First there was a blurb on CVG that user-generated levels in LittleBigPlanet would be segregated by region. And the internet exploded in rage.
Then PS3Fanboy expressed their concern,as they had heard something different. And the internet continued to explode in rage and confusion and speculation.
Now our good friend Sam Protagonist (Hi Sam!) has stepped forward to let us know what is hopefully the final word on the subject. I hope he doesn’t mind us reproducing his post here:
Hi all,as many of you may have heard already in an interview at Leipzig the senior producer for LittleBigPlanet announced that the game is region locked. This is in fact not the case,and all shared levels in the game will be available worldwide. The confusion arose out of regional differences in how moderation will work as there are different legal rules each region have to play by,and at one point this looked like it may require the game to be independent in each region –however this has been worked around and there will only be one region for the game…. a LittleBigRegion.
Apologies for any confusion over this issue,however I’m pretty sure you’re happy with the result.
This does bring up some interesting questions,however. How does a global moderation system actually work? Since consumers in different regions are sensitive to different things (e.g. the cliché of Americans fearing nudity and Europeans fearing violence),how do you manage a global server? I doubt we’ll ever get full transparency into the inner workings,since most good moderation systems avoid letting users know enough to trick the system,but I am curious to know whether it’ll be a lowest-common-denominator system (anything offensive to anyone is blocked) or have individual flags for regions (so the “They Saved Hitler’s Brain”level is okay in NA but blocked in EU,and “Topless Trampolines”is okay in EU but blocked in NA).
I’m actually not as worried about sensored content as much as I am about language barriers. Will there be some kind of tranlation thing in place? Not that this is a huge problem or anything,because I would imagine that each level would have a label describing what region it’s from.
http://littlebigplanet.us.playstation.com/post/2008/08/Ode-to-the-Fansite.aspx
Nice!
Hi,
sorry for hijacking the comments but I found no other way to contact you. Just wanted to say that your site lacks a favicon. Maybe you would like to add one. If so –checkout the “official”lbp planet news from Sony –they have released a fansite kit containing lots of lbp images
Thanks
eh screw it,this is the best lbp fan site i have seen…well even though its not the best looking but who cares at least it has the best news. i always come here first! but the little big newsite is cool how it has the stickers…but then again the site itself doesn’t really give us anything yet.
Glad I could spread some good news.
On the subject of moderation we’ll put together an article on how it’s going to work in the near future. It’s a complicated beast for us to manage but it should be very straightforward for players to use and understand.
It’s partly out of this complexity that the wrong answer on region locking was given in the first place.
Sam
Maybe you could include an explanation as to why HDD image importing will use up more space in a level that PS EYE image importing.