Big Influences from a Little Video Game

I was a bit of a weird teenager, and am still a bit of a weird adult. I like a lot of the “normal” things like sports, music, and hanging out with friends, but when asked what some of my hobbies are I still respond “writing code”. I also enjoy little entreprenurial ventures, toying with music, and trying to market myself or things I’ve worked on.

The other day, in a bout of nostalgia, I realized that all of those little hobbies and passions stemmed from the same thing: a video game called LittleBigPlanet.

This is meant to be a bit of a personal history and love letter to a game that has had a profound impact on my life. You’re welcome to read along, but much of this is aimed at future “me” to recollect and remember. As the servers of the game have been slowly turned off, I wanted to capture the remnants of things I worked on.

Over the years I became one of the top creators in the game, had friends get hired by the developers, and planted seeds of logic puzzles and programming in my brain that ended up pointing me towards a career in software. Here’s the whole story:

The Game

LittleBigPlanet was a game released in 2008 for the PlayStation 3. It was a platformer game where you could create your own levels and share them with the world. On my 15th birthday my brother bought me Skate 2, my mom thought the game was distateful (and I think she was right) so we ended up returning it and getting LittleBigPlanet instead. I was hooked, I poured hours into it. I loved the game, and I loved the community that surrounded it. I started releasing little levels to share with the world like the game encouraged you to do, and had fun when I’d get even a few plays on them.

The first game lacked some polish, but it was charming, unique, and hilarious to enjoy multiplayer. When LittleBigPlanet 2 was announced with a more robust creation system, I was very intrigued. Me and my little brother drove over to Walmart to pick it up the day it was released and I jumped in head first. I saw an opportunity to be first to market to make levels that would capture more attention.

The upcoming release would feature:

• logic gates like you see on physical circuit boards, IF, AND, OR, XOR, etc.
• analog/digital signal processing with programmable digital microchips

• a full piano roll music editor with various synthesized instruments, drum kits, and effects

Sequencer	Piano roll editor

• as well as new tools, materials, and mechanics to play with

It looked like you’d be able to build virtually whatever you wanted, but the barrier to entry was low.

Inspirations & collaboration

I jumped in and found levels online that I thought went far and above what the rest of the people online were doing. You could tell when someone had put an extra degree of care into something. I wanted to be like those people. One such person was a creator named “Lockstitch”, I played his first level and was blown away, I added him as a friend on the game and started collaborating on levels with him. He was a high school math teacher, which made me realize “maybe not everyone on here is a kid”.

I made other friends and connections releasing various levels right at the launch of LittleBigPlanet 2, and started to get a feel for what made a level popular. Because the game featured a very comprehensive toolkit for level creation, I familiarized myself with all the tricks, and tightened the feedback loop it took my to build something by making little tools for myself.

I got familiar with the music editor, the logic gates, and designing characters and writing dialogue. My first level was a pirate themed open world adventure where you explored a top down map, ported at different, locations, and worked on solving puzzles. I never felt good about releasing it, but it was a start and I now knew what I was doing.

The first big hit

My first big levels were a handful of platformers that drew in a few thousand plays. They each had a couple unique platforming elements, and got shared around forums and recorded by YouTubers. It was my gateway drug.

I’d plan when to release my next level, send personalized messages to all my friends to try and get good ratings on launch day, and watch and see how they were received. I obsessed over fixing bugs, and play-testing to make sure I would get 5 star reviews.

Just copy the best

I started to learn a principle I’ve relied on a lot in life. When you want to get really good at something, copy the experts. Just do everything they do and eventually you start getting it right.

I saw what other levels were getting played and made levels just like them.

The community liked levels where you got to keep little custom objects and music tracks you could use in your own levels, so I built galleries where you could customize things and take them with you. They weren’t technically challenging, but were well-received.

The connoisseurs of the game liked levels that were more artsy and story-driven, so I made levels with dialogue, jokes, and cutscenes. I’d sketch out ideas in a notepad, and daydream about how to make more inventive puzzles. They were a lot of work, but they were also well-received.

Groups of homies liked explosive chaotic games that were fun to play with friends, so I made some just like that, with mini-games and challenges that were very light-hearted and less artistic. They made it to the top of the community leaderboards overnight.

My LittleBig magnum opus

The most impressive thing I worked on was a series of levels for a competition that the developer’s of the game (MediaMolecule) put on. They were looking for players to bridge the stories between the first and second game and offered an exclusive and coveted in-game prize crown to the winning team. Team was special here because all other contests up to that point were individual.

I found a couple friends and we got to work. For months we built, and built, and built. We’d log on and chat with mics and then spend hours working, regroup, and critique each other’s work. I scored the levels with about a dozen tracks. We had a story that spanned 5 levels, almost 20 min of cutscenes, and multiple boss fights. We wrote complex logic to advance the different stages of the story, and keep the levels engaging and interesting. We called it “A Malevolent Tale” and crossed our fingers.

You can probably guess where this is going, but we won the contest. We got the crown, and it felt really, really neat. As a teenager, I felt like I really could make something special with a little focus.

If you’re interested, you can watch the levels on YouTube, this is the first playable level in the series that I published:

Returning years later and Googling my old Playstation ID, I can still find people talking about the levels I made, or the songs I wrote. Here are a couple comments I found on YouTube:

YouTube comments

Influence on my future

After all was said and done, I didn’t make a penny from LittleBigPlanet, and I put in hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of hours. My friend Lockstitch got a job at MediaMolecule. My friends that worked on our award winning levels went on to study art, computer science, and character design.

I learned a truck load of lessons though:

• I could build virtually anything I wanted, given enough time and patience
• The best levels don’t always win, it takes some marketing and luck
• Your workflow is important to do better work, and do it faster
• A lot of the best art is made by simply copying

Now I work as a software engineer, and love getting to do those exact same things. I’m beholden to share holders, investors, and managers, so I don’t feel the same freedom I did when I was a teenager, but I still look back and cherish the memories I made just building for building’s sake.

Cheers to the builders!