Media Molecule creates games that they love and hope that you will enjoy them as much as they do. Creative Director, Mark Healy, and Technical Director, David Smith, spoke to Game Reactor at Gamescom and shared more about their new IP that was announced at the event, Tearaway.
Media Molecule has been known for implementing a way for players to join in on the creativity in their games. They wanted to expand on the play experience with Tearaway, where the player can jump from playing to creating, and back and forth. We can see some this in action in the official Gamescom 2012 trailer, where the elk looses his skin and asks for help finding more. The player then takes hold of the PS Vita and uses the camera to snap a picture of anything they want to become the skin for the elk. Smith explains that the team was wanting to connect it more with the player experience by allowing you to dive back and forth into the gameplay and creating and never really think about the fact that you are really being tricked into creating something.
Some of the themes from LittleBigPlanet may show through on Tearaway, simply because there are certain things that the team likes to make or play. However, they point out that Tearaway is not LittleBigPlanet with Tearaway graphics, or LittleBigPlanet origami. It is "an entirely new world, with it's own rules, and it's own ideas of about what creativity is," Smith explains.
When asked if there is a lot of origami going on in the office, Healy jokingly remarks, "Yeah, the office is a complete fire hazard, at the moment." He also explains that concept art is usually people sketching on paper. Healy explicated, "It's none of that, we're making things out of paper." They then use the virtual paper foldings to translate it into the game.
With no labels attached to various team members, Smith says that they are really just working together to create the game.
In a place like Media Molecule, there isn't such a class separation between the artists, and the programmers, and the designers. Really, most people can do some coding and some art and have ideas about games. Really, that's where it's exciting.
We definitely look forward to more about Tearaway and will keep you posted as news on this amazing title rolls in!
The trailer can be seen again below, in case you missed it.
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