Sunday, March 20, 2011

Little Big Planet 2 - Resources

This week I collected links to help others create levels when playing Little Big Planet 2. Like Maria’s Atmosphir, Little Big Planet 2 can be considered a game design platform, but it doubles as a game, too. Also, LBP2 provides an online community where designers can share their work. This kind of digital media is a valuable tool for those interested in creating games – it allows them to explore their creativity and gives participants a venue for self-expression.

Since I am new to this sort of digital media, I found that exploring these sites to be helpful to learn how to create levels and they were very inspirational, also. Remember, the game itself has tutorials to “play” and watch, but I do not have access to share those reels with you. In addition, these links provide cross-references to the game’s tutorials and I can share them easily with all of you.

This site is a blog created by the makers of Little Big Planet. The blog is organized well and it is easy to investigate. This blog is the first example of the many new media tools used to communicate with users of Little Big Planet 2.
http://www.mediamolecule.com/games/littlebigplanet2/

Makers of Little Big Planet also create this site and it is a compilation of tutorials and music videos about Little Big Planet. This is a second example of new media – visual and audio products to share with the LBP2 community.
http://mediamolecule.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc


Flickr – This is media molecule’s Flickr site, which shares their sketches, wallpapers, digital photographs, etc. This site is a third example new media sharing and communicating details about Little Big Planet 2 – I liked this site due to the visual inspiration and the story it tells with pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mediamolecule


Media Molecule’s Facebook site connects users with the makers of LBP2. It also links users with resources to play the game and to help design levels.
http://www.facebook.com/mediamolecule


Finally, Media Molecule has a YouTube stream that users can subscribe to for recent posts of videos created by Media Molecule. This is the final example I am sharing of new media being utilized to help users learn how to design and play Little Big Planet and Little Big Planet 2.
http://www.youtube.com/mediamolecule


The wonderful connection with all of these examples is that users can also create every one of these media resources to share with their immediate community (friends and family) – for example, my daughter has created a blog about Minecraft and is currently working on video/audio recordings to post to You Tube.



She also has me post her blog postings to my Facebook page (since she is underage) – asking my friends to visit her blog. We have not started a Flickr site, but certainly could do! I am interested in learning more about bliptv.com – this is the first I have come across this web 2.0 tool. I think it is similar to youtube.com -

By exploring the resources Media Molecule has made for their game, it has inspired me to take a closer look at how we can expand our blogs and play/learn time while playing and designing games! For example, I would like to add pages to our blog so that Samantha can include more than one video game to her blog - allowing her to share a more rounded perspective of her accomplishments with this genre of media.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks iKate! Lots of great resources here -- can't wait to check out LBP2 myself here in the next few weeks. Do you think that it allows a sense of artistic expression in the game? Just wondering as I didn't think that the first game did as it was a little too constrained (fun nonetheless!). Would be interested to hear you and Maria compare notes at some point about the two tools for game design...

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  2. Yes, this game definitely allows for artistic expression. For example, players have access to a library of "stickers" and "objects" - as they master higher levels, they unlock more items for their library of items to use in their future designs. I am not sure that users can design their own stickers, however, I do know that they can take photos of themselves and make those images stickers and backgrounds! In addition, users can "build" objects such as flying aircrafts or rockets. I think that the next LBP should allow for even more design - allowing users to draw, paint, and create their own backgrounds, stickers, objects, etc. I am sure they are working on that!

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  3. Kate,

    Really interesting resources here... I find LBP2 to be similar to atmosphir in may ways. Levels can implicitly tell their own mini stories and players get a chance to design whatever they want. In atmosphir there is a rating system where people vote for the best levels, which are in the end featured on atmosphir's home page. Is that something that LBP provides as well? I know that people could post their stuff on Youtube with LBP, but hos does this work for the new version?

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  4. Hi Maria,
    So good to meet you this week! Yes, LBP 2 does have a community to not only share but for rating also. They can also comment about why they rated it that way. For example, I got four stars for mine, but the comment was "because you are a mom!" Haha - in other words, I probably would have only gotten 1 start had I been perceived as a child or teen (because it was really, really awful!!!) haha

    I have not yet figured out how to post to Youtube with a playstation - but I know people do this. I know my daughter wants to do this and I haven't had time to figure it out!@!! :)

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