LBP: 1.5m new users since PSN outage
"Community is not stagnant," says MM.
LittleBigPlanet has seen 1.5 million new users since the PlayStation Network outage of April, developer Media Molecule has announced.
"I like that stat because it's growing," Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans told an audience this morning during the UK studio's Develop keynote.
"LittleBigPlanet is not a stagnant community. There's multiple levels published every second. You can no longer keep up with the amount of content."
LBP's staying power is the result of better levels, Evans said.
"One of the things we noticed about LBP2 – difficult second album and everything – one of the subtle points is the games you get in LBP2 are more varied and they're actually more fun.
"LBP1 there was an amazement to it, and it was cool there was this user-generated content. But LBP2, it's subtle, but there's actually better quality games on there.
"As the result the community has published the first million LBP2 levels twice as quickly as they did with LBP."
There have been nearly two billion plays of levels. A whopping 4.7 million levels have been published. Former Sony president of worldwide studios Phil Harrison, who signed LBP in 2006 as a PlayStation 3 exclusive, said LBP exceeded all expectations.
"When we were planning the game we thought if we'd sold a million units and one per cent of the users made a level, that would be an additional ten thousand levels," Harrison said. "That sounds pretty impressive. That's at a 1:99 ratio. 99 per cent of people would just be players, and one per cent would be creators."
Now, "basically everyone publishes a level," Evans said.
All this gives PlayStation 3 owners a reason to go online, said Evans.
"One of the things I really love is it gives you a reason to go online. A lot of people use their console and they're a bit afraid of the stigma of headshot. Multiplayer can be a bit terrifying.
"The thing about LBP is it coaxes you in. You don't know you're online. So it's this real reason to go into the world of PlayStation 3 online and PlayStation Network."