Sony Wows GDC with LittleBigPlanet

The former Lionhead minds behind Rag Doll Kung Fu have been signed up by Sony and the result on PS3, revealed during Phil's GDC keynote, is nothing short of outstanding.

Page: 1  2 

Phil Harrison's speech at this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was all about getting people involved in creating their own fun, tapping into personalisation and user-generated content of the kind seen at social sites like MySpace and YouTube. For the Sony exec there's one game that embodies this idea of Game 3.0: LittleBigPlanet.

To start with, LittleBigPlanet seems much like a regular sandbox game, where you get to know your characters and the world through challenges that begin to tap into the PS3 community. From there, though, it's up to you.

Like a cute Rube Goldberg machine, LittleBigPlanet provides the putty for you and your friends to mould into fun. You'll be able to take basic components and build up your plot in the world, creating gameplay as you go along.

The game puts a heavy emphasis on co-operation with other PS3 owners. You'll be able to invite other players from the LittleBigPlanet community into your plot to play with your creations and you'll be able to go into theirs. But there is an offline mode too, in case you just feel like fiddling for a while.

True to the Web 2.0 roots of the game, the emphasis in LittleBigPlanet is on ease of use. To that goal the game has been designed not as the kind of level editor seen in countless other games that extend creation into the audience but rather through mechanics tied directly into gameplay.

The game is the creation of ex-Lionhead designer Mark Healey and his team at Media Molecule, who previously worked on cult-hit fighting game Rag Doll Kung Fu.

Sony is planning to release a fully functional demo for LittleBigPlanet later this year with the full game to follow in 2008.

Go to the next page for news of Sony's central GDC07 announcement, the 'Home' service for PS3.

Page: 1  2 

NEXT PAGE >>