LittleBigPlanet allows users to charge for user created levels?

Pretty interesting read here


"Even if you charge less than one euro, it doesn't take many downloads if you've got a really strong LittleBigPlanet level for people to be able to make money. It's a great way for people to show others what they can do." This may give aspiring level designers a chance to not only show off their creativity, but turn their skills into profit"


Lets say this game did let you charge for user created levels, would you? and not only that, is this wrong? Littlebigplanet has always stressed its vast amounts of awesome user created levels, and i havent played a stage worthy of me spending money just to play.

Lets say this awesome stage did arise, would anyone really buy it when there are dozens of other free stages out there?

I remember when that guy first said that. nothing ever came of it and people hated the idea.

I opened a thread a few weeks ago on this topic, and everyone hated the idea. I'd bet that if Sony did it, not only would they need to hire a new team just to try and find broken/ copyrighted levels, but pretty much the entire community as it stands would abandon LBP. In fact I'm positive. All that would be left would be people trying to make a quick buck, and a lot of good creators would just quit LBP altogether since it would turn a fun community thingie into a business, really.

Only way you'd i think get payed for a level is if someone commissions you to do so.
least that's how it works for Art~

any other way is a bad idea pure and simple~ *mew

That's a freaking terrible idea and it would be the day I stop playing for good.

Mmm not sure about this one, does seem to undermine the play, share, create moto to create, pay, play then share. How would you know if you wanted to pay for a level if you can't play it? Some sort of demo feature? What about kids that don't have a credit card of prepaid card. Im not keen on this but I'm opened minded and can see both sides. There's always the side where paying may actually put off people from even trying the level. There's a lot to consider before even implementing it.

It's a nice idea but, it'd take away the fun from LBP. In fact, one of the main points of LBP is Play, Create and Share - not Play, Create, Charge.
I'd probably leave LBP - I don't really want to pay for every level I play - especially when we know someone will charge like £10 eventually - and you have no way of knowing how good the level even is until you play it! I'm not paying a tenner to play a level, which when opened, has only a scoreboard and a "Please Heart" message.

I think the only way it would work is if the charging was reserved for level series - so, for example, you play a demo, and see if you like it or not. If you do, you pay a few quid to unlock all the levels in that series. That would be way more worth it then just paying for a single level. Also, we know that these series take more time to make, so the money would probably be more deserved.

They would, however, probably need to hire a whole team to monitor this. Perhaps if you could make the levels, and then send an "application" to charge for the levels. An employee from MM or something plays, and decides whether or not it is copyrighted etc, and then sets a maximum price you can charge (if they decide your level is worth charging for at all that is), based on the quality etc. Then these levels are fully unlocked, and those who buy can play as many times as they want.

Something along those lines would be good - but I somehow doubt that it'll work out ok. Everyone will probably send out applications to do this, so MM would have to wade through the bad levels, which are just for a quick buck, and the good ones which may actually deserve a little reward.

Thoughts?

I think the idea's crap. I think we'd be further ahead if they charged people to publish levels. At least then we'd have TONS less crap on the servers.:p

No one would play it if you charged for it. That's a great way to not get any plays.

the idea would never ever work. You would get a handful of people paying for levels just to recreate the logic and post it for free on their own.

people deconstruct levels all the time now, and that's a good thing. It's how we learn. Make someone pay for a level and I can bet you they would drop .50 to be able to play, deconstruct, build, and then repost it as "play premium level X for free".

plus, any time anyone has a good idea there are 1000 other people out there with ways to improve on it, and half of them will post better levels for free. There just would be no money in it.

All the real money is in Product Placement, anyway...

This sounds like a good way destroy the community.
Plus how to they expect to moderate the content?

The only way I would pay for a community level is if I could decontruct it in create mode.
No I wouldn't charge. Unless you recorded and cut a trailer and put it on youtube (or are a high porfile creator), I doubt you would get any plays/buys.
I agree with standby250, it could work with a level series.

It's totally ridiculous, yet I would love to see it happen, just to see the outcome.
If it took off or completely failed, both outcomes would be equally interesting.

I think the real question is what percentage sony gets off each payment. :p

EDIT:
Re-read acticle.
It says only creators selected by sony will be able to charge for content. (or something).
So the rich get richer, literally?

I imagine it would make the FREE ITEMS levels more popular.

Honestly, the entire online portion is free, you don't need to tell us. Just a buzzword.

Well this idea is unknown seas in user-generated content, first of all this is not so stupid idea as people may think, but it needs to be play very well work, specially when they got game that is 2 years all levels free. There low chance to this happening to LBP and even if happen bar of paid levels need to be very very high.

It's not so original idea too, bah it's already in plan of some game ;] It's Starcraft 2:

http://kotaku.com/#!5343006/blizzard...net-eventually

It's supposedly be planned and there no hear how this gonna work, but i bet they are not so stupid to allow every map to be paid with all free stuff flying around. Well we gonna see how this gonna go, but with starcraft 2 editor you can do a lot of stuff and it's allows to use even deepest parts of the game not like LBP2, so i can see this work there

http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/sho...-never-made-it.

Funny thing is, not sure if the one I made was the 1st either (maybe it was tho. xD
Anwyho, there's been like 4 threads about that exact thing, linking to the exact same page, all resulting on people deisagreeing with it, seems its no different this time around again. :p

Yeah, so this just proves the point of why it wsan't implemented, yet again. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Silverleon

http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/sho...-never-made-it.

Funny thing is, not sure if the one I made was the 1st either (maybe it was tho. xD
Anwyho, there's been like 4 threads about that exact thing, linking to the exact same page, all resulting on people deisagreeing with it, seems its no different this time around again. :p

Yeah, so this just proves the point of why it wsan't implemented, yet again. ;)

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That could be true, however, this is less about the article and more hypothetical if anything. This article for instance was pertaining to LBP; things have changed in LBP2 for the simple fact that multiple genre's are finally possible. Just because i usually play devils advocate, im going to say-- perhaps its not entirely unrealistic to assume something like this could occur with LBP2.

With LBP2 just about anything is possible and even a tag line MM frequently used was" create your own games! " Well making games is hard work. Making a series could take months and sometimes it can become a second job on its own. Not to say that justifies putting a price tag seeing as all of us are creating free stages.

But say someone wanted to create an epic series and charge for it. The demo would be one of the awesome levels we see in LBP2 nowadays, only with an option to buy the rest of the game. Thats not as bad as it sounds.

Its sort of like the Android market, where mostly everything is free, but the really definitive version of the content comes at a price. It shouldn't stop players from enjoying the awesome free stages that people like us are creating now, it would just give players more options for quality content.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rpg Maker

That could be true, however, this is less about the article and more hypothetical if anything. This article for instance was pertaining to LBP; things have changed in LBP2 for the simple fact that multiple genre's are finally possible. Just because i usually play devils advocate, im going to say-- perhaps its not entirely unrealistic to assume something like this could occur with LBP2.

...

But say someone wanted to create an epic series and charge for it. The demo would be one of the awesome levels we see in LBP2 nowadays, only with an option to buy the rest of the game. Thats not as bad as it sounds.

Its sort of like the Android market, where mostly everything is free, but the really definitive version of the content comes at a price. It shouldn't stop players from enjoying the awesome free stages that people like us are creating now, it would just give players more options for quality content.

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the difference is that everyone with an Android phone doesn't have the tools to make any given app. with LBP2 we all have access to those tools.

It's a bad idea unless they are talking about putting together full story level packs like you mentioned. Then you are paying for the story and that could be worth it if there is good writing. I absolutely support that.

if it is just some guy charging $.50 a level, I'll be the first to admit that if this ever happens I will buy any level that hits the top pages, get a group together to reverse engineer it, and put a level up showing everyone how to create a remarkably similar level.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rpg Maker

That could be true, however, this is less about the article and more hypothetical if anything. This article for instance was pertaining to LBP; things have changed in LBP2 for the simple fact that multiple genre's are finally possible. Just because i usually play devils advocate, im going to say-- perhaps its not entirely unrealistic to assume something like this could occur with LBP2.

With LBP2 just about anything is possible and even a tag line MM frequently used was" create your own games! " Well making games is hard work. Making a series could take months and sometimes it can become a second job on its own. Not to say that justifies putting a price tag seeing as all of us are creating free stages.

But say someone wanted to create an epic series and charge for it. The demo would be one of the awesome levels we see in LBP2 nowadays, only with an option to buy the rest of the game. Thats not as bad as it sounds.

Its sort of like the Android market, where mostly everything is free, but the really definitive version of the content comes at a price. It shouldn't stop players from enjoying the awesome free stages that people like us are creating now, it would just give players more options for quality content.

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How about for players like myself, who for any circumstances, cannot get PSN cards, nor do they have credit cards, so they can't really buy online?
Are they to be punished and left out because they CAN'T pay?

You gotta rememebr LBP is sold in many places around the globe, and not everywhere's like the U.S.A. where you can find PSN cards everywhere, and Credit Card usuage is minimal or nonexistant on some countries, so what would those people do, eh?

Just because you can buy online, at will, does not mean everyone can, dude.

This will never happen. It wouldn't be the death of LBP but they'd be digging a nice six foot hole.

Psh, you all complain but you know you would charge to play your levels. :p

I would charge 1 penny. So cheap that people still play it, and it just grows over time until I make a bunch of money.

Say you get MM picked, that's at least 50,000 guarenteed plays. At one penny thats at least $500 you get. You're not robbing people but you still make profit.

Although I have to agree, it would have to be some craaazy stuff to make you put a price to play it.
You wouldn't just slap a price on a regular level you make, people would hate you. :P

This is a Horrible, Horrible, Horrible idea!

First and foremost, even though you as a creator design the layout of a level and direct the gameplay you still don't OWN the level.
It's still the intellectual property of Media Molecule. Otherwise, you'd have to purchase a licence to use the level editor/dev tool just like the Unreal Dev Kit.
I think we should be happy the way it is, that we actually are allowed to upload our creations for free. It could easily have been the other way around.
And a system like that would tear the community apart, leaving just a handful of creators with a steadily decreasing income on their levels as all the rest of members fled like rats from a sinking ship.

Pay, Create and Sell doesn't sound so cool.