DIY format a real game-changer

With ‘Little Big Planet’, gamers had infinite scope to craft their own games and build an ever-expanding community. So why do we need a sequel?

ON PAPER, a game that asks you to create games might sound like a chore. But Little Big Planet 2rekindles a childish joy in arts and crafts, offering you the tools (regardless of your technical know-how) to build a game with unique themes, imagery and challenges.

The games work as traditional titles in their own right, with arcade-style game-play and narrative. But the hook is the ability to create your own levels, and upload and download them with the Little Big Planetcommunity. The first Little Big Planet(or LBP) sold in excess of four million copies, and user-generated levels exceeded three-and-a-half million.

New levels are created for LBPand LBP2every day. So how do you make a sequel to a game that had infinite content? "You make it even more infinite," grins Mark Stephenson, a designer for the game's developer, Media Molecule.

James Spafford, community manager for Media Molecule, continues: “There were things left undone and we wanted to make it easier for people to build whatever they wanted. What we saw when we put it out . . . we thought people would make platform games, but people made shooters and music levels and puzzle games and all these kinds of things, but they couldn’t do it properly, so we wanted to give them the tools to be able to do that.”

Media Molecule couldn’t have asked for a better focus group for their sequel: LBP has an enormous online community to talk to. So what did they learn? “What didn’t we learn?” says Spafford. “Everything they did, we fed back into the game; everything they tried to do but couldn’t, we’d work out a way to do it.”

" LBP2would not exist without the LBP1community," adds Stephenson.

Irishman James Rath is a fan of Little Big Planetwhose creations went on to be used in LBP2's European TV ads. "People like me and the rest of the community took LBPand fired everything we wanted to them, like a giant want list," he says. "And they responded. That's what LBP2is."

With a game of this scale and reach, there were inevitable cultural trends in user-created levels, with local pop culture and news events playing a part in the new creations.

“I’ve seen loads of Japanese levels where you can jump into a big robot and destroy a big city,” says Stephenson. “When a cultural event happens, like when Michael Jackson died, there were numerous new Michael Jackson levels. If anything happens in the world, or even if it’s localised, like the Irish levels, within hours there’ll be something.”

Rath chimes in: “For example, I’ve created a level where you’re the last leprechaun defending your pot of gold from the politicians and bankers. They’re coming in trying to steal your gold and you’re fending them off with rainbows. It’s just fun craziness, but also throwing in a bit of current affairs.”

Apart from being a user-friendly game construction kit, the LBPgames had additional, sometimes surprising, educational benefits. Stephenson nods, "Yes, we are very interested in pushing LBPto schools and game schools, to encourage people, especially kids, to create. We worked on a few things with LBPbut hopefully that will expand now that we have more easy-to-use tools. We use simple logic."

"Just last week," Spafford says, "I spoke to an electronics teacher for A-levels, and he couldn't get the money to always have practical electronics sessions with students, so he was planning on taking LBP2and putting it in the classroom. And then he'd have a more practical way of building something that didn't work properly and having them rewire it. All the electronics stuff in the game is real electronics, and you can feel that it's fixing something, rather than doing something theoretical on a piece of paper.

“We also had a music teacher who was thinking of putting it in a classroom for people to use the music tools, and I’ve spoken to numerous people who use it as physics demonstrations because it has real physics. So yeah, it’s out there and people are using it to teach.”

And wasn’t there funding released in the US to use it as a teaching tool?

“Yeah, true fact!” Spafford confirms, “Congress have worked to try to get it in every library across America. I love that it’s an educational game.”

Stephenson beams. “I love that. I love seeing young kids coming up to me and saying ‘I want to be a game designer’. I love that things that I’ve learned at school like logic and physics, I can see that in the game and it helps me. They’re learning stuff [in the game] that they’ve learned in school early on in life.”

The Little Big Planetgames aren't the only ones that ask their players to use their imaginations. Create, which is available for numerous formats, allows gamers to paint, decorate and augment the game's levels, and even combat games such as Halo have a "Forge" facility where gamers can invent their own virtual arenas.

While TV was described by Groucho Marx as chewing gum for the eyes, modern games are demanding more from their fans, and, in return, they’re offering them a new opportunity to express themselves.

" LBPopens it up to 10-year-olds who build their own levels, says Rath. "You just see nice things like kids making an 'it's my mum's birthday today' level. Somebody proposed to their girlfriend on this game, so that was a cool thing to see."

"I think what was out there before was that you could make your own games," Spafford says, referring to previous, more technical game-construction kits, "but the tools were like bricks and mortar and timber and you had to be a builder, to have some knowledge of things to build with. LBPis more like Lego: just play and have fun and the building itself is fun. You're playing as well as creating."

Little Big Planet 2is out now for PlayStation 3