Interviews// LittleBigPlanet PSP

SPOnG: With all the community stuff out there, does that feed back in to what you develop for the DLC? Do you look at the user-created levels and say, 'oh, that's how people are using it'?

Mark Green: I think a lot of the inspiration for this pack came from - and I mentioned this earlier - there's a lot of those racing camels, and there's a lot of those racing cars, and everyone's loving them! But there's only those two fast-moving, stable vehicles that existed in the first one. So, the whole basis for this pack was to say, 'right, let's give people more of what they actually want, and what they seem to be using.' So, that's one big way of doing it.

Andy Knowles: I guess another thing is that most of the vehicles that have been created, certainly in LittleBigPlanet on PSP and PS3, they've been fairly A-B kind of things. So, you've got a forwards and a backwards or an up and a down. With some of the ones that we've built with this pack, there's all kinds of things like boost for the racing car. The Formula 1 car actually goes upside down. There are quite a few extras that we've put in there, just to give quite a bit of variety as to what you can actually do with these things.

Mark Green: And people have been very ingenious in what they've done, just with the set of physics and everything. For example, being able to climb along a ceiling and stuff. My favourite level is the 'Now and Then' level, with time travel going on - it's just genius!

There are certainly people doing things that we didn't even think of, and people manage to do things where you think, 'oh! That's good!'


SPOnG: There was talk at one point of a payment model for the community levels in the PS3 version. Was that ever a possibility for the PSP version?

Mark Green: When we first started looking into that, that was one of the rumours that was out there. But it never really went anywhere so we decided early on to avoid it. We had quite a tight deadline to actually get the game out in, so it was, 'that's a complicating factor. Let's leave that aside. We know the rest of it's worked.'


SPOnG: How long was development on LittleBigPlanet PSP in the end?

Mark Green: So... what year are we in now? So, in June 2008 we heard the first rumblings of 'this might be available if you want to do it', and obviously it came out in November last year. So, not much more than 12 months in development from a zero codebase. We had to start from scratch, we couldn't port anything from the PS3. So, it was a rough ride, but we're pleased with how it's gone.


SPOnG: One of the things that a few people pointed out in their reviews was a lack of multiplayer. Is that something that we could see as DLC?

Mark Green: It's a real tricky one with multiplayer, in that on the PSP, as soon as you turn the Wi-Fi on, you lose a third of your processing power. You lose a third of your available system memory for the libraries and what have you. So, we were looking at it and we think it might be feasible to do something the size of the mini-games in multiplayer. But something of the complexity of most of the levels just wouldn't be possible. And it's still, obviously, quite a lot of work to actually do that. So, it's a real balancing act of 'is it actually worthwhile?' Obviously we'd all love to do multiplayer for the large levels we've already seen, but it's just not going to work.

SPOnG: It's a shame.

Mark Green: It was something where the bosses kept coming back to us all through development going, 'what about multiplayer?' It haunted us for a while, but we think we made the right decision, not including it. It allowed us to do all the physics and everything that I think makes LittleBigPlanet what it is. The mechano set, as I think you described it, for people to build things from.


SPOnG: LittleBigPlanet is obviously part of (or the starter of) a trend of user-generated content - we're seeing it now in particular with ModNation Racers - do you think further down the line you'll be developing more games centred around community content? Do you think it's dug in?

Mark Green: I wonder whether, particularly Media Molecule with the first LittleBigPlanet, have not so much set a trend as changed the landscape of what games actually are, and the fact is that no matter what game - whether it be Call of Duty or whatever - people are going to want to be able to have a larger degree of customisability to create the game that they want, and that anyone creating any game (barring, perhaps, things like Heavy Rain) are going to have to take that into account.


SPOnG: It's very difficult to ignore. Personally, I was the sort of kid who, given a LEGO kit, always ended up with something shit like a square box. So, for me LittleBigPlanet's been more about the traditional platforming stuff, which is really well done. But even if creation's not your thing, it's impossible to ignore the scope of the tools and the way it's appealed to a lot of people and got them involved.

Mark Green: I think, because I don't build the levels, it's certainly not my forte, but I do rather enjoy playing the best of the publicly-created levels. They are great, and I think the ingenuity you get from millions of people is always going to add significantly to what a single team can actually bring up, and it makes so much more of the game as a whole.


SPOnG: Thanks for your time, guys!