At Development: Brighton, Media Molecule Co-Founder Alex Evans said LittleBigPlanet could have benefited from early access. Evans believed LittleBigPlanet would have had more of a chance to shine if players got their hands on the game early, like they did with Dreams. That launched as an early access title in April 2019.
When asked about whether or not LittleBigPlanet could have benefited from early access by GamesIndustry.biz, Evans made the following statement.
I don’t think you can generalize across games. I think LBP was probably a bit less lop-sided so maybe it didn’t need it, but then in retrospect I think it would have been interesting to try it. Certainly, getting Dreams out to an audience has been really helpful for us. I didn’t think I wanted it at the time of LittleBigPlanet, but I probably would now.
David Smith, Technical Director at Media Molecule, also felt LittleBigPlanet could have benefited from an early access phase. He said:
We often said it was Play, Create, Share, but really it was Play, Create–the Share side was the weakest. That needed more testing in a real environment with lots of people using it. So yeah, in hindsight it would have been great to go down that route.
Dreams is still in its early access phase, meaning features like a campaign and VR support are not present in its current state. Media Molecule has not provided exact dates about the full version’s launch or how much it will cost once it leaves this phase. At least 100,000 players have hopped into the game to create something special since its early access debut.
Do you think LittleBigPlanet would have been better with an early access “beta” phase? Would you ever like to see a new installment in the LittleBigPlanet series? Let us know your thoughts on what was said in the comments below!
[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]
