed up for PlayStation Plus yet, what are you waiting for? It’s a crazy good deal — not to mention it now includes a slice of Starhawk.

On top of all that, in a partnership with the MLG, we launched a major $20,000 Starhawk multiplayer tournament. The competition has gotten off to a fierce start as all Starhawk players are eligible, including you! To sign up, head over to the MLG GameBattles Starhawk website and mount up to compete for your share of the cash! After you sign up, all you have to do is get online in the ranked match frenzy and you’ll be entered. Easy!

Click here to compete in the $20,000 Starhawk MLG Tournament

Separate from the leaderboard tourney, MLG is also running four skill challenge weekends to ensure you always have a second chance at scoring some cash. And that’s where this gets interesting — these quick weekend challenges give everyone a shot at nabbing a $500 prize! Starting right now, the first of these quick challenges begins with a skill competition to see who can score the most knife kills. Score the most knife kills at the end of this weekend to top the leaderboard and you’ll win $500, even if you aren’t in the top ranks of the main leaderboard. Get online right now — the first quick challenge has been activated!

Click here to compete in the Starhawk Quick Challenge

To help you become a knife master, we’re continuing our Starhawk multiplayer strategy video series with an overview of the top on-foot weapons. Also be sure to watch our strategy videos focusing on Rift Energy and effective use of Zones.

We’ve produced a whole slew of new multiplayer tutorial videos covering every aspect of Starhawk. We’ll be continuing to release them weekly, so check ‘em out, then hop online and put your new skills to work!

Between the new updates, tournaments, community game nights and new video series, there’s never been a more exciting time to be playing Starhawk. So grab your Kinetic Rifle, dust off your hat, and we’ll see you in the New Frontier!

Yeah, you saw that right. We now have three, three ways for you to download the exact type of Starhawk experience you’re looking for on September 25th!

First you can get the complete Starhawk experience by downloading the Full version for $39.99. Another option — and this is an insane deal — is the Starhawk: Multiplayer-Edition for $19.99. This includes one of the best PlayStation 3 multiplayer experiences and all of the updates we’ve released since the game originally launched.

Last, but certainly not least, is a another killer deal for all PlayStation Plus members. You guys get the Starhawk: Single-Player Campaign for free. Yeah, that’s right, free.

And because I’m a tease, I’ll leave you with this: We have something else very tasty in store for PS Plus Members, so keep your eyes on the blog for another announcement very soon.

But wait… there’s more. As you know just about a month ago we released the Starhawk 1.03 Update that had a ton of new features, including two completely new — and free — maps on the planet of Cypress. The team and I were so stoked to see how happy the Starhawk community received it, that we’re excited to release our Starhawk 1.04 Update on September 25th with more free awesome-sauce, including three new gameplay modes!

Okay, so those are the new hella-fun gameplay modes, but there is a ton of other stuff in the Starhawk 1.04 Update as well. We’ve been following all of the community feedback and we’ve made a large number of changes. In my last blog post I wrote this massive wall of text covering all the various new things we added. So this time, I’m going to try and be more efficient on what should matter to you most.

• 3 New Gameplay Modes: Assault, Deathmatch Arena, Gatekeeper.
• 5 New “Small” Maps: Cypress Glade, Space Relay, Scourge Junction, Space Flotilla, Scourge Breaker.
• Updated pre-placed pick-ups on all maps (just like we did in Cypress) as well as updated Rift Barrel placement.
• 3 New Build & Battle Load-outs: Trooper, Lightweight and Speeder.
• New Tool-Tips are displayed on various options and buttons in the Uplink. including a display of all the units in each Load-Out and recommended player counts when you create a new game.
• MAW Rocket Launcher now can lock-on to the Sidewinder Jet Bike.
• Added four New national clan banners for our players in the Middle East: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE.
• Quit Penalty for players that quit during a game — you get a loss posted and SkillScore hit.
• New “Up Next” display at the intermission screen of what map, mode and load-out is coming up in the next round.
• More score-limit and time-limit options when creating a game.
• All three new game modes are added to QuickMatch for matchmaking.
• Co-Op Prospector is now supported in Quick-Match for matchmaking into public Co-Op games.
• New Co-Op Prospector options for creating Private or Public games, difficulty, and game name.
• Public Co-Op Prospector games now are supported in the server-list.
• Bug fix that ensures that only Clan Leaders/Officers can edit the clan tag field.
• Added a PlayStation Store button to the Uplink for accessing Starhawk DLC.
• Increased starting Rift-Energy in Homeworlds.
• Slightly increased the Galloway Pistol’s head-shot damage.
• Removed the “Bruiser” Skill.
• Added a “Grinder” Skill that allows you to start with a Grinder in your weapon inventory.
• Grinder wind-up time has been reduced.
• Max range for the Grinder has been increased.
• In the server-list, the easy “Cake” and medium “Fist” game icons have been removed. You will still see the hard “Skull” game icons.
• Refined difficulty tuning on all Co-Op Prospector Missions (slightly easier).
• Increased XP payouts for all Co-Op Prospector Missions.
• XP payouts for capturing Tier-2 and Tier-3 bases in the Zones gameplay mode.
• Integrated Starhawk-specific network scan to help players resolve port issues.
• Added in-game scoreboard HUD for Dogfight & Arena Deathmatch gameplay modes.

Blurg! Even with my super-effective condensing, the list of new stuff is still looooong — but that’s a good thing for the Starhawk community! If you want the extended version of this list with all the juicy details, head on over to our LightBox Interactive Dev-Blog or the official website at Starhawkthegame.com.

Oh man, still so much to talk about. Focus Dylan. FOCUS!

If you remember back in May when we released Starhawk, I wrote a blog post about our close partnership with Major League Gaming to put together a major Starhawk Tournament for the community with great cash-money prizes. Well our good friends at MLG have been hard at work and I am wicked-excited to say that it’s “GAME-ON” for the Starhawk MLG Tourney, with $20,000 in cash prizes. Head over to the Starhawk MLG site for all the rules and details! Whatever your competitive level, there is an entry spot for everyone, and a number of different opportunities to win.

The Starhawk MLG Tourney is a two-month long tournament with $20,000 in cash prizes at stake for not only the grand champions, so listen up. The primary tournament will revolve around an official Starhawk MLG ladder. The more you win across all online game modes, the higher you’ll rank on the MLG Starhawk ladder. At the end of this two-month phase, the top 16 ranked players will be chosen to form two “Super-Teams” who will battle it out in a live-streamed grand finale, with eight players crowned the victors of the Starhawk MLG Tournament!

As a secondary option for all players to win, the MLG has also been really cool about planning four mini-competitions along the way for smaller $500 prizes. These “quick challenges” will take place over various weekends and award players with the highest score for a particular stat such as “Most Headshots” or “Most Pod Kills.” This is a great way to increase a player’s odds of winning a piece of the big cash prize.

So, get ready for the Major League Gaming Starhawk Tournament, go hone your skills and keep your mind on your money and your money on your mind!

“But Dylan… what about Starhawk DLC?”

Don’t worry! While we have been focusing on making sure we get you guys all of the free content first, we certainly didn’t forget about the DLC — we have a truck load of it ready to go live for all of you on September 25th as well.

However, as I’ve already established in this blog post, I am sometimes a tease. So… I’m not going to list any of the DLC just yet. We’ll make another blog post about it very soon! Let me leave y’all with this one DLC hint. Here’s a piece of concept art showing a couple different design ideas for our new DLC Build & Battle structure. I’m not going to tell you what it does but I can say it’s awesome.

I wonder what it could be?

We didn’t just have a ton of fun making the War of the Monsters — we were very happy with how the finished product turned out. The game was ridiculously fun to play, and players around the world loved it! So when Jeff pinged me the other day to tell me that War of the Monsters is going to be released as a PS2 Classic on the PS3 I was crazy-excited. Of course, I wanted to write a quick post!

The first thing I did was dig through some of my old archives and find some really cool old artwork from back when we were developing War of the Monsters. The image below is something I put together during the game’s production to summarize the core combat mechanics in the game. We used it internally to make sure everyone on the team understood the basics of game’s combat. What’s really cool is that now, almost a decade later, you can look at this combat sheet and still get a quick overview of the game before you download it from the PlayStation Store tomorrow.

Here’s another cool image I found. It’s an early color comp I created to show the team how we were going to reference old movie posters to develop our color and lighting palette, and how we’d adapt it for our game environments. Man, I’m having fun digging through all my old files. Thanks, Jeff!

These were internal docs, so cut me some slack on their style. When you’re preparing materials for internal studio communication it’s often not as flashy or super-produced like you might see from a full-up marketing team. And hey, this stuff is almost a decade old!

Oh snap, check these out! These are the level-loading screens for each of the battles when you play through single player battle mode! These were all painted by a super-talented artist by the name of Owen Richardson, who also worked with Dave Jaffe and Scott Campbell on the new Twisted Metal for PS3.

Here’s another bit of trivia: Bet you didn’t know that I also did some 3D modeling on War of the Monsters too — back in those days everyone had to do a bit of everything! This is Preytor; I had a great time modeling and texturing him. He’s a massive praying mantis with a nimble fighting style, and one of only two monsters in the game with the ability to fly.

It’s crazy to look back on War of the Monsters and see those low-poly, low-res PS2 graphics — a reminder of how far we’ve come with the PS3. One thing remains the same though: great gameplay is timeless. Luckily, War of the Monsters is super-fun to play and holds up nicely. I hope you all download this PS2 Classic from your PS3 on Tuesday when the Store Update goes live!

And in case you were wondering, we are still totally hard at work on Starhawk! We have a ton of stuff ready for release very soon — including our 1.3 Update, which has a bunch of new features and fixes, as well as the awesome (and free) Cypress Map Pack! Here’s a sneak-peek at a couple screen shots of Cypress, but check back here on the blog real soon for a complete breakdown of the Starhawk 1.3 Update, as well as more in-depth info on the new free map pack!

Stay tuned and, as always, rock on!

• Android devices
• iOS devices

Once you’ve downloaded the Starhawk Uplink to your mobile device, you’ll find a wealth of information available on all of the player weapons, Hawk weapons, and Build & Battle structures.

The Starhawk Uplink app is totally free, and it’s a way for diehard players to always stay in touch with Starhawk. And for those of you who haven’t picked up a copy of Starhawk yet, you can still pull down this app and learn more about the game and the exciting community of Starhawk followers. Here’s a look at our Starhawk Uplink trailer…

Features include:

• Access to clan information: You can view your clan invitations, clan leaderboards and statistics, and search for new clans to join or challenge.
• View player and weapon stats: You can view your player and weapon stats from all of your online action in Starhawk.
• Track other players: Want to see how your stats compare? Look at stats for your PSN friends, clanmates, and other players you meet online.
• View the Starhawk leaderboards: See how you rank against your friends, clanmates, and the rest of the Starhawk community.
• Access Starhawk community strongholds: You can link to various Starhawk social sites, as well as directly link to gameplay videos and other Starhawk community-driven sites.
• Browse The Armory: An encyclopedia of information on all troop and Hawk weapons and Build & Battle structures.
• Stay up to date: Our news ticker and game announcements section ensure that you are completely up to date on all the latest and greatest Starhawk news.
• The Starhawk Uplink runs on the following devices: iTouch, iPhone 3G/3GS/4/4S, as well as all versions of iPad and Android devices, including the Sony Tablet S and Sony Xperia Play mobile phone and all Gingerbread Android devices. Kindle Fire support is coming soon.

Go download the free Starhawk Uplink and an edge over your fellow Starhawk players! Lastly, we just deployed another great balance update on PSN for our Starhawk fans around the world! To see all of the great stuff included in this week’s release of update 1.02.002, check out our latest LightBox Interactive developer blog here.

After our reveal of the Starhawk Minipack last week with some help from our friends over at LightBox Interactive, we are proud to be able to present to you these awesome costumes which will be available on the PlayStation Store this week.

The Starhawk Minipack contains the complete trio of costumes shown above and we can’t wait for these guys to land on LittleBigPlanet.

So in celebration of this release, we baked an extra special LittleBigPlanet Starhawk cake filled with all the goodness and sweetness that you can expect from us!

Doesn’t it just look so awesome and delicious?

Mm Picks

We start this week’s Mm Picks with a trip to beautifully designed Sunset Paradise and Grabby Gorge levels with their amazing eye-pleasing visuals. Following that we head to the Megachimia laboratory for Sackboy to try his hand at mixing potions before heading out into space in Gun Sack.

Finally we have a rather super keyboard tool that we created by Samson107, just head over to his level and grab a copy of it for yourself to solve all your typing needs when creating a level! He’s even provided everyone with a rather handy little User Manual to help you get started!

Sunset Paradise by Alpha24bauer

Megachimia (platformer) by Khodex

Grabby Gorge (Platformer) by Alley_Cat_8633

GUN SACK(1P Only) JPN by robot_k

LBP Keyboard and Font Advertisement by Samson107

LBP Keyboard User’s Manual by Samson 107

Grabby Gorge Level:

Community Highlight – LBPC Community Spotlight Team

The LBPC Community Spotlight Team work tirelessly to provide a new hub level every couple of weeks, containing a brand new batch of amazing levels that they want everyone to play! I’ve featured them on Sack it to Me previously and we will likely be hearing much more from them as they continue to release new Community Spotlight episodes in future.

Head on over to their latest hub level to see their latest community level recommendations!

LBPC Community Spotlight: Episode 85 by LBPCentralHub

In honour of their amazing efforts though and to celebrate their community spirit, we will be awarding the members of the LBPC Community Spotlight Team a Rare Prize Crown for their continued dedication and hard work in seeking out and featuring these great levels from the LittleBigPlanet Community! Congratulations guys!

Much More Goodness To Come!

We certainly don’t intend to stop there though!

There’s plenty more awesome folks on LittleBigPlanet who deserve recognition for their contributions to the LittleBigPlanet community, so be sure to keep an eye out in future for more awards and prize giveaways for people that truly embody the LittleBigPlanet community spirit!

Stay tuned for more information soon!

LittleBigPlanet on the Web

LittleBigPlanet Twitter – @LittleBigPlanet
LittleBigPlanet Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/littlebigplanet

LittleBigPlanet Community Team Twitters

Steven – @StevenIsbell
Spaff – @thespaff

Next week we will be releasing a brand new Starhawk Minipack containing a trio of costumes from the amazing game by the awesome folks over at LightBox Interactive.

To celebrate this release we have put together a cool new wallpaper for you all to enjoy!

Eagled-eyed blog readers will have noticed that there are only two characters on this wallpaper…Stay tuned later today for a post from our friends at LightBox Interactive, where they will reveal the third and final costume to be included in the Starhawk Minipack!

Mm Picks

This week’s Mm Picks include a delve into the platforming fun that is Water Caverns, the chance for Sackboy to have an out of body experience as he becomes a spirit in Ghosting and a few awesome mini-games for you to challenge your friends against!

Watery Caverns by ThePurpleWaffle

Ghosting (1Player Only) by PacJonno

Tiles by tevlon1

Bricker by DJD2010

Colortrain NEO [1-4 Player] by DeKa1357

Community Highlight – The Weekly Planetarium

Every week the incredibly dedicated folks over on LittleBigPlanetarium.com work hard to release a newsletter updating the community on absolutely everything that has been happening on LittleBigPlanet throughout the week!

There’s not a single news post, video or quote that they miss from the week’s news and they even have time to put together their own features and articles to make this awesome newsletter truly unique.

So head on over to LittleBigPlanetarium.com to read the latest scoop on LittleBigPlanet!

We’ll also be able to tell you more about some great downloadable items soon, including our first free map…Cypress. Stay tuned for details!

But, as I mentioned in my last post, the release of Starhawk is really just the beginning of our ongoing support for our international community. And to support our online multiplayer community we have some really great announcements for you all today. First, we’re honored that Major League Gaming has taken a strong interest in Starhawk with its blend of shooter and strategy gameplay, and they’re kicking things off right with a tournament worth $20,000 in prizes so get over to http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/starhawk and sign-up! And if you missed it last night, be sure to check-out the live stream that we did for the MLG Starhawk exhibition with pro gamers Tsquared, Hastr0, and GoldenBoyFTW! We cover single-player, co-op, and of course hot multiplayer action. Witty commentary supplied by me, of course ;-).

Secondly, and this is the announcement that you guys probably were *NOT* expecting…there was a lot of discussion here at LightBox Interactive and Sony Santa Monica on how best to support the community and keep our player base all together as one cohesive group. We really didn’t like how in Warhawk when we released a new map pack, it forced these divisions on our players. And after we released three expansions, our player community was pretty fractured. With Starhawk that ends! We are incredibly excited to announce that all map packs for Starhawk will be free. Yeah, you read that right…FREE. Whenever we release a map pack you won’t have to pay a friggin’ dime! And we’ve already started the early stages of our next map pack for you guys. Check out these very early sketches from the new planet of Cypress! A lush, swampy world that’s home to an abandoned research facility that many years ago was responsible for researching the mysteries of Rift Energy.

Now certainly we’ll have some paid DLC content in the future as well as our free map packs, but we’re still playing around with what that will be. We’re going to be looking to see what the player feedback is on Starhawk in the coming weeks to help steer the DLC that we develop for you all. This is our commitment to all of you, the players. I hope you all get a chance to enjoy Starhawk – not only with today’s retail release but for the months and years to come!

Tonight, MLG and PlayStation are bringing you an exclusive first look at tomorrow’s PS3 epic Starhawk with the Starhawk Arena Exhibition Powered by PlayStation. Starhawk is the spiritual successor to the PSone classic Warhawk. This third-person shooter allows online combatants to approach the fight in ways never before possible thanks to the all-new Build-and-Battle combat system. This new mechanic adds a layer of complexity to the battlefield that is constantly changing, and allows new tactics to develop as the match progresses.

In order to show off all the crazy action, MLG and PlayStation are bringing two pro gamers, Tsquared and Hastro, to the MLG Arena studios to get a first look at all the intense action. Tune in to the broadcast as these pros go through each element of the game, including single-player campaign, co-op, and the highly anticipated multiplayer modes. Acting as captains, Tsquared and Hastro will hop online to provide the first true showcase of competitive multiplayer action in all its glory.

The Starhawk Arena Exhibition Powered by PlayStation will be hosted by MLG personalities Chris Puckett and GoldenBoy, and will also feature President of Lightbox Interactive Dylan Jobe.

Of course, there’s more…throughout the show, PlayStation and MLG will be giving away tons of prizes and gaming gear to viewers. Be sure to follow @MLGAllAccess for your chance to win some awesome swag.

That’s it! Tune in to MLG.tv tonight starting at 5pm Pacific Time to catch all the action. (If you miss it – don’t worry, catch re-airs on Starhawk launch day, Tuesday May 8th at midnight and approximately 11pm.) Big thanks to MLG for making all this possible!