I just got back from talking to Siobhan Reddy, an Australian designer at Media Molecule, and I’m currently feverishly transcribing what was a very interesting interview. One thing, however, immediately struck me while we were chatting. When asked what Media Molecule ultimately wanted to see users create in LBP 2, she threw down the gauntlet to all the potential LBP creators – she wants to see a brand new genre.
Via the LBP 2 beta we’ve seen plenty of clever interpretations of other games, such as Flower and Wolfenstein 3D – which is to be expected, we saw a similar trend when the first LBP came out – but I’m also keen to see what will occur when you provide an accessible, increasingly more flexible set of tools to the general public.
But I do find myself wondering – is it possible to create a new genre from what is a pre-determined set of tools? I say yes – but there’ll have to be a lot of wrangling and manipulation of the tools in order to do so. In a way LittleBigPlanet 2 is like an insane global experiment – it’ll be interesting to see precisely what people will create, and how far the community is able to push the boundaries.
Personally, I’m really looking forward to it.
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