Media Molecule to try out new ideas, stepping away from Little Big Planet
Little Big Planet was a gift, developer Media Molecule gave to the world, but now it seems the company is set to turn its attention on to some other projects.
Siobhan Reddy, the Studio Director at Media Molecule, announced while speaking in Barcelona, “We’re stepping away from Little Big Planet to focus on some new ideas.”
Little Big Planet was an instant hit among fans of every genre, as the light hearted platformer and its instantly loveable character, Sack Boy, became both a gaming icon and a benchmark for future games.
The Play, Create, Share concept introduced by Little Big Planet, is now becoming an industry wide trend, as an increasing number of games are now following that concept. ModNation Racers is a prime example of how Little Big Planet changed the gaming landscape.
However, while the in-game physics engine was solid in the first game, and improved in the second, the thing that gamers hooked to the series, apart from Sack boys and Sack girls slapping each other around and pulling each other off ledges, was the fact
that players could create their own levels from scratch and upload them for the world to play.
In fact, over a million user-created levels have been created on both Little Big Planet and, its equally successful sequel, Little Big Planet 2. The second game allows gamers to create their own genre of the game as well, ranging from Real Time Strategy
(RTS) to side scrolling shooters and platformers, from sports games, like soccer and basketball, to racing games.
The range of tools available to the user were virtually unlimited, yet at the same time simple enough to pick up and use, with enough depth to pull off whatever the gamer wanted.
When one considers the fact that Little Big Planet will never run out of content, as long as players keep creating and sharing, the news that Media Molecule is thinking of ‘new ideas’ is not as bad as one thought initially.
All Media Molecule did was release the game, release an odd patch or update and sit back and watch the game literally grow itself in terms of content. So for the developer to sit back and do nothing would seem a waste, seeing how they are responsible for
a gaming revolution in their own right.
It will be interesting to see what the new ideas are. Will MM go for a more conventional, mainstream IP or would they continue the philosophy of Play, Create, Share but in a new and creative way.
However, Media Molecule have confirmed that they are working on an update which will add PlayStation Move compatibility to the game. So at least for the time being it seems that Media Molecule are still nurturing Sack Boy.
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