Mm History Chapter 3: Building the game
20/04/2010
When we launched this new web site type place into your life a few months ago, we also published a couple of history articles looking back at the beginnings of Mm and of LittleBigPlanet, which we put together by trapping Alex Evans in a room with a tape recorder, shouting “Go!” and then sitting back for a few hours. This of course means that we are relying on Alex’s notoriously twisted memory, and should take it all with a pinch of nutmeg: we already found out one thing was a total lie, but the rest seems to be quite true!
The first couple of chapters looked at the founding of the studio, pitching the game to Sony, and building the team up. We left it on a cliffhanger of sorts…. which we will now continue with Chapter 3: Building the game. If you haven’t read the other parts, then I recommend you do so immediately. No not later, now, just do it!
After a fairly intense six months, the small gang of Molecules had been given the green light from Sony to go into full production. Up until now the company had been formed entirely of Lionhead leavers and friends, but now there was a game to make, and some money to make it with, so Media Molecule started to grow.
They advertised, interviewed, hired, all whilst continuing to work on the game…
“It was a weird one, we’d hired key people, but we were all working on such independent things. We didn’t really work together, we discussed together, but there was so much to do that we just… well I could work on a 3D engine, but there was no hope of it integrating with Dave at that stage, Dave was working on a level editor… the PC editor was one of the first things that was made - post green light, we very much focussed on creative tools.”