Items tagged with 'Media Molecule'
April 2nd has arrived, and with it the truth, no more fooling – I’m simultaneously happy and sorry to say that it is all true: This site will be ‘closing down’ and we really do have jobs at Media Molecule.
We’ll be updating our new home with some introductions shortly, and have plans in the pipeline for all the ways to improve and have fun with the LittleBigPlanet Community, and beyond. There are various things we need to set in motion, move over, archive, change, or fix up. We may not update the news here again very much, but keep your eye on our twitter feed – We’ll keep that updated when we can, and possibly rename it and make it official. Maybe. It’s over here: www.twitter.com/lbplanetoid
I’m in ur office stealin’ ur BAFTA.
We’re just transitioning into our new jobs, learning all the secret things, meeting all the cool folks and signing legal documents; so updates might be slow at first. When we get into the swing of things, you can expect a steady stream of information to come flowing forth!
So, with that in mind, we hope you will all join us over on…
See you there!
Speaking at GDC, Alex Evans and Mark Healey have revealed that there will be plenty more to come for LittleBigPlanet, with Mark saying:
We still feel like we’re halfway through the development of LittleBigPlanet, to be honest
...which is a tasty reminder that the game is still expanding and will be offering even more to the community as time rolls on. If the game really is considered to be ‘halfway’ through development, we can all expect to see some pretty epic updates throughout 2009.
In the months since launch, we’ve been treated to regular free DLC, plus paid-for DLC like that big game changing premium content - the Metal Gear Solid pack. Improvements to the game via patches and updates have also been made regularly - and let’s not forget that the next big patch is due very soon. In fact, there’ll be news on Cornish Yarg later today.
The pair also gave some interesting insight in to the development of the game and the ways in which it has changed since its initial conception. We won’t repeat the article here though, because it’s already been splendidly written over on Eurogamer.
The third British Academy Video Games Awards took place in London tonight. Everyone from B-List Celebrities, Games Industry professionals, journalists and those “PR types” attended.
And of course, amongst the developers there, were the Media Molecule team, apparently arriving in limousines - nice.
Yep. That looks like a video games awards event…
All sorts of famous people attend these kind of things…
Yay! Mm pick up their Bafta award.
Media Molecule and LittleBigPlanet walked away with the BAFTA Award for Artistic Achievement, which was handed to them by the extremely awesome Charlie Brooker.
The game was nominated in the following award categories….
- Casual - Electronic Arts’ BOOM BLOX
- Best use of Audio - Dead Space
- Technical Achievement - Spore
- Original Score - Dead Space
- GAME Award of 2008 (voted for by the public) - Call of Duty 4
- Artistic Achievement - LittleBigPlanet
For a full list of nominations (and soon, winners), check out the BAFTA Video Games Awards 2009 nominations page.
The entire team at Media Molecule are currently travelling from their offices in Guildford to the London Hilton in Park Lane in a convoy of Limos. Here they will be attending the British Academy Video Games Awards ceremony, where our beloved LittleBigPlanet is nominated for six of the prestigious awards. The BBC visited the Mm offices ‘today’ to run a little piece on them…
We wish you all the best of luck, let’s hope to see A D.I.C.E style sweeping occur! We’ll be updating with the results as soon as we get them.
LittleBigPlanet for PSP has been officially confirmed (previously it was only confirmed internally at SCE’s annual briefing). The game was debuted as part of a 2009 lineup unveiling at SCEA’s annual Destination Playstation retail and publisher event in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, which also announced the arrival of Rockband and Assasins Creed for the Sony Handheld. Gamasutra reports...
As for its own titles, a PSP LittleBigPlanet developed with Media Molecule promises new levels specifically created for the platform with the same gameplay, although SCEA didn’t specify whether the PSP edition of the game will interface in any way with the console version
Time to dust off your PSP in anticipation folks!
Gamasutra has posted coverage of Alex Evans’ talk at the D.I.C.E conference, which he gave after Mm won eight of twelve available AIAS awards the night before.
“I don’t want to paint a picture that we’re just a bunch of hippies in a room,“ Evans added.
“How do you make sure you’re not just making shit?“ he asked, saying that as a studio director he considered that question many times. He recalled Media Molecule going through many, many iterations of its core user creation tools, many of which were only practical for creating “melty lumps of shit.“
The user tools ended up needing to be powerful enough to create production-quality content. “We are just power users,“ Evans explained—the PC-based tools the team uses are simply more efficient versions of the same tools that ship with the game on PlayStation 3.
The decision to pursue that focus with the tools was one that required great effort and caused many headaches, he admitted, but it “paid off in huge spades.“
Interesting, that was always a bit of an unanswered question to us, whether the developers used a more enhanced set of tools or not, and it appears they do. Oh to get our hands on ‘em!
Read the full report on Alex’s talk over on Gamasutra.
After the announcement that LittleBigPlanet and Media Molecule were up for a grand total of 10 nominations at The Interactive Achivement Awards taking place in Las Vegas this week, the winners have now been announced and LittleBigPlanet has taken 8 awards home.
Speaking on his Twitter feed, a clearly excited Alex Evans said:
We won! A lot! Go team mm! Thanks academy judges
There’s much to be exicted about too, just take a look at all the awards:
- Overall Game of the Year
- Console Game of the Year
- Family Game of the Year
- Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction
- Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction
- Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering
- Outstanding Character Performance
- Outstanding Innovation in Gaming
Congratulations Media Molecule!
The Interactive Achievement Awards are part of the D.I.C.E summit, which ends today. As part of the summit, Alex is giving a talk about LittleBigPlanet, its user generated content and the game’s design philosophy.
Full details of awards and nominations are available on the official AIAS site.
Remember that emergency late notice news piece last week regarding the BAFTA Families event? Well Media Molecule have posted a report of the event to their blog.
Anton opened the proceedings with a brief bit about what programming is, and a child-friendly history of the company (e.g. “Here is a picture of Kareem, he is Egyptian” and “This is Alex and Dave, they like pink”). He included a code sample from the game to illustrate his first point (”This page of code makes the character jump”), so if you are keen to learn what goes on under the hood consider attending about 50,000 similar presentations, and maybe you’ll be able to view the entire codebase!
I then continued with a bit about the Create aspect of the game, and admitted that I hadn’t been allowed to show the photo of me peeing my name in the snow. I talked about the world the game is set in, and the kinds of things you can make - and how cool it is to be able to share what you created in your living room with 1000s of people around the world.
Danny finished off with a brief talk about level design, and introduced the task they were to perform - design their own game! The children had 45 minutes for this, and namely they needed to come up with a title for the game, a lead character and perhaps a nemesis, and a description of what you would do. At the end they would have 1 minute to pitch their concept to the rest of us. So off they went and got busy with paper, paint, felt, glue and glitter to make something amazing!
Sounds like it was a really entertaining morning for the kids who attended, and a level featuring the kids’ faces, handily snapped by a PS3 Eye camera, will possibly be published some time sooner or later - cute!
Why not check out the full report from molecule Jonny, and also the flickr photos from the event, over on the mm page.
This came to our attention on extreeeeeeeemely late notice, but if you happen to be in the London area tomorrow… well kinda today now, then you could go hang out with some Molecules at the BAFTA Families event.
He’s tiny, he’s knitted, he’s all yours - meet ‘Sackboy’, in a whole new kind of video game.
Players age 7+ jump into creating and sharing characters, settings and adventures on different levels using the stylish images and sounds of the LittleBigPlanet world. Today, meet Media Molecule, the creative minds behind the exciting ideas and technology of LittleBigPlanet. Find out how they developed the game and have a go at designing your own!
This event is for children age 7-11. Please note that it is not recommended for older children. Families might like to stay at 195 for lunch, where the menu will offer half portions at half price for children as a special offer for today only.
Sounds cool, and we’d be going if tomorrow didn’t collide with a certain romantic event! Entrance is £5 or £1 to BAFTA members - if anyone goes be sure to send us some photos!
Hi, i’m a link with more information.
Over the last few days we have observed severe weather conditions down on the LittleBigPlanet, a storm of epic proportions with award nominations raining down upon the heads of all who dwell there.
BAFTA has listed LittleBigPlanet as a nominee for the best game in the Artistic Achievement, Casual, Original Score, Technical Achievement, and Use of Audio categories, plus the Game Award of 2008, which is voted for by the public - (so get voting!).
At the GDC Game Developer’s Choice awards, to be hosted by Tim Schafer once again, LBP will be up for a potential seven of the ten awards: Best Game Design, Best Visual Art, Best Technology, Best Audio, Best Debut, Innovation and the apparently coveted Game of the Year award.
If all those weren’t enough, today the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year, the Design Museum’s annual exploration of the most innovative, interesting and forward-looking new work in design of all kinds, has shortlisted LittleBigPlanet for their Interactive Award 2009.
All of these on top of the 10 nominations at the Interactive Achievement Awards, and the host of awards won at the end of last year.
Congratulations to Media Molecule for this impressive bundle of prizes, and good luck at the ceremonies!
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has announced that Alex Evans will speak at the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, over February 17-20.
The D.I.C.E. Summit - which stands for Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain - is the second conference in recent days to confirm the attendance of a Media Molecule head Honcho, with GDC announcing their sessions on Wednesday.
“Our take on ‘Creative Gaming’ is that it’s an incredibly broad church, and LittleBigPlanet represents our particular first take on user generated content,“ explained Evans. “The D.I.C.E. Summit gives us the opportunity to present our design philosophy to the industry in the most prestigious forum today.“
Joseph Olin, president of AIAS, added: “The incredible achievement that Alex Evans and his colleagues at Media Molecule accomplished with Little Big Planet is the perfect topic for this year’s conference.“
“The D.I.C.E. Summit line-up is the strongest yet featuring many of the speakers that are defining our industry and laying the groundwork for future generations of game creators.“
Thanks very much GI.biz.
An LBP session has been added to this year’s Game Developer’s Conference in San Fransisco. Entitled Media Molecule: ‘Winging It’ - Ups, Downs, Mistakes, Successes in the Making of LittleBigPlanet, the session will be delivered by Mm studio founders Mark Healy and Alex Evans.
Mark Healey and Alex Evans will discuss the processes behind the making of a game designed to bring creativity to the masses. MediaMolecule was founded around the concept of ‘creative gaming’, and LittleBigPlanet (LBP) is their first take on this very broad idea. They’ll discuss the choices, as well as routes they rejected, in the effort to make game creation fun.
The talk will also include some examples of the surprising ways that small creative building blocks, whether delivered as DLC, or user created, can be combined to create a wide variety of games. It’s these building-block extensions that will hopefully keep the future of LBP as fresh as its past.
Interesting stuff, surely a must for you developers out there, in between coffee and keynotes.
