The following is an open version of a letter which I wrote to the developers of Little Big Planet. I decided to put it here as an open letter in the hopes that someone who knows answers to the issues I raise will be in a position to share them with me definitively. If you have no interest in this game, then just skip this post altogether.

I have been an ardent follower of Little Big Planet for some time now. I’ve played it at game conferences. I’ve watched countless videos. I’ve read a slew of previews. And I have driven friends and family up the wall with my near incessant fawning over it. There is no question that in my gaming life (since Atari 2600 was “cutting edge”) that no game has ever had me as remotely excited to play it than LBP. No question.

In particular, I have been especially excited about the “Create” and “Share” aspects of the game. As someone who has been illustrating even longer than playing video games, having gone on into a successful (enough) career in both graphics arts and audio production, the ability to infuse my own creativity into the game via the ability to customise my character and produce my own levels has been an exceptionally big draw for me. And after watching the interviews where the developers said how excited they were to play the levels made by the gamers who will be able to use “the exact same tools” the developers did to “create and decorate” their own levels, I knew I would be in for a treat. 

But as of late, several issues have come to my attention which are causing me to become a bit… concerned.

First and foremost, it seems as though the ability to make my own “stickers” will be confined solely to images which I bring in from the PS Eye, and not from the HDD as has been said numerous times in the past - even as recently as E3 of this year. This is particularly distressing because not only do I somehow doubt that the developers who are using “the exact same tools” to create and decorate their levels brought in their stickers by sticking print-outs in front of a USB camera, but I know that the quality of an image I bring in will be constrained to the limitations of the camera itself (i.e. compression, artefacting, inherent degradation of image quality of “scanned” images versus “direct” images, potential file size limitations, image dimensions,ratio, etc.). I am extremely troubled by this.

I can understand that the PS Eye would create images using only one compression scheme, colour palette, etc. which would make image importing entirely predictable from a technical standpoint. But why not just state during the import process that in order to import your own images they must be (something like) 8-bit RGB JPG files no larger than 400 x 400 pixels and 100kb or less? (Those specs were just an example, not a specific recommendation!) Other games which allow for image importing (for even less powerful systems, like the PSP) from non-standardised methods have been able to do this. 

I can also understand that the distribution of user-generated content means the potential (and probable) headache of copyright infringement from applied source material. In the inevitable Donkey Kong levels that get created it is inevitable that Nintendo would be none too happy about seeing their intellectual property scanned and distributed in a Sony game. So locking out image importing from the HDD might theoretically help cut down on the number of people who would simply pull an image off of the Nintendo site and drag it into their level. But what is to stop people from doing so via holding up a print-out of the same imagery in front of their camera? It’s not as if it will end up being of any greater image quality than the materials we will be allowed to import which we created and printed ourselves. They will all look equally bad.

I have also read speculation that Sony is imposing this requirement on you to increase sales of their proprietary camera. I have no idea if this is true or not, and I’m not going to speculate whether or not such is the case. All I will say in regards to that possibility is that I sincerely hope that you would not acquiesce to such a marketing manoeuvre as this, since it would stand to not only alienate creators from your game who don’t want to be forcd into such an arbitrary purchase and, much more importantly, render the final results of user-generated content weaker than necessary. 

Secondly, I am curious about the depth of character customisation options. I know I can “apply stickers” to my sackboy, and I know I can choose from a wide variety of costumes - but will I actually be able to use the same Boolean operation tools on user-made 3D objects to construct shapes which can be implemented into costumes? For instance, let’s say I wanted to make a samurai character. (I realise that there may already be the costume components to generate one, but for the sake of this argument pretend there is not.) I have 3D experience and am confident I can use the tools to union / intersect / punch / etc my way into the next life a set of objects which would render a decent looking samurai helmet for my sackboy (mempo and all!). Am I going to have the option to be able to do this, or will I be confined to the costume options offered at the game’s launch, and the inevitable downloadable content which will follow? I had asked about this at Tokyo Game Show last year, and was told I could, but having recently heard all character customisation discussion limited to sticker application and pre-defined content selection, my fear is increasing that I will not be able to do this. Fear, I tells ya. Fear.

Thirdly, and this is similar to the image import point, I am curious if we will be able to import our own sounds in any fashion. I distinctly remember seeing a video within the last couple of months of a custom level where a sackboy was on a hand-car and moved past stacks of cubes which each had a drum machine sound applied to them, which moving past them caused their sound to be triggered. A quaint little beat box drum pattern was then audible, with varying tempo according to the speed at which the sackboy passed each respective set of blocks. This short video had me exceptionally excited, as I can think of a lot os use for this for the types of levels I want to create. (While I cannot find that video any longer, I did see this interview from July where the drum machine “level” was mentioned.) So will I still be able to do this from my HDD content as well?

All three of the previous points are quite important to me, as they are all intimately related to the “Create” and “Share” aspects of the game. As a professional “creator” I have not only the tools and ability to bring in my own content, but the strong desire to do so. While I have little doubt that the supplied content will be of the highest quality, I am a finicky bastard and will probably grow very quickly tired of the options which will be available to me. (I did say I am a bastard.) And seeing as how I have been reminded time and again from interview after interview that I can use the same tools that MM has to make the levels and customise my character, if it turns out that this is not really the case, then I am going to be extremely disappointed. I may even shed a tear or two. But only in private, since it would be embarrassing if others knew.

I am sure regardless of the outcome of these features that LBP will be a highly enjoyable game with a lot of room for creative expression absent from 99.9% of the games which are out now and for the foreseeable future. However, when I am told features X, Y and Z are core elements to the game (about which you, as developers are excited) and become excited about those features then the removal or alteration of these specific features is understandably going to make me quite concerned - as evidenced by my letter here.

Hopefully my fears can be put to rest.

Cheers,
Jason Ruddy (perhaps your biggest fan in Japan)

If you want to discuss these points, please feel free to leave a comment in the, erm, comments section below this entry. If you don’t want to, then fine.