@DustySword: hmmm, I'll probably rent it for the campaign but I'm largely turned off by the "multiplayer/community" aspects that games like this and Spore have, and any other game with a multiplayer that makes me interact with human beings (who are, 99.99999% of the time, horrible wretched creatures)

Even with this and Spore where I'm not actually *interacting* with them per-say, but it's still just as bad. Imagine all those horrible, racist, ignorant, unintelligent, prepubescent, signing, shouting, screaming, hick-speaking, gehtto-speaking, drunk, stoned denizens of multiplayer games on Xbox Live and the internet alike....and then giving the creatures of their imagination a physical form, and letting them run wild in YOUR game.

That's just as bad, if not worse. :(

PathRifter

I would imagine that if you are out of server space on Sony's servers through the game you can just copy a level to a Memory Stick and put it up on some site on your PC. If Media Molecule doesn't allow that then we really do have a problem. After all even Smash Bros. does.

Cartman86

@DustySword:

Yeah, I couldn't have said that any better myself.

In the same way you could choose to only play the game (especially for those without an internet enabled PS3), you could also choose to only create and mess around in the level editor. Or you could chose to focus on the sharing experience the game like surfing youtube, going from level to level with a group of friends and experiencing other players content.

Bl1nd-Techno

I want to buy this game.

icegoat

Didn't Rockband or Guitar hero already announce a similar feature? I hope more and more people begin to do this and similar things to peole who invest the time to make user-generated content.

I also like what MS/Bungie does in allowing you to buy extra space as well. There's a happy (awesome) median waiting to be discovered here :)

okenny :( ... not sure what to believe in anymore

I'm looking more forward to this game than anyone I know and I'm definitely glad that Media Molecule is making this choice. At the same time, it's not *entirely ground breaking.

According to the GI article this is the same process that will be used to (try to) ensure quality user submitted content in Guitar Hero 4. It makes sense, and for games dependent on this type of content I think it'll become a common system in the future.

CareyCondor

Multiple times I've looked at the ideas and features that LBP will be showcasing and thought to myself, "Hey...yeah! Why hasn't this been thought of before?"

ReidP

It's strange to think that it will be this game and not MGS4 or FF13 that gets me to buy a PS3. Not that I'm not excited for those games. It's just that LBP sounds like a an absolute blast.

DamnYouKrycek

@PathRifter:

You will fight enemies, made by the developers themselves of course. There are many other hazards and some enemies push you into them or try to squish you. There are even bosses at the end of many levels. The campaign is not built around that purpose, it just gives you a reason to play the single player to collect those items so that you can use them when creating your own levels. In other words, it's Play, Create and Share. You can choose to just play the game, but you'd be missing out on the create and share aspect.

DustySword

This will be the greatest game ever!

GTA4er

Sounds like they need a king of komments.

Psudonym

That's awesome!

Darth_Xehanort

@DustySword: @Bl1nd-Techno: Sooo...I'm kind of with Baxterpunch here in that my main focus on almost every game is it's story and single player campaign. Just to make sure I'm reading this right, there *is* a story through a narrative, but I won't fight any enemies unless I make them myself, and the campaign is built around collecting items for the sole purpose of making things for myself?

PathRifter

I was kind of worried about having to rake through all the crap levels. I hope this scheme works!

Rather, I just hope everyone's so fucking great at designing levels that MM are going to have to buy extra servers to cope!

LBP, here I come!!!

PlayerX

@Bl1nd-Techno: Yeah, the lack of story info is what really has me worried. I mean, I'm definitely getting the game, I just hope I don't have to wait around for someone to make something cool... I'd like a good game to play through in the meantime.

baxterpunch

I'm interested in user-generated content but I also want to seem some good efforts from Media Molecule as well. I'll probably slowly get into the whole Create-a-level thing slowly, but what I'm looking for now is a fun, simple platformer in LBP :P

Chupakun

@Gloibin:
Well, I saw a video preview of LBP on G4TV recently, and it looks like they made sure that while you have a limit to your levels, you don't have to worry much about the limit. They jumped into one of the levels and it was huge.

@baxterpunch:
The story will be a loose, but funny narrative to tie the levels together. As for the enemies, there are a variety, and you can make your own enemies and hazards. There are also bosses =)

DustySword

I like this idea way more than the idea of a user-sold content...

Aex

@baxterpunch:

There are enemies that can be built, but we haven't much footage of them. I believe there's a clip on either the G4 or Gametrailers website. There's no word on the story so far though...

Bl1nd-Techno

@Bl1nd-Techno: @DustySword: Awesome to hear! Any details on story? Enemies?

baxterpunch

I like it.

What does concern me, though, is the size restriction on levels. During a demo, I saw the "this-is-how-much-stuff-you-can-put-in-your-level-meter" go up pretty far after just 3 objects were placed on screen. If they want levels to be interesting, they need to allot the appropriate amount of space. If the levels could be as big as I'd want, I'd have no problem only being able to upload 3 at a time or whatever.

Gloibin

@baxterpunch:

WHat the people above me have said...

THough really none of that matters.All that matters is stephen Fry is narrating it,which means the single player will be awesome.

Tom Clancy's Samuraidino

Hm, I wonder if the workflow for the...let's say, less talented level designers will be that of continual level creation, storage space limit hit, and old level deletion. I hope they do adjust the storage space so that it'd be big enough to keep a sizable amount of your levels (say, 8-10) and not require people to churn through users' content as they keep on creating + deleting.

I'll be also interested to see what kind of community tools they're building into the game itself. For this kind of community-driven content to work, they'll have to support it with ratings, commentary, etc.

Datheron

@baxterpunch:

It has a single-player mode that stretches across 60 levels which is where you collect materials to use in your own levels. These levels were all designed by the pro-level designers at MM.

Bl1nd-Techno

@baxterpunch:

There are 50 developer-made levels.

DustySword

@Bl1nd-Techno: exactly, its a grand strategy, glad to see it.

TheIrishNinja

I must be the only person on the planet who sees everyone and their dog talking about this game, but I have no idea what it's about/does/plays and I'm not too interested.

I suppose it's because of the reason above in that the game is heavily "user generated" based, and I have this little problem wherein every single human being that has interacted with me in my game experience (online, multiplayer, Live, etc etc) has swiftly and efficiently ruined any pleasure I got from the game. The more contact with other human beings I am subjected to in the games is inversely proportional to how much fun I have playing it.

So games like Little Big Planet, Spore, and any other game with a "deep multiplayer experience" generally turn me off.

Kudos to the reward system though. If it works as intended and does actually keep the riff-raff out of people's sights then it could indeed be a blessing.

PathRifter

"Sony wants to create a sense of value for those who've bought their game."

I would get a much better "sense of value" if they would let me know a little bit about the on-disc single player content. I was incredibly excited about this game about a year ago, but my attention has waned. I mean, I like youtube and all, but I also like entertainment written by actual writers.

baxterpunch

As long as you can share the content among your friends, then I'm happy. I'm sure if whatever I make (other gamers make) is something valuable and fun, tons of gamers I don't know won't mind downloading; and I know I won't mind downloading. That's all I care about :)

Jun581 won't give you tree fiddy!!

Sweet, it's darwinism for level designers.

Bl1nd-Techno

Certainly an interesting idea. I'm very much looking forward to this.

perrinbar

Good philosophy.

LionheartAce

Agreed!

Dalorien

So Spore isn't as high-profile and highly anticipated as this then...

Polyh3dron

@Polyh3dron: Whats the opposite of anticipation? dread? I dread spores release. Already the floppy penis creatures are everywhere and I dread having the conversation about which strategy to take against the army of penis monsters without being vulnerable to the fruit fucker faction.

I think for me, it'll be like sim city. 2h of making a city/creature. 8 hours of fiddling around with it and . 5 minutes of raining destruction down on my city/creature and then shelved never to be played again.

kingmanic

@Polyh3dron: "LittleBigPlanet MAY [Note: does not mean "definately is"] be the most high-profile and anticipated game launch ever to hinge so much on user-generated content."

Pata-pwn(TM?)

I agree with this strategy... as long as everybody gets some storage space even so you don't have to have super popular levels to be able to make and share with friends. I think that's the idea anyways they're rolling with so... cool!

Kamesen

@Bl1nd-Techno:

Yeah, the good thing about it is that it gives you a choice. When you're not feeling creative, play someone else's levels.

@PathRifter:

lol, I get what you mean. I'm not much of an online gamer myself. I played COD4 for a while online and just didn't keep playing. But in LBP, you can choose to not play with other people. You can play other people's creations by yourself, or with friends and family. And to me, it's a different kind of game, where both cooperation and competitiveness is encouraged, so I hope for the best in the online.

DustySword

@Cartman86: Agreed. MM has already stated that you can share levels between friends without it touching the servers. They made this comment in reference to adult-like levels. They won't be allowed on the servers (due to their reporting feature), but you can still make them and send them to your friends to play. This leads me to believe that these levels can at least go through the PSN and I don't find it hard to believe that you can transfer them to your computer and send to other people via an e-mail or website.

Monsignor

I have to wonder what the buzz is for LBP amongst gamers who don't follow the gaming media, as well as more casual gamers. I also wonder if the game that will have a broad enough appeal to go beyond a cult hit.

I like the idea of talented people getting more space, but I don't like the idea of somebody less-talented getting their space lessened.

@Polyh3dron:

Good point.

Strangelove

@Nassin: They're going to be heavily moderating the levels that get uploaded to the servers for stuff like that.

SolidEyeSystem

This could work and this could suck. skate.tv comes to mind immediately when it comes to looking for popular stuff. to anybody who's played, remember how long that one vid of the guy managing to get a lucky bail that caused him to look like he was sitting on a bench relaxing?

For all we know the most popular level could be a completely typical one that just happens to have some particular build so it looks like a dick or something.

Nassin

@Datheron: If your stuff sucks don't upload it until you've worked on it some more. It's not like the upload limit has any impact on how much stuff you can create locally. People just churning out crap and uploading every lame thing they make is exactly what they are trying to prevent.

@Gloibin: Pretty sure they talk about the amount of stuff you can put in a level in one of the E3 videos. If I remember correctly the developer (or whoever) doing the walk through says something about larger object limits being accessable as you progress in the single-player game. I could have just made that up, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't.

stfufools

the game LOOKS fantastic. i have no idea what its about though.

i guess someone (aka me) has some diging to do on kotaku.

jrghoull

@PathRifter:

I don't know, user generated content can get really really good. Look at some of WC3 and SC user made maps... Hell look at DotA, user made content so good it gets world tournaments.

My problem is I don't know how deep a side scrolling platformer can get, regardless of the user generated content.

Laho

That's a good idea. That way the gam's servers don't get filled up with crap.

TF2Soldier914

Great idea! Too bad a popular level isn't always a "good" level. Could just be a badass prize for beating it.

kingofrain

Well as long as the rankings are determined by the users this is great news

yashichi8bit

@GTA4er: Please share more about your feelings on the game and why, I don't know much about it other than it's getting some buzz, which makes me interested... but it's just buzz instead of many facts. Share, share, share!

Omnimon

user-content is good.. but limited space?? they better came out with some sort of a few gigabytes for any user..

jsc_tidus

this game. oh my god. *explodes out of sheer awesomeness*

sc00t420

Those darn things are cute. Also, that's a swell idea, but I still expect no less than 100 Super Mario Bros. stage 1-1's.

Wolfers

Come out already!

everybest

@Tom Clancy's Samuraidino:

If they had gotten Bruce Cambell to narrate like he does the Spider-Man games, it would have made it complete for me.

PapaBear434

@ReidP: That's pretty much LBP in a nutshell.

It's also helping prove my theory that the ideas that make us all say "darn, I could've done that!" or "incredible that nobody ever thought of making this before" are the most brilliant ones.

Grive

Kotaku needs a LBP contest to see who can create the best Kotaku Tower Level with Crecente,Fahey,McWhertor and Leigh Sackboys/Sackgirls.Just a idea.

enewtabie

I'm surprised to be one to say this, but hear me out. I think games where you interact with other players are getting bad wraps simply because of the players. It's understandable. I refused to play any online games because Halo players were such unrelenting bastards. But somehow or another, I got talked into playing WoW recently, a game you pretty much KNOW will have douchebags, if only based on sheer odds. Much to my surprise, the community was excellent, and people were quick to be friendly and helpful to each other. Sure, there'll be jerks everywhere you go, but if you don't go because of them, you'll miss out on some really cool people and the experiences they can offer you.

...Then again, the possibility of a level made of dicks sounds inevitable, now that I think about it. But hey, I'll take some Lost Lake if it comes with a big pack of Bud Light any day. ;)

AntiheroKing

I wonder if LBP news can come and go without someone writing a long winded statement about being uninterested and not getting it.

Benzak

@Benzak: Never happen. Everyone is either excited as hell about the game..... Or is tired of hearing about it.

Me? I'm in the excited as hell camp. I love 2-D Platformers and they are giving me a 2-D game that essentially never ends. Awesomeness.

BigDerf

Too bad Second Life never thought of it.

Vadan

@PathRifter:

You must also be the only person on the planet telling everybody you must be the only person on the planet who isn't for LBP.

Seriously, we've heard it a billion times there sport.

Glass_bomb

this will finally be a system seller for sony.
hopefully more than mgs4 was.

dh4645

I don't know if anyone noticed this but the link for Microsoft attracting criticism just takes you to this article and the the link is this:

[kotaku.com]

when it should probably be this: [kotaku.com]

Just thought I'd point it out :)

BlackMage66652

What would make this golden is being able to decide that you want to store your level on your own system to share with players on your friends list. I would think it would be a little frustrating to just want to make a stage to play with friends and find out that you can't cause you've ran out of space.

KrelianAngel

this is for stuff you're uploading onto their servers right? we can make as many as our ps3 can hold, I hope.

islandknight

I don't think I like being subjected to internet popularity as the primary determinant of my degree of creative freedom.
I've never really been first on the internet's guest list, but I love me some creative freedom.

Comatose Turtle