14 DAY TRIAL // Lionhead is one of the most respected video game studios in the United Kingdom. It is responsible for hits such as the Fable series or Black and White, which have a big number of fans across the world. The creativity going on at the studio is due to the fact that every employee could attempt to make a game mechanic and show it to everyone else, in order to see if something good can come of it.
Peter Molyneux has talked about these experiments, and has revealed a very interesting piece of information about three former employees, Mark Healey, Alex Evans and Dave Smith, who are three of the four founding members of Media Molecule, creator of the very prized and successful LittleBigPlanet. Molyneux says that they actually came up with the concept while they were experimenting at Lionhead, and even created a demo level.
“This is one that didn't work terribly well,” Molyneux reveals. “They worked on this for quite some time... and they had some really, really cool ideas. All of this was enormously, massively exciting... Each time we looked at it, our jaws dropped every single time. But – at the end of the day, even though this looks really cool and inspired us massively, it wasn't an experiment that really went anywhere.”
It really didn't go anywhere, as LittleBigPlanet is one of the most popular titles on the PlayStation 3 and has received numerous awards for its innovation and creativity. But don't go as far as believing that Molyneux is angry at Media Molecule, as he confesses that, “Media Molecule [are] some of the smartest people in the world.”
So, there you have it, we might have praised Lionhead for LittleBigPlanet instead of Media Molecule if the project were to get more attention. All in all, though, perhaps it was for the best and we really should be happy that the founders of Media Molecule focused on their project and turned it into the great game that it is today.