Something that's bugging me about LBP
We all know the Cool Levels page is not reliable for "cool levels," and that's not really what I'm here to write about. It's just that only really well-known Creators who already have good levels published get lots more plays because everyone knows they're going to just make more levels. It's incredibly hard to actually get people to even see your level if you're simply browsing through the community. There is a Newest Levels option, but even minutes after you published it gets buried underneath dozens of more levels, some of them good, some of them just more spam. The highest views I've ever gotten on a level is still 19 views on a sackbot tech demo I published a year and 11 months ago. I try to fill out tags, a title, a description, photos, make it visible on lbp.me, everything, and still get so few plays. I published a level showcase, trying to be detailed and fun, and one nice person gave a review and played it. So that's one review and one more play on that level.
I posted a thread a couple days ago showcasing a project I've been working on for a while. I published a demo featuring the sackbot ingame, which alone I spent about 2 weeks on. So far, I'm about a week into the intro level to the series, which is about 1/8 done. So far, there has been no posts on project thread, no criticism like "I think the costume there looks a bit awkward, maybe do ___." I'm not feeling optimistic here. And the longer it takes, the more the thread will be shadowed by projects that people seem to be interested in.
I'm not trying to be whiny or anything. I guess what I'm trying to say is that to simply look through the Newest Levels page, or the showcase, or the projects thread. Play the level, maybe leave a post, comment, or review. Just help some people instead of immediately going to the popular creators. Of course they're going to make more good levels, but some never-before-seen people might be making some, too.