14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Media Molecule and publisher Sony have announced that they plan to launch a new update for their video game Little Big Planet 2 which is designed to encourage collaboration between players and to eliminate negativity from the gamers community.
The biggest change that players of the platforming game will see is that the Boo feature has been disabled.
The Boo was essentially a negative vote, designed to balance the Yay, but the community of players has not used it in a positive manner.
The official statement from the development team reads, “To help encourage creativity, we have removed the Boos from the Level Rating System. You can still Yay a level to say that you really liked it, but we found that the Boo ratings were disheartening at best, and could be used to cause grief amongst the community.
“If you happen to find something you don’t like because it’s rude or mean or just plain offensive, then hit the Select Button and use the Good Grief System to report it to our moderation team.”
The initial idea was to allow players to use the Boo feature and the reviews to tell those who created Little Big Planet 2 levels what they were doing wrong.
Unfortunately, the community used both mechanics mostly to grief other players rather than to offer any useful feedback.
The new update also changes the way the Dive-In feature works, putting it at the top of the Community menu and re-making it in order to make it easier for players to find partners to play levels with.
After the launch of Little Big Planet 2, the development team at Media Molecule has stated that it will continue to offer long-term support for the game while also focusing its efforts on research that will allow it to create new gameplay mechanics for its next major title.