Ye Olde LiBiPl Blog » rumour

Getting excited about el mes que viene

LiBiPlBlog — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:02:08 +0000

My theory is this: The guys who compose the “coming next month” pages in most magazines have no idea what NDAs or embargoes may be in place.

[with thanks to Yuluga for tweeting about this]

San Francisco Rumour Mill

LiBiPlBlog — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:12:07 +0000

A little tweetstalking reveals that Kenny’s not the only Molecule in San Fran for GDC this week. While a Molecular presence seems a natural thing if Sony wants to talk about the recent nuptial announcement, or could in fact be strictly educational, everyone loves a good rumour. Any truth to it? Your guess is as good as mine; I’ll weigh in as “doubtful”, but I’ve been wrong before.

Yesterday is Not Tomorrow

LiBiPlBlog — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 04:23:26 +0000

[Image unrelated to story]

In case anyone was confused into thinking that August 17th’s big LBP announcement (LittleBigPlanet Game-of-the-Year Edition details) was the promised big announcement for August 18th, it’s not. Sony blogsman Mark Valledor has asked us to wait until tomorrow for the “bigger” announcement. I’m not one to dwell on a single word, but will this be the “bigger than mgs even” content that was tweeted about in May? We’ll have to wait and see; I have the feeling it’ll be something “really cool”. Of course, there are other things we’d really love to see become reality soon.

Little Bits for April 27, 2009

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:30:20 +0000

All of the cool kids in the UK are picking up LittleBIGPlanet for ten quid or so, while it’s still over $30 everywhere I look in the USA. (But then, sometimes prices are a bit inflated.) Either SCEE feels that it’s worth discounting to attract people to PS3, or they expect to make back the discount in DLC; I’m betting on the latter. In harsh times, it seems people are more likely to spend £10 and then £1.99 or £2.99 a dozen times than to spend £45 at one go.
Games industry veteran American McGee was asked about LittleBIGPlanet and the user-generated content trend in a recent interview. He reminds us that UGC goes back quite a few years (personally, Pole Position Construction Set was my first taste), and seems to contend that the creators should be paid. “I think if game products or publishers are relying on ‘outside the box’ content created by users to drive interest in their titles – then they should find ways of compensating those users for developing added value. That might even inspire the user content communities to step up their game.” Last summer David Reeves had some interesting things to say in that direction, and it caused quite a stir. I think recognition rather than recompense is still a good policy, and the community has certainly “stepped up” quite a bit already.
Machinima: Who knew there were so many LittleBIGPlanet/Daft Punk fans? Little Daft Punk joins the ranks of the Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger video and the Robot Rock level and the blue-haired salmon-skinned twin girls segments of LittleBigDance.
One of my rumourhound friends pointed out the opening of this blog: “Earlier this week I attended a two day long super secret Sony press event [. . .] I headed right to the store and purchased an 80-gigglebyte PlayStation 3 and a copy of Little Big Planet.” I wouldn’t infer too much, but I am curious what’s been covered in recent secret Sony events; perhaps we’ll learn more at E3.
Awwwwwwwww. Or, to quote one LiBiPl.net staffer, “omgomgomg cuuuuuuute!!!”
I have to admit that I’m not familiar with Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, but the idea of turning such a piece into a series of LittleBIGPlanet levels is pretty cool.
Award: LittleBIGPlanet wins “Best New Games Brand” from MCV.
And finally, webcomic Dueling Analogs contends that Sackboys are “creepy” and gives us a disturbing theory as to their genesis.

YouTubey Ambiguity

LiBiPlBlog — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:29:25 +0000

Sony sent out a press release today announcing the launch of their PlayStation YouTube channel. One paragraph in particular caught the attention of the few LBP fans not already camped out at their local video game retailer:

In the future, PlayStation’s YouTube channel will feature a user-generated content section within the channel, as publishers and developers take advantage of the PlayStation 3’s advanced application programming interface (API) to allow users to create game mode videos. SCEA will also launch game-specific enhanced YouTube channels, starting off with the highly anticipated game LittleBigPlanet™. LittleBigPlanet, which launches on October 21 will also have its own YouTube channel coming out in November and will feature cross-promotion with the LittleBigPlanet.com community.

Some have leapt upon this as confirmation that YouTube uploading from LittleBigPlanet will be a launch feature. Yet a careful read doesn’t seem to support this. The first sentence simply restates something which has already been reported: that an API exists to do YouTube uploading directly from PS3 games (indeed, まいにちいっしょ already supports this), and is careful to say “in the future”. The second sentence just talks about having game-specific YouTube channels (they already have game-specific playlists on the PlayStation channel), saying that LittleBigPlanet will be the first; except for proximity, nothing really links this to the first sentence. Lastly, they restate the LittleBigPlanet NA launch date, that it will have its own YouTube channel, and promise cross-promotion with LittleBigPlanet.com.

Without that sentence about the YouTube upload API, it’s a relatively ho-hum press release (although certainly a lot of work must go into the agreement with YouTube and ongoing support for the channel). So maybe it is meant to imply something that they’re not ready to announce, in order to gauge public reaction. What do you think? Am I reading this wrong, is Sony deliberately teasing us, or are all press releases automatically subject to fans’ wishful thinking?

Post-Beta Blues – Part One

LiBiPlBlog — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:49:54 +0000

Time to put the PS3 controller back on the shelf and dig into my inbox:

Those of you experiencing withdrawal can pour salt in your wounds by watching some Beta levels you may not have had an opportunity to play. Wired has a top 10, Media Molecule has their Mmonday picks (1st Monday, 2nd Monday).

One eagle-eyed blogger has noticed that the LittleBigPlanet seaside resembles Brighton.

Since they seem to be so popular, Sam gave a rocket car construction step-by-step.

If you experienced a lot of lag at times during the Beta, don’t despair. The servers were deliberately cut back.

Kikizo talked to Mark, Alex, and Pete last month. Interesting bits: They were working on a “more Portally than Portal” game at one point, and originally in LittleBigPlanet you could make infinitely deep levels.

Here’s a splendid attempt at a LittleBigPlanet cake.

For a little while, this page was advertising an opening for developers to work on LittleBigPlanet PSP, but that detail’s been removed. This, along with Mark telling EuroGamer that “There’s definitely scope for a PSP version,” bring some old rumours back to life.

Kunal Patel, one of the Parsons students responsible for the award-winning “Shadow of the LittleBigColossus” level, has an interesting post on the official PlayStation Blog, calling LittleBigPlanet “Legos for a new generation”.

More homemade Sackboys, this time including Kratos, Old Snake, and Nariko.

Someone tried to auction off LittleBigBillboard #27, but set the reserve at over $198.50?

Wired’s First Impressions of LittleBigPlanet gets bonus points for reminding us about ZZT. From the text, however, it sounds like they were dealing with something earlier than the Beta.

As the fervor for the LittleBigPlanet Beta turned to madness, Sony says they weren’t surprised.

Beta Rumours and Confusion – October 1st AM Edition

LiBiPlBlog — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:16:59 +0000

This one has already started to spread quickly: Someone over on the Blu-Ray forums claims that they’ll be opening up the Beta as a Demo for the week before launch. Despite the claim that “I heard this from SCEE”, I have strong doubts. The poster goes on to say “The closed public beta is just to create hype”, so I guess all of the developers hard at work on the server code can just go home. I’ll continue to believe Sam’s message that no Demo will precede the game’s launch, until something official is posted to the contrary.

The recent Reuters article re-awakened rumours that LBP would be released as a download as well as Blu-Ray; CVG contacted Sony to confirm that this was just a mistake. Still Blu-Ray only.

Is there one version of the Beta client or two? And will Beta-published content be available at launch? On the PlayStation Blog: “This version does not require a DNS redirect and levels created here will be available for consumers at launch of the full title.” The “this version” could just be differentiating it from private Beta versions for Sony employees and press. But if we look at Sam’s Beta info thread, he says this on the topic of Beta levels being retained: “The safe answer to give is no. We will definitely be deleting at least some of the content that has been shared so far if not all.” I would go one step further: I would not be surprised if content is deleted during the Beta, if and when they need to make changes to the way things are stored on the servers.

No links on this one, kids, but there’re already a lot of videos of inappropriate level creations floating around. One thing to look out for: most of these are private levels on “MyMoon”, not having been published at all. The moderation system is definitely in place and being used to police even the Beta content.

That’s it for this morning. More this afternoon; the internet does not disappoint.

European Release Date Improvement?

LiBiPlBlog — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:55:20 +0000

[Update: Joystiq clarifies that the press release "was issued by an outside PR agency in the UK on behalf of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe". But they have received confirmation directly from SCEE, including the detail that the date is for all of Europe. They also talked to SCEA, who repeated that "We have not yet announced an official North American release date."]

Citing a press release they say they’ve received, PS3Fanboy is now giving October 24th as the UK release date for LittleBigPlanet. I’m waiting for official word from Sony that I can link to, but assuming it is true: What could have caused this change? Did Sony just think that UK PS3 owners needed a pleasant surprise? Did the game somehow go gold a week early? Maybe they had all of the translators and voice actors work a long weekend to avoid the usual European delay?

My bet is that the October 29th Large Hadron Collider sent a copy of LBP back in time to the September 10th LHC. Or, rather, it will do. Then it was simply a matter of getting it to the duplicators. Thanks, Mr. Science!

Mickey Finn (or How The Internet Works)

LiBiPlBlog — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:00:57 +0000

It’s a familiar story by now. First, a company representative at a trade show says something:

They wouldn’t talk specifics, but said they’re partnering with other companies to bring third-party themed content into LittleBigPlanet. The Sony rep mentioned Disney, for example – being careful to note that it was just an example – as a company that LittleBigPlanet could conceivably partner up with to provide new content.

It being a public event, all sorts of people hear only part of what’s being said, or get the info second-hand, or whatever. Humans being error-prone conveyors of information, what shows up on several forums at once is “LBP will have official Disney DLC”.

As the pros and cons of such a thing are debated on the forums, the news is submitted to the various news sites and social networks. From there it makes it onto the major video game blogs as well as LittleBigPlanet and Disney fansites.

Unfortunately, there’s little to be done about this process. It’s just the way things go, amplified by the popularity of the subject at hand. I can only be happy that most of the fanbase takes things with a grain of salt (I think we’ve learned the hard way), and Sony continues to let Sam spend some of his time clearing these things up:

It’s worth highlighting right now that LittleBigPlanet will have regular updates of downloadable content, and I believe it has been mentioned in the past that we have been in talks with third parties regarding themed downloadable packs. Disney was mentioned at PAX only in the context of being an example, so the article in question is speculative. There is plenty of work still to do at our end before we can announce what these packs will be and when they’ll be released, so as ever until you hear it officially announced it’s worth seeing it as speculation only.

So, while it’s certainly possible that one day we’ll be taking our Iron Man Sackboy in his X-Wing Fighter to attack the Legion of Doom along with Barbie and Cloud; nothing is real until it’s officially announced.

[Note: There are several forums that I don't link to directly, nor do I approve comments that link to them directly. If your comment didn't show up, this may be the reason. Either that or it got mixed in with the thousands of spam messages.]

Good times are coming your way

LiBiPlBlog — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:32:47 +0000

First of all, if you haven’t yet, go take a look at Media Molecule’s Leipzig photos. Simply amazing. And to those who ask “What about lighting? Can we make dark levels?”, you might spy an answer in this image.

Joystiq has posted a new interview with the incomparable Jim Unwin (interface designer) and the famous-German-tolerating Pete Smith (producer). Right at the beginning, we get the bestest news ever:

Firstly, the game is finished and pretty much ready to go. The European release date has been finalized as October 29th, with other regions to be confirmed later. Barring unforeseen circumstances there’s no reason at all why this game shouldn’t ship in time.

With just over two months to go, we’re happy to see that it’s almost burning-blu-rays-and-printing-manuals time. I just hope they spend that time hardening the servers as well. With lessons learned from the likes of Warhawk, SingStar, and the Home Beta; the PSN should be able to handle anything, right?

Since everyone seems to be curious about DLC:

Smith confirmed that there are plans for paid-for and free downloadable content, but bemoaned the rumours and speculation flying around about things like allowing people to charge for their levels. “We don’t know that stuff ourselves, yet. We’re going to be listening to the community once the game comes out, to see what you want.”

So keeps those comments coming, but in a nice way. Media Molecule wants to listen to us; it’s up to us to communicate clearly, without whinging or abuse.

As we’ve heard, sticker imports are only via the PSEye for now:

At the moment it’s only possible with the PlayStation Eye, but other methods could be patched in later.

My theory is that this will be one of the first patches. The public outcry has been pretty clear, but perhaps too late to make the change before release. (I could go into a whole discussion of the QA impacts, but will spare you. This time.)

One of the other public outcries has been over the level creation thermometer. There’re a lot of confused and concerned aspiring level designers, seeing the thermometer fill up “too quickly” in the demos thus far. Maybe this will sooth their fears:

There’s a thermometer in the Create mode which shows how complex your level is. This is just a rough estimation and we’ve only ever seen it maxed out once and that was here, at Leipzig. One guy kept a level open for an entire day while groups of German press rotated in and more content was added. By the end of the day it was maxed out, but none of our levels, the ones on the game disc, even come close.

Now here’s a fascinating idea (good question, Jem!):

Will there be any levels that require the Create mode to get to the end?

No, not to beat the level. Though there are levels where using the create mode will allow you to access hidden areas. The Create mode will have its own set of tutorials to get you used to it.

Platformers are usually full of secret little areas that take some skill/luck to reach, but think how much more interesting it could be when the player has to actually build his or her way in! It’s not mentioned whether these levels are part of the story mode or not, however.

Finally, on the question of game length:

It takes me [Jim Unwin, interface designer] about 12 hours to complete all the levels, and I’ve been developing the game for the past however-many months. So expect it to take a bit longer than that.

So, perhaps 20 hours for a mere mortal? The temptation was certainly there for the developer to try to get by with only a few hours of included gameplay, relying on user-generated content for the value proposition. However, Media Molecule seems to be going above and beyond. I’m feeling more and more confident in recommending the game, even to those who have no interest in going online.

So put on a smile, start waving your hand…