If your level idea ISN’T a Sackboy running around and jumping on things, LBP will not be your friend. You can make complicated machines in game, but it is not easy at all. LBP objects have bad failure modes — when it doesn’t like something, oftentimes parts of the object just poof without any clue as to what just happened. I’ve had complicated things become impossible to do. Eventually the game trains you — like the importance of using the grid tools and making artificial flattened surfaces with small areas to use as attachment points.

Making levels in LBP is a lot of work, and a lot of that is having to do creation in-game. The camera always seems to have a tough time looking at what you want to look at. When objects are glued together, it’s usually impossible to get them apart again without rewinding, which could undo changes you didn’t want to undo. Non-linear systems are wildly unpredictable. The frame rate of the game is unable to show intermediate frames of fast moving objects. Things get stuck to other things at mysterious times. Sometimes motors just stop working for awhile, then restart later. Sometimes objects with brains forget what they are doing and stop working, which usually requires rebuilding the object.

And there’s NO WAY of taking a picture in the game and getting it OUT of the game that I have found.

As an introduction to level design, I think it’s decent. Pro designers will likely have little trouble. New designers, like me, are gonna have to go through a learning curve, and that’s that.

I don’t have a PS3, but I’ve been wondering if LBP will actually be as popular as predicted because the level design seems to require some sophisticated planning and awareness of limits. There’s a big difference between players’ customization by mere selection (ala an MMO’s character customization) and customization by ordering, arrangement, sizing, etc.

Do you think level design in LBP will intimidate many players? Can it be overwhelming?

The best player-created LBP levels I have played have been either the very simple ones with a single concept, well executed, or really fast moving ones that throw one puzzle after another at you.

The best one I played, that I actually went back and played again, was a race that was called Ninja something, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with ninjas. But it was fast paced, some of the puzzles were clever, and it flowed well.

There’s no way I can match Media Molecule’s levels — they probably spent weeks on each one, and had better tools, and developer support. But I think I can eventually make a level other people will have fun playing, even if it isn’t much like my original design.

This would make a fitting epitaph for the MMORPG industry someday, don’t you think?