Hello! If you didn't see last week, I announced that I'm making a Giant Bomb level set in LittleBigPlanet 3. I've also decided to make a weekly blog post about my experiences with the game, making the levels, and overall game mechanics in general until these levels are ready to publish. In the meantime, here's a piece that summarizes a key component about why I love this game.

The Joy of Limitations

A couple years ago, I took a couple community college courses in the fields of computer programming. I thought that since I liked computers so much I should give a Computer Science major a spin. My heart wasn't into it. I wasn't very good. I had no motivation to program. So, I gave up on that idea, and switched to a different major that I'm happy to be striving for a degree in.

Meanwhile, I've put several hundred hours into the LittleBigPlanet Create mode across the whole series. That time was spent in enjoyment rather in frustration. So, if I can't get into programming in real life, why does the Create mode in a video game hook me?

With this kind of telegraphing, I'll have to explain how making stuff in LittleBigPlanet is similar to programming for this to make sense–Also, I should point out that the stuff you do in LittleBigPlanet is not literally programming. You aren't typing things–Both involve the creation of a sequence of instructions designed to make something happen. In programming, this involves learning commands and the way they are ordered and setting them in an organized fashion. In LittleBigPlanet, this manifests as a visual set of tools that can be tweaked and placed in a physical environment. Wanna make x do y? In programming, you learn what commands do what, and you type in a set of instructions that will eventually make x do y. In LittleBigPlanet, you learn that w tool with z settings hooked up to tools a, b, and c in this certain fashion and placed on character j make x do y. With that kind of phrasing, the latter's system of doing things sound incredibly clunky, while the former sounds elegant and efficient. Furthermore, computer programming allows you to make virtually anything, while with LittleBigPlanet the canvas you create and the tools you are given have a limit to what you can achieve.

And yet, that's precisely why I enjoy it so much.

I could just end this on the short answer being, “I find LittleBigPlanet easier to deal with because it's more accessible, there's not as much to do with it as real programming, and it's not as overwhelming.” but that would be a boring way to end it, so instead I'm going to attempt to articulate what that short answer means to me and why it matters in the grand scheme of things.

Unlike LittleBigPlanet, I don't see programming as a game. It's a fair enough statement. After all, LittleBigPlanet is a video game, and programming is not; however, by limiting what with you can do with a vast, yet bounded, toolset, LittleBigPlanet turns a version of programming into a game of its own. It's a game where the primary objective is, basically, “Given this set of tools, how can you use them to solve a certain problem?” You could say that about programming too, however. The tools of that consist of the language you are coding in.

The interesting aspect I find about LittleBigPlanet, however, comes from its platform. In order to use the “LittleBigPlanet Programming” language, you have to have a Playstation, a video game console which is designed to be limiting in order to be accessible to most people. I'd expect no less, and certainly much more, from a personal computer, but a Playstation? You can make things with that box? Well, in LittleBigPlanet, yes, you can. Sort of. You can't program full games in place of traditional LittleBigPlanet levels. You can't hack the Playstation or the game and edit the source code to do whatever you want. There are no third-party applications that are compatible with this game, and for the things you can download to add to the game, Sony expects you to part with your cash.

The result of this closed-source system brings a bootleg quality to many of the LittleBigPlanet levels that attempt to do something big, and it's kind of beautiful. To use an example, I recently played a series of levels inspired by Bloodborne. Well, it was basically Bloodborne. You play as the Hunter, you slash at zombies with your sword, and you take lots of damage when you get hit; however, it was very much a poor man's version of the game. The movement speed is incredibly slow, but it's insanely fast when moving in and out of layers. The hit detection is kind of shoddy. There are two buttons to dodge left and dodge right, instead of just dodging in a direction indicated with the stick and a single button. The level loads sections each time it wants to change the perspective 90 degrees in order to accurately portray the depth of Central Yharnam, so you sit through loading screens a lot. When you die, you lose the level, and it sends you to the next one. The most infuriating aspect I found was that the UI is impossible to read because of the darkness of the level. There's no way to slap on a UI overlay in the game; you have to physically create a layer for the UI to move around on and then have it follow your character, so whatever elements you have in it are affected by global lighting. In those levels, it was dark enough for me to be unable to tell how much health I had at times.

If this was made on a PC and money was charged for it, it would be a giant pile of garbage, and even in LittleBigPlanet it kind of is, but given the limitations of the system that made these levels, there's no doubt that there's a certain level of charm to it all. Somebody made an honest attempt at a Bloodborne game in LittleBigPlanet. A game that is rated M for mature and is absolutely filled with blood and guts when you slice through gory flesh demons, replicated in a kid's game in kind of a bootleg fashion. The art in those levels was absolutely stunning to look at, even if it made the game unnecessarily harder.

To be fair, the game isn't for everybody. Many people aren't looking for games where everything's a little under par. Anybody who actually derives enjoyment out of the LittleBigPlanet games, like I do, doesn't do so because of the gameplay. Much has already been said about the floaty jump physics being not-so precise. Nobody's going to play these games because they have prime hardcore mechanics because they don't. Some people might say that they are kind of bad.

The truth is: LittleBigPlanet is fun because the game is more akin to a toy, which is something I can't say about programming. Sure, it's limited compared to programming, but compared to the myriad games that have their own level editors, LittleBigPlanet allows you to do so much more. It's in the sweet spot in between no freedom and complete freedom, kind of like playing in reality. Imagine LittleBigPlanet is a virtual version of a pile of toys, and that the Create mode is akin to assembling the toys in a certain fashion. You can imagine and act out a lot of scenarios with toys, but no matter how wide your imagination is you can't physically turn your toys into things that they aren't. LittleBigPlanet gives you the power to create and destroy physical objects and turn them into virtually everything, but not infinitely everything. It gives you the power to script some powerful stuff, but it doesn't give you full control to modify the innards of the game's systems. There's only so much you can do, but you can, in return, do so much, more than anybody would think.

In a world where video games are prized for being serious, LittleBigPlanet stands in great contrast and succeeds in the other direction in a huge way. It's a video game where imagination takes triumph over mechanics, where the joy in playing a level comes not primarily from the quality of the level, but of the fact that the level was possible to make and play at all. It's a place where ideas are encourage over execution. And yes, while execution is still crucially important, the limiting nature of the game allows for the appreciation of levels that aren't tight mechanic-wise. (Let's not be too artsy here! A shitty level is still a shitty level.) The game is also democratizing in a way that programming isn't. It puts everybody in one big spot and makes it easier and faster for players to interact with creators. It's been almost 8 years since the series first debuted, and yet there still hasn't been another video game as big as LittleBigPlanet that has channeled that same sort of ideal positive personality.

I don't think I would've taken those programming courses if I knew the true reason why I enjoy LittleBigPlanet and the game's creation tools. It's not because of the inherent programming features themselves, but because the game provides a charming platform to allow such stuff to happen, and thereby makes the actual act of creating charming itself. I don't play levels and make things in LittleBigPlanet solely to be entertained or to prove I can do something; I do it to get inspired.

Also, a Giant Bomb level update!

I've mainly worked on the second level, and it has seen big promise. The boss fight in the level is finally playable. There just needs to be a small area in the middle of the level to be fleshed out, and it will be alpha-status. The lava has been changed to a more realistic material and kills the player with fewer buggy instances. Also, the entire level was positioned towards the background to allow for lava to fill the foreground, which makes it look way cooler.

Also, the gun powerup actually hurts enemies now, so I've been working on enemy encounters. The demonic Detective Jenks enemy now has the ability to kill you and be killed, as do other enemies in the level. This level should reach alpha-status soon.

Also, more dumb jokes and references have been added. There are a lot more secrets in this level now, including secrets within secrets. Have fun!

PS: The Quick Look for LittleBigPlanet 2 that Jeff and Ryan did sums up what makes this game great pretty well. One of my favorite parts of that video is Ryan saying “I … prefer it when you can see the strings that are being used to keep it all together.”