Interviews continue

First,ScrewAttack spent just a couple of minutes with Kyle Shubel at PAX08.

GamesIndustry.biz has a two-part interview with Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida was named as his successor as president of Worldwide Studios (part one,part two).  LittleBigPlanet still seems to be on Yoshida-san’s mind:

I can’t wait to see how consumer will create stuff using the tools. It’s great to play many different levels that Media Molecule has been creating,and you can spend hours finishing this game –but there’s the possibility of hundreds of thousands of interesting things for consumers,and people will spend that time. When we were kids we’d spend lots and lots of time,just because we were motivated.

One challenge is getting the support from all parts of the company,getting them behind the titles. Something like LittleBigPlanet is brilliant,but it’s such a new concept,it takes a lot of effort to communicate it. That’s something that has to be done in each region,but in each region consumers have different sensibilities,so sometimes the message has to be catered to each region.

But we really want to make it successful globally,so what we’re trying to do is communicate much earlier in the process of development with the marketing partners within the company,not just in the region where the game’s made.

Yes –LittleBigPlanet is unique in the sense that it defies cultural differences,and will hopefully be accepted in Asia as well as Europe and the US.

IGN also talked to Shuhei Yoshida,and the topic of LittleBigPlanet came up there as well:

We are totally focussed on making it successful from worldwide marketing. From a company standpoint we totally believe in the premise that it brings to the table –not just for the game but for the future and where we’re heading. It is just going to take a concerted effort from all parts of the company. So from a marketing standpoint it’s going to be huge campaign that you’ll see.

LittleBigPlanet even came up in an interview Joystiq did with Spore Producer Caryl Shaw:

Now that Spore is done – and reviewers continue to make of it what they will – we asked Shaw what she’s most looking forward to. The answer didn’t surprise us in the least. “I’m really interested in LittleBigPlanet,and I think the rest of the team is,too,”she said with genuine excitement in her voice. “I really want to see their tool set and how easy it is to share [content] with other people. There’s huge potential there if they do it right.”

The big news,however,was GamesIndustry.biz’s interview with Alex Evans.  You know,the “LittleBigPlanet Couldn’t Have Been Made on 360”[sic] and “LittleBigPlanet fills up Blu-Ray disc”[sic] one.  My initial headline was “MM Praises 360,Says Cell Processor is Weird,Confirms Possible Sega Mega Drive Port”.  Unfortunately the internet is knee-jerking based on headlines,but let us look at what was actually said.

Alex first gives a behind-the-scenes explanation of the E3 presentation that went a little awry,which is worth a read if you don’t know the story.  He also talks about the difficulty in explaining the game to people.  I keep hearing industry insiders saying “Of course we get it,but what about The Casuals?”  Alex seems to see it another way:

If I’m talking to someone who doesn’t have all these preconceptions of what a game is,it’s actually a lot easier to explain –it’s something that you play and enjoy,and you make things with it. That’s what it is. They don’t know what a game is anyway,they wouldn’t know what an FPS was,so they have fewer preconceptions –like kids:“Oh,it’s fun,oh it’s got a cute character.”They see things a bit differently,they’re less worried about this elevator pitch.

The comes the controversial bit about it being 40gb:

Q:And it weighs in at about 40GB?

Alex Evans:Erm,yes –I believe a Blu-ray single layer is 20GB and a dual layer is 40GB,but we’re filling up the Blu-ray. One of the things on there is we’re having a lot of tutorial content –basically there are two paths through the game,the player’s route and the creator’s route.

[ . . . ]

So one of the things we’re filling the Blu-ray up with is tutorials,and a lot of video stuff showing exactly how it’s done,it’s narrated by Stephen Fry and so on. It’s really useful that thanks to Blu-ray we haven’t needed to worry about file size,it’s never crossed my mind. We’ll check in another gigabyte file…it’s a bit slow on our network but beyond that…

But the game itself and the levels you produce are relatively compact.

To me this sounds like they’re putting all sorts of stuff on the Blu-Ray because they don’t have to worry about space.  It doesn’t sounds like “We have a double-layer Blu-Ray’s worth of data”.  Given the space that’s available,I’d expect we’ll see uncompressed files where it speeds loading,and perhaps all languages on every disc to simplify distribution.  If they were limited to DVDs,or CDs,or floppies,various compromises would be made.  Also:

So we have a huge library of thousands of different objects,and they’re not just textures –we worry about the bump-mapping and the specular…all the HD,next-gen stuff happens and it’s sitting there on the Blu-ray for you to use without having to worry about it. And that’s really how we’re using the space up.

I wonder if we’ll ever see a procedural material editor for LBP,or if they’ll keep new materials as DLC-fodder.  Now on to the big-time fanboy incitement:

Q:So clearly you couldn’t make LBP for the Xbox 360?

Alex Evans:No. Somebody asked “Could you have made it on the Megadrive?”and there’s one answer that’s yes,and one answer that’s no. With LBP as it is,we couldn’t have made it on the Xbox 360 and the reason for that is actually because we designed it around the PS3′s strengths.

In other words,if you’re a game designer,from day one you know your platform,and you just cane it on that platform. You’re not worrying about cross-platform,you’re not worrying about anyone else’s hardware design.

The 360 is an incredibly capable machine,and you could make a user-generated content game on it,no question –just as you could make one on the PS2 or the Megadrive,or any platform. But because we picked our platform,you go and you use every available bit of space,every little processor cycle.

For example,the Cell –which is unique to PlayStation –we really enjoyed using it because rather than coming at it from the “Oh my god,we’ve got to port to a 360 engine for this”or “We’ve got to do an engine that’s on both,”we were instead:“Fine,it’s idiosyncratic,it’s weird,it’s not anywhere else –let’s go use it.”

And that’s been the reason I think that it really plays to the PS3′s strengths. I don’t want people to say “You could do this game on the 360″–well,you could do any game on any platform,it’s just that you have to design around it. Just the design decisions on the PS3 are huge,and I’m sure you realize that having a hard drive on every unit makes a difference.

That’s another thing –if we didn’t have a hard drive on every unit,we’d have to scale back the ambition of what you could save and do. So yes,you could make this game on the 360,but it’d be a different game.

I love certain things on the PS3,and the hard drive is one of them. And it’s not just that it exists,it’s that it’s on every single SKU.

I think Alex says it pretty well,if you bother to read it.  My take:Certainly the guaranteed hard drive is a factor,and (althought Alex doesn’t mention it) the openness of PSN is a factor;but primarily it can’t be a 360 game because it was designed around the PS3 from the beginning.