Little Big Indie Kids

[Cooper42]

Well Trackmania is a game with a fairly similar premise, except being that of racing tracks. Creating tracks is relatively fun and the community seem to have a fairly good output. LittleBigPlanet looks rather fun and intuiative rather than one of the many frustrating competitive games, however it does seem like someone played Trackmania or any of sandbox editor type game then played LocoRoco. I suppose it could be considered brave in the times of EA blockbuster style multi-platform exploding gun fests, but at the same time I would expect to see similar games on the PSP, DS, Wii etc.

Trackmania only works because people leave servers which host crap tracks. The same way people playing Garrysmod leave if a server starts to get boring or full of griefers. The same 'voting with your feet' should work with LBP too.

[nvrmor]

yeah, uh, dont ever try to compare yourself to someone like mark healey. i mean, dont even look at him. the guy is just on a totally different level. he's an alien. a savant. i'm quite sure m$ was a bit disapointed when he left just before they gobbled up lionhead. have you ever seen what his other side project at lionhead was? i believe the cocreator was the guy who helped out on rdkf, and is now partner of the new company. visionaries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGiPUx9Zgi0

[DueAccident]

Impressive stuff.

[KingAl]

Most of the 'advances' in that demo were merely technological, though a healthy does of Molyneux's rhetoric blew that out of proportion. From what I've seen, Healey's skill seems to lie primarily (solely would be going a bit far) in designing interfaces.

[Ricass]

Just a thought, but having gone through all those posts, no one has mentioned the fact that Media Molecule (the guys behind LBP) have either already sold themselves to Sony (that's the impression I'm getting) or are getting ALL their funding from Sony. Which is basically the same thing.

Exhibit A

Hi, by the way.

[KingAl]

...no one has mentioned the fact that Media Molecule (the guys behind LBP) have either already sold themselves to Sony (that's the impression I'm getting) or are getting ALL their funding from Sony. Which is basically the same thing.

No, they only implied it strongly

[wwarnick]

...having gone through all those posts...

All of them?

wwarnick

[Kadayi]

yeah, uh, dont ever try to compare yourself to someone like mark healey. i mean, dont even look at him. the guy is just on a totally different level. he's an alien. a savant. i'm quite sure m$ was a bit disapointed when he left just before they gobbled up lionhead. have you ever seen what his other side project at lionhead was? i believe the cocreator was the guy who helped out on rdkf, and is now partner of the new company. visionaries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGiPUx9Zgi0

I'm sorry, but Portals as a concept in games are old news (and were back in 2005) you're giving Mark Healey far more credit than deserves there (look up Prey, Lookup Narbacular Drop, look up Valves Portal game).

[shinygerbil]

Portal is not distinct from Narbacular Drop. If I'm not mistaken, Valve were directly influenced by ND and have cited it as their inspiration; it's quite possible they've hired the guys who made it to work on Portal.

I'm far more interested in TF2. MEEDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIC!!!!!!!!!!!


(edit: spelling)

[Cooper42]

Also. Yes, the entire team has been working at Valve for the past year on the recently announced "Portal". The news has caused a huge traffic spike to hit the site, but we have secured more bandwidth (just shy of 15x as much as we had before, and cheaper than we got it before to boot). Please excuse any late night (Pacific time) outages while we work out the kinks. Lastly, we have added download mirrors for Narbacular Drop to the Downloads section just in case the spikes get even bigger.

[shinygerbil]

There we go. I was running on what I already knew, which was very little.

[zoombapup]

I feel your pain Chris, I saw that game and I thought to myself "shit, I'd loved to have worked on that". Although, I know deep down I wouldnt have liked it (tried a physics based game, its PAINFUL).

But dont get yourself on too much of a downer, because there's enough room in the world for more than one great game idea.

Besides, if there's one thing I've learnt whilst doing my own indie thing, its that the more you try and analyse things and the more you care about someone else's lot in life, the less you are going to create something true to yourself.

Clearly you guys have a sense of self in your products, so you need to stay true to that. No matter what the hell anyone else is doing or telling you (ok, not including me). Clearly thats how products like LBP come about. Media Molecule were in develop a few months back where they were saying theyre like a teeny tiny company (or were at the time of making LBP's concepts). So its not about having a crapload of people, its more about having people driven to be creative internally. Inspiration cannot be "engineered" I think, it has to be felt.

To me, you guys have proven you can create an original concept more than once, so stop giving a shit about someone else and focus on making your own inspiration work. Self doubt isnt going to do anything for you.

I'll tell you a little story...

When we were working on Worms 2 after the huge success of Worms, we had a design doc presented that was from Andy D (the originator of Worms). Basically, his next big idea. Anyway, it was all over the place, loads of "lets throw everything in here and see what sticks", which frankly just sounded completely silly. Needless to say nobody bought into it. Clearly Andy had made his money (being a millionairre from all accounts off the back of worms 1), so what was he doing? He was trying to convince people that the way to create a great game was to have loads of different things and mixing them. Anyone could see that the reason Worms 1 worked was because the basic premise was good (trajectory based combat on procedurally generated landscapes with cutesy characters), but that once you'd tried to analyse it, you came up with something that was nowhere near as focussed and fun.

I think over-analysis is a big trap to fall into, I've done it continually with my indie stuff since leaving Team17, starting projects and not finishing them because I lose faith in the concept.

I'm finally learning that basically, you are better to just not give a crap about anyone else's products or ideas, because your own execution will always be unique. Focus on what drives you internally to be creative and good things will flow. Not that we cant appreciate others brilliance too, but just dont mistake someone else being capable of brilliance as a sign that you are somehow now incapable too.

Anyway, this is (one again) turning into a long ramble...

I feel your pain about artists though. Highly recommend hooking yourselves up with a good strong characterful artist. I think your blue styling (reminds me of homeworld) is serving you pretty well so far, so pushing that to new limits with some artistic input might be a good idea..

Goddam, I hate rambling and I do it so often.

[nvrmor]

I'm sorry, but Portals as a concept in games are old news (and were back in 2005) you're giving Mark Healey far more credit than deserves there (look up Prey, Lookup Narbacular Drop, look up Valves Portal game).

if all you got out of that video was portals, you really need to watch the whole thing again, and pay attention this time. listening might help as well. there was a hell of alot more going on than just portals. not to mention that what they were doing with the portals was far beyond what anybody else has done. very far beyond.

[KingAl]

Concentrate on what you actually see, and not what Molyneux tells you. Also, technological advancement != creative genius.

[BrianBlessed]

I think over-analysis is a big trap to fall into, I've done it continually with my indie stuff since leaving Team17, starting projects and not finishing them because I lose faith in the concept.

If you had any part in the development of Body Blows I will have you babies. Well I will congratulate you heartily anyway.