Media Molecule Addresses LBP Sales, Sequels, and IP Infringement
The Little Big Planet team addressed some of the biggest little issues facing the game in an interview with IGN, from copyright infringement to talk of a sequel. Despite reportedly slow sales, Media Molecule is optimistic about their numbers so far. "There's all these different reasons that you could be disappointed with the sales and look at it that way, or you can say we kept pace with the Fallouts, etc," said Media Molecule's Alex Evans. "Every other game that we were keeping pace with was a third or fourth iteration, and this is our first one." David Smith from MM said they'll be consistently releasing packs like the recent Metal Gear Solid themed, so "every few months this thing improves so it stays visible and people stay excited."
This led to the talk of a sequel, and in direct contrast to reports, the developer is shying away from a follow-up right now, at least publicly. "When I told people we're not going to do a sequel, they thought that we were lowering our support for it," said Evans. "A new way of answering that question is that we're putting all the creative ambition of a sequel in, but we might not end up calling it a sequel."
The company had to pull stages that imitated popular characters from movies and other games. User-made stages that infringe on intellectual property are against the rules in LBP, but some copyright holders aren't as strict as you might expect. "[Some] IP owners came up to us and said please whitelist us - we'll never ask you to pull infringing stuff," said Evans. "I can't say who that is. I think it shocked [the IP holders], who were like, hang on, my IP's being represented and it's being represented really well." David Smith added, "the concern was how people could take existing IP and refer to it in a really negative way. But there hasn't been a problem with that." The team also thanked Sony for helping them sort through some of the international copyright laws when dealing with different regions.
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