“SACK IT TO ME”…Weekly Answers to the LBP Community’s Questions

Over the past weeks, we’ve been reading lots of forum posts, comments to blog posts and news posts and even heard questions coming into our consumer services hotlines. To better serve the community, we’ve decided to provide a weekly update on the hot topics and answer the burning questions you all have.

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…