Creator Crisis: It's killing my dreams and creative future

There definitely needs to be a way to narrow down the number of levels by some objective criterion (as oppose to ratings, tags etc.), which categorising levels would do.

KenBlayton has pointed out the unfortunate truth that there will always be way more levels, good and bad, than can be displayed as results of a search, especially in the 'planet' format. Companies pay Google big bucks to get them featured at the top of a search, purely because with a million hits everything after the first few pages gets lost in the mire.

So any way to boil down results to something the player is specifically looking for would be a good thing - newest, highest rated and busiest is a start, but we could do to have more options. Categories like platformer, mini-game, race etc. is the logical next step.

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Originally Posted by KenBlayton

I think it's important that you can rate a level if you don't get to the end, due to the sheer number of 'broken' levels out there. On some levels you simply can't get to the end, and while on some this may be due to an oversight by the creator (in which case a 'needs work' is appropriate) on others it's apparent that the creator wasn't that bothered if you did or not, and other potential players should be warned with a one star rating.

On another note, I can't help but think that people a being a little bit insular about the whole search issue. While decent levels are in the minority on lbp, that minority could quite easily be in the thousands, and even if the search tool could hand them to you on plate, you still wouldn't have time to play them all. This community is a marvelous thing, but I don't think I've ever seen a post where I've seen somebody say 'hey I've just played this great level by such and such', where such and such is not a member of the community. I appreciate that 'every mother thinks their baby is the most beautiful' and wants to publicize the fact, but people need to realize that it might not be 'top 1000' let alone 'top 100'. Don't get me wrong, the community is a valuable tool for finding great levels, but it needs to remember that there are probably thousands of people in the same boat.

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Gorilla Curling. Enough said.

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From a different perspective, I'm the lead designer for a popular service management software package (not bragging I promise, just pertinent to my comment).

When designing a search engine (which is what the entire LBP database is) - as there are more entries and you need to find what you are looking for it is necessary to break things down into subcategories.

Let's take PSN for instance. If you are looking for a movie, you first choose "Video". Then you possibly choose a genre (maybe your favorite subject is "Sci-Fi"). Finally, you get a list that is relevant.

One of the issues I see with LBP is there will be well over a hundred thousand games published out there (assuming every single person out there publishes at least one game, even if it took them half an hour to create).

With all these levels and no classifications, there really isn't any way to properly search. Right now with the information LBP is collecting, I don't see a way to fix this.

DON'T GET ME WRONG - as a gamer I absolutely LOVE the new search features. This morning I popped into "highest rated" and didn't need to go anywhere else. As an author, however, I'm not sure I want to spend the time. I'm a decent author, but I'm certainly not a 5-star-rated author.

And their "Tag" system is not really a "Genre". It has FAR too many tags to be used for accurate categorization.

One thing I mentioned in an earlier post is a suggestion to let the game author themselves set a difficulty and a category to guide appropriate players to your game.

The ability to find what you are looking for properly has already been perfected over the years. Public Libraries have been around for a fairly long time.

Could you imagine what would happen if you walked into a library and what you saw was a) a gigantic stack fo 10,000 books in the middle of the floor labeled "community books", and another stack of 50 books labeled "highest rated books", and a third seemingly organized stack of 50,000 books organized by 100 terms applied by the people who read them?

People visiting the library may be able to find good books, but I'm not sure as an author I would be pleased....

Perhaps you didn't read my second post....

I'm not sure author assigned difficulty would work - many authors think their levels aren't difficult because they've played them hundreds of time while creating, yet to a newcomer they may seem impossible. Also, a well designed level should get progressively harder. If levels were categorized by type, then perhaps a 'kids' category might help....

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Originally Posted by KenBlayton

Perhaps you didn't read my second post....

I'm not sure author assigned difficulty would work - many authors think their levels aren't difficult because they've played them hundreds of time while creating, yet to a newcomer they may seem impossible. Also, a well designed level should get progressively harder. If levels were categorized by type, then perhaps a 'kids' category might help....

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Your absolutely right - I published a video game back in '86 called "Earth 2500" for the Atari 800 and Commodore 64. It was a good game, however I had played it so many times that I thought it was easy and kept kicking up the difficulty level. People liked it, but I don't think anyone ever finished it.

A few years ago I found the game being pirated on a web site that had Atari emulators. I had not seen it in about 18 years. I downloaded it and tried playing it and I couldn't even finish it myself.

However, that doesn't mean the idea wouldn't work - it just means if authors want their games to be popular they are going to need to learn to listen to feedback. (I did not have the internet, a comments section, or the ability to republish a game in '86)

So, if a person publishes a game under "Easy" and people get frustrated with it, the author can either fix the game or change it to "Medium" or "Hard". Or they can leave it under easy and suffer from poor ratings from people like my son....

Although, your idea of "kids" would also work. I'm not really partial to specific terms for a difficulty level, just that I think authors being able to further categorize their work would help.

I know. Some of the levels I play that have like 100,000 views are awful, and yet there's my (not perfect, but still ok) level with only 48 plays.

It annoys me soooo much that a level that had about 5 seconds thought and took about 2 minutes to build is getting more plays/hearts than mine that I worked on for like 4 days solid.

/rant

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Originally Posted by CCubbage

Your absolutely right - I published a video game back in '86 called "Earth 2500" for the Atari 800 and Commodore 64. It was a good game, however I had played it so many times that I thought it was easy and kept kicking up the difficulty level. People liked it, but I don't think anyone ever finished it.

A few years ago I found the game being pirated on a web site that had Atari emulators. I had not seen it in about 18 years. I downloaded it and tried playing it and I couldn't even finish it myself.

However, that doesn't mean the idea wouldn't work - it just means if authors want their games to be popular they are going to need to learn to listen to feedback. (I did not have the internet, a comments section, or the ability to republish a game in '86)

So, if a person publishes a game under "Easy" and people get frustrated with it, the author can either fix the game or change it to "Medium" or "Hard". Or they can leave it under easy and suffer from poor ratings from people like my son....

Although, your idea of "kids" would also work. I'm not really partial to specific terms for a difficulty level, just that I think authors being able to further categorize their work would help.

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I can't help but think that authors would just go for 'medium' to ensure maximum exposure, and after all, the difficulty of a level is as much determined by the player's skill as any other factor....

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Originally Posted by KenBlayton

I can't help but think that authors would just go for 'medium' to ensure maximum exposure, and after all, the difficulty of a level is as much determined by the player's skill as any other factor....

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They may. However, wouldn't it be cool if you could choose a "Hard" "SciFi" game and get a list that includes ArmorBoy? How about a list of "Easy" "Puzzle" games and get TicTacToe? Maybe get rid of "Medium" and force people to choose easy or hard?

Also, if you forced people to classify and a particular classification started getting a TON of games, it may encourage the authors to be more creative.

indeed. I'm not saying grading difficulty is a bad thing necessarily (and there would have to be more than just easy and hard IMO), but I'd say genre was a more important distinction.

One of the best things about lbp is that for those with young children like yourself, you can knock up a level they will enjoy in a couple of hours and include everything they like - you don't even have to publish it.

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Originally Posted by KenBlayton

indeed. I'm not saying grading difficulty is a bad thing necessarily (and there would have to be more than just easy and hard IMO), but I'd say genre was a more important distinction.

One of the best things about lbp is that for those with young children like yourself, you can knock up a level they will enjoy in a couple of hours and include everything they like - you don't even have to publish it.

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Yes... but I published "LBP Playstation Home" which is a highly polished multiplayer kids game. Each time I watched multi-players in it they were having a blast. Bouncing on a couch, grabbing points in a maze-like washing machine, or being thrown around a bedroom by springs.

Kinda wished there was some way to get it out to the masses of kids that would enjoy it. Instead it get's buried by people giving it poor reviews and saying it is "too easy"...

Here's an additional add-on idea to the difficulty/genre combination idea (I know it will never happen, but here it goes...)

When you go into a list of games, it comes up with a globe of, maybe, 50 randomly selected games along with a list of "Top 10 recommended from last week". At the end of the game you simply select whether you recommend it to others. If your game is one of the most recommended from the previous week it appears in this list.

(games already listed in the recommended list could not be recommended during that week)

This would force people to give new games a chance, and reward great levels by putting them up on a recommended list under a genre for a week.

Well you have another play on it now, very nice it is too.

I see what you're saying about the 'recommended' system (although obviously this was how hearts were supposed to work - I think they messed up big time by awarding trophies for hearts), sadly there's so much garbage being published that plays would be spread too thinly for an accurate poll of results. Also, how would you allow for the (currently) 'necessary evil' of republishing in this system?

Perhaps instead of the author picking categories, it could be part of the tag system. As it stands, people probably just skip tagging or flick through a few pages to see if a slightly appropriate word pops up. The problem is, all sorts of words are thrown into the tag bin together.

What if the tag screen consisted of three columns, and the player could pick anywhere up to three tags, one from each column? The first would be a selection of game types - platformer, race, kids etc., which are essentially objective descriptions of what they thought the level was about. Second could be difficulty, easy, medium, challenging in parts, very tough etc. Then the third column could be subjective opinions such as brilliant, fun, creepy, lousy, rubbish, broken etc.

This may overcomplicate things (hence MM's currently simplistic but 'user-friendly' approach), but would lead to more accurate level descriptions and categories in the long run, which could then be searched by with the search engine.

Makes sense to me...

I guess I'm kind of spoiled right now with internet searching. I can author a web site, put my own tags, and control how people find me. Then the quality of my web site determines if people use it. The direction they are going may be the best course for the game. I am just used to having a little of that control myself...

By the way, KenBlayton, thank you for playing my Home level. Hope it wasn't too kiddie for you ;)

But are they going in a direction, or have they just fixed it so it works how they originally planned?
I think a chap called Takelow (?) had a a good point on another thread when he said that after time the number of new levels being published will drop dramatically. Perhaps when the dust has settled a different picture may emerge.

True. Many times there is no right or wrong answer, just different ones. This game is unique, however. No one has really attempted to put this much emphasis on "design your own game" before, or provided tools that were this powerful but intuitive. It would be nice if we were looking back at this in a couple years and saying "wow, this really works and we're all still happily building content" instead of "man, that could have been great.. but I've moved on to playing Tomb Raider 16".

Regardless, I'm having fun with it right now so it was definately worth the money.

I agree and thanks for playing my Tomb Raider 16 level, hope you hearted it....

LittleBigPlanet II - Build ANY fully 3D game you want. And carry all of your objects over from LittleBigPlanet I. And find any game, anywhere, anyway you want.

And it comes free with your Playstation IV. Street price: $12,000.

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Originally Posted by aer0blue

Thanks. I'm getting a Creator itch again, but it still bums me out... You know, the whole Cool Levels thing. Anyway, TF was made first, FYI. For some reason, though, I'm more attached to that one than Raz's Tomb... Guess it's because it was my first level.

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Congrats on Raz's Tomb. It's on the front page of the Highest Rated levels and it's been boosted to almost 4k plays. I'm sure you already know, but congrats. Crisis averted?

It's a great level, and deserves the recognition,

So that's one of the 10,000 sorted.....

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Originally Posted by Voltiare

Congrats on Raz's Tomb. It's on the front page of the Highest Rated levels and it's been boosted to almost 4k plays. I'm sure you already know, but congrats. Crisis averted?

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Thank you. Well, sort of... The "Crisis" isn't totally done for because of...

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Originally Posted by KenBlayton

So that's one of the 10,000 sorted.....

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...This.

You see, levels are getting recognition now. Good levels are being exposed to the general audience. However, there are still probably hundreds of levels that may be even better than the ones on "Highest Rated" right now...and they're not there. This update is a good start, definitely, but there's still a lot of space for improvement.