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The Last Word on LittleBigPlanet 2

"It's very awkward even comparing it to Mario."

Robert Purchese avatar
Interview by Robert Purchese Associate Editor
Updated on
19 comments
Eurogamer Are there any regrets?
David Smith

There's always more things we can add. There's a list as long as my arm of things that would have been fun to add, but I think we chose the right set of tools to give away. There are things personally that I would have found interesting to add, but it probably appeals to the much more hardcore demographic. The thing that's appealing is those really geeky electronics boffins making really cool things that other people can use.

Eurogamer In LittleBigPlanet 1 you ran across problems early on when the community copied games like Mario and copyright law prevented them being shared. There's greater creative potential in LBP2 – are you anticipating more problems?
David Smith

The problems we had in the first game were very overstated. I was always really impressed at how many IP holders came to us and said it's really cool that people are making homages to our games in LittleBigPlanet. There were very few instances where things were pulled for IP reasons.

Some of the negative reaction at the start of LittleBigPlanet 1 was just because there were a lot of moderation mistakes. It was a very odd thing for the moderators to know what to deal with. Sometimes the moderators would make a call as to whether the content might be copyright infringing, which was the wrong model.

We spent a lot of time both with the technology for the moderation but also working out the legal issues and finding the right model. The issues were fairly infrequent in LBP1, so in LBP2 we will build on that much more solid system.

Eurogamer How can LittleBigPlanet 2 grow after launch?
David Smith

There's going to be a variety of things. There's always a demand for costumes, so that's an obvious thing to do. At Media Molecule we're definitely committed to release more functionality and more levels, because the new levels inspire the community, and new technology adds more possibilities. How long we continue to do that for is a really hard question.

There's no limits to potentially what we could add. Currently we're very much focused on adding in really powerful Move controller support. And that is a combination of functionality and levels and assets and things. But that is still early, so it's not something we can talk too much about.

Eurogamer That sounds like a big project.
David Smith

Err, yeah.

Eurogamer When will we see the fruits of it?
David Smith

I'm not sure we're quite ready to talk time scales yet.

Eurogamer Roughly, then – is it months off?
David Smith

Probably, yeah. We have a lot of the team focused on that. We've just been reconfiguring the office. We've got loads of manpower on this Move stuff.

Eurogamer From here, will we see you try and squash LittleBigPlanet 2 onto a handheld – perhaps a new handheld that no one knows anything about yet cough wink?
PR

Nice try, Bert.

David Smith

Ha ha.

Eurogamer Is chart success important for LittleBigPlanet 2?
David Smith

It's definitely a nice pat on the back, but that's not really the reason we make games.

Eurogamer Can the LittleBigPlanet series continue – can it run on to LittleBigPlanet 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on?
David Smith

I see no reason why it couldn't. We have a pretty strong character and a very interesting physical craft-based world. There's any number of stories that would be interesting to tell there. I'd love Sackboy to still be around in another 20 or 30 years.

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