Postcards from Leipzig: LittleBigPlanet team

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More Games Convention 2008 now, straight outta Leipzig. I just received this update from Pete Smith, Senior Producer of LittleBigPlanet.

leipzig postcard LBP

Day 1
We’ve arrived for the first day at The Leipzig Game Convention and I’ve been blown away by the PlayStation stand – even though I say so myself it’s the best thing here and considerably bigger than the other stands. Within the stand, the LittleBigPlanet area is buzzing – we’ve got 25 pods with the game on and they’ve been full all day long. We’ve had a crowd before we let the public in, so we’re expecting some queues. THERE IS a special 3 pod area set up for Danny, Jim and Craig (the designers from Media Molecule) to show off the Create mode from LittleBigPlanet. They’ve been doing an awesome job at showing just how crazy this part of the game is.

I’m sure some people saw the Sony press conference where I was demonstrating the game – I was interrupted by a famous comedian from Germany (although I’d not seen him before) and he did a good job at making my presentation more ‘entertaining’. Apparently he asked me my name and my response was ‘hello’ – perhaps I need to brush up on my basic German.

The main thing to report is that the game is very popular indeed! Whenever we do a demo, people start playing and creating they don’t seem to want to leave! Everywhere you look around the LittleBigPlanet area you’ll see people laughing as they’re playing, which for me, is the best thing ever.

LittleBigPlanet @ Leipzig

Day 2
Uh Oh! The public have arrived! It’s much more busy than yesterday, the guys from Media Molecule are working their socks off demoing constantly. There are over one hundred seats available to play the game from and every one is occupied – plus there’s a queue.

Once again, everyone is really enjoying themselves. The level we’ve chose to demo is the construction site from the Metropolis theme and it’s pretty tricky, people seem to be loving the challenge, and there is plenty of laughter as SackBoy gets it wrong on numerous occasions!

Danny, Jim and Craig are looking exhausted!!! I would be too after demoing non-stop for 2 days! They’re talking about getting an early night, which I can’t say is surprising, however I’m going to take a look around the rest of the show – some of the booth babes are demonstrating some really interesting games…

I saw the SackBoy on the side of the tower block last night – it looks ace! LittleBigPlanet is absolutely everywhere, our team in Germany have done an incredible job.

It was also good to see Rag Doll Kung Fu being demonstrated today! That was the original concept behind LittleBigPlanet believe it or not! Look for it on PSN soon!

LittleBigPlanet @ Leipzig LittleBigPlanet @ Leipzig

Thanks, Pete! Still more to come from Leipzig !

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112 Comments

  • @62, AMEN!!! STFU you little whiney useless tools, please, just shut up!!!! You’re going to have every grease tool sittin there shooting out cruddy levels to fill up server space AND bandwidth AND you complain… shut up.
    Either all you lil whiners are xbotts or your just twitts, bandwidth from continent to continent is expensive, all of which you lil jaggas’s don’t have to pay for. . . D o n ‘ t h a v e t o p a y f o r . If you don’t like it don’t buy it, and for god’s sakes, STOP WHINING ABOUT IT YOU LITTLE BRATS!

  • SONY please put in a vote button so we can kill these obsessive complainers… PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Oh and you’re not complaining? (pointing at post 107) I wonder who’s the biggest whiner, all these people together who have a right to share their opinions and complaints since THAT’S what this blog is for to direct them to SCEA…, or… you alone :-P

  • I mean it as a joke MSplatter, just to make that sure. Lighten up, there’s too much other stuff to worry about than to mind what other people are saying. Just ignore it then.

    I agree on the read-the-posts-before-you-post-comment. Most of the times when I answer a question like for the 4th time in the same blog, it feels like I’m writing it only to myself :-D

  • @ 107 & 108 (MSplatter)

    It’s Not Called Complaining!! :P

    We have Consirns about things that Someone on here might have a Answer and sometimes us blogers might have that answer to one of them.. :D

    It’s called geting along and enjoying the Gaming Life were one Big family in this Gaming world so have the most fun as you can ok ;)

    ON TOPIC: I preordered Little Big Planet about over a week ago I think it might of been 2 weeks lol I forget :D

    Skater_Ricky, 8)

  • Jesus christ, are you the kind of people that just sit there and do nothing when something you don’t like happens?

    Power to the people! Let your voice be heard!

  • Chinese Big Wing Bird

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  • I don’t know if anyone knows it yet or not, but LBP is region free.

  • Dear Media Molecule,

    I am sure this letter will get lost in the shuffle, ignored or initiate an automatic “Thanks for your interest in Little Big Planet” response, but in the off chance that it will do any good, here is my letter…

    I have been an ardent follower of Little Big Planet for some time. I’ve played it at game conferences. I’ve watched the videos. I’ve read the reviews. And I have driven friends and family up the wall with my near incessant fawning over it. There is no question that in my gaming life (since Atari 2600 was “cutting edge”) that no game has ever had me as remotely excited to play it than LBP. No question.

    In particular, I have been especially excited about the “Create” and “Share” aspects of the game. As someone who has been illustrating even longer than playing video games, having gone on into a successful career in both graphics arts and audio production, the ability to customise my character and create my own levels has been an exceptionally big draw for me. And after watching the interviews where the developers said how excited they were to play the levels made by the gamers who will be able to use “the exact same tools” to create and decorate their own levels, I knew I would be in for a treat.

    But as of late, several issues have come to my attention which are causing me to become a bit concerned.

    First and foremost, it seems as though the ability to make my own “stickers” will be confined solely to images which I bring in from the PS Eye, and not from the HDD as has been said in the past. This is particularly distressing because not only do I somehow doubt that the developers who are using “the exact same tools” to create and decorate their levels brought in their stickers from the PS Eye, but I know that the quality of an image I bring in will be constrained to the limitations of the camera (i.e. compression, inherent degradation of quality of direct image versus photograph of image, potential file size limitation, image dimension / ratio, etc.). I am extremely troubled by this.

    I can understand that the PS Eye would create images using only one compression scheme, colour palette, etc. But why not just state that in order to import your own images they must be 8-bit RGB JPG files no larger than 400 x 400 pixels and 100kb or less? Other games which allow for image importing (for even less powerful systems, like the PSP) from non-standardised methods have been able to do this. I can also understand that the distribution of user-generated content means the potential (and probable) headache of copyright infringement from applied source material. It’s doubtful in the inevitable Donkey Kong level that gets created that Nintendo would be too happy seeing their intellectual property scanned and distributed in a Sony game. So locking out image importing from the HDD might help cut down on the number of people who would simply pull an image off the Nintendo site and drag it into their level. But what is to stop people from doing so via holding up a print-out of the same imagery in front of the camera? It’s not as if it will end up being of any greater image quality than the materials we *will* be allowed to import which we have created ourselves.

    Secondly, I am curious about the depth of character customisation options. I know I can “apply stickers” to my sackboy, and I know I can choose from a wide variety of costumes – but will I actually be able to use the same Boolean operation tools on 3D objects to construct shapes which can be implemented into costumes? For instance, let’s say I wanted to make a samurai character. (I realise that there may already be the costume components to generate one, but for the sake of this argument pretend there is not.) I have 3D experience and am confident I can use the tools to union / intersect / punch / etc my way into the next life a set of objects which would render a decent looking samurai helmet for my sackboy. Am I going to have the option to be able to do this, or will I be confined to the costume options offered at the game’s launch, and the inevitable downloadable content which will follow? I had asked about this at Tokyo Game Show last year, and was told I could, but having recently heard all character customisation discussion limited to sticker application and pre-defined content selection, my fear is increasing that I will not be able to do this.

    Thirdly, and this is similar to the image import point, I am curious if we will be able to import our own sounds in any fashion. I distinctly remember seeing a video within the last couple of months of a custom level where a sackboy was on a hand-car and moved past stacks of cubes which each had a drum machine sound applied to them, which moving past them caused their sound to be triggered. A quaint little beat box drum pattern was then audible, with varying tempo according to the speed at which the sackboy passed each respective set of blocks. This short video had me exceptionally excited, as I can think of a lot os use for this for the types of levels I want to create.

    All three of the previous points are quite important to me, as they are all intimately related to the “Create” and “Share” aspects of the game. As a professional “creator” I have not only the tools to bring in my own content, but the strong will to do so. While I have little doubt that the supplied content will be of the highest quality, I am a finicky bastard and will probably grow very quickly tired of the options which will be available to me. And seeing as how I have been reminded time and again from interview after interview that I can use the same tools that MM has to make the levels and customise my character, if it turns out that this is not really the case, then I am going to be extremely disappointed.

    I am sure regardless of the outcome that LBP will be a highly enjoyable game with a lot of room for creative expression absent from 99.9% of the games which are out now and for the foreseeable future. However, when I am told about features X, Y and Z as being core elements to the game and become excited about those – enough to the point where I consider my most highly anticipated game of my life – then the removal or alteration of these specific features is understandably going to make me quite upset.

    Hopefully my fears can be put to rest.

  • LittleBigPlanet!!!!!!! can’t wait..

    one question tho.. is it october yet :)

    …..

    ….

    How about now?

    …..

    ….

    and now?

  • You don’t tell Sony what to do, Sony tells you what to do!

    Awesome stuff

  • I SOOOO WANT A SACKBOY/SACKGIRL PLUSHIE!!! I WOULD PAY $50 FOR ONE!!! PLEASE MAKE PLUSHIES SONY! :D

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