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PlayStation’s shutdown of Media Molecule platformer Little Big Planet saw the loss of millions of user-made levels last year. After discovering issues with the game’s servers, Sony made the decision to shut down the game “indefinitely”, a decision that sound designer and Astro Bot composer Kenneth Young believes was “inevitable” but also “unfortunate”.
Little Big Planet shutdown was “inevitable”
Speaking to VideoGamer for the PlayStation The Concert tour, which starts on April 19, Young looked back on the shutdown of Media Molecule’s platformer.
“I mean, the way it happened is the most unfortunate thing,” Young explained. “I think, obviously live services do come to an end, so that was inevitable. Obviously, as a fan I would love it to persist infinitum, but that’s not a reasonable expectation.”
After working on the series for so many years, Young explained that he wishes the games’ shutdown were handled better, but it wasn’t an easy decision for anyone involved.
“The way it ended was just unfortunate because, I don’t really know the ins and outs of it, but I think there were problems with the servers. Maybe [they] hadn’t been maintained for a while or they were becoming difficult to maintain for whatever. Then they got taken offline and I think Sony had the full intention of fixing them up. But then I assume when they looked into it, they realized it was a much bigger can of worms than they maybe first realized. So they just stayed offline.”
“It’s been a real privilege to be able to work on a game like LittleBigPlanet.”
ASTRO BOT COMPOSER KENNETH YOUNG
Young explained that Sony’s treatment of Little Big Planet service wasn’t “malevolence”, but the fact that it happened wasn’t surprising in the slightest. With the age of the series, it made sense to sunset, but the composer wishes there was more “grace” in how the situation was handled.
“It’s just unfortunate the way it happened,” the Astro Bot composer explained. “I think we all would have liked to have seen that done with a bit more grace and respect, but it is what it is. And so that’s, for me, that’s what makes it sad, is how it happened. Not so much the fact that it did happen because I do think it was inevitable.”
For the future, Young is confident that the game’s extremely dedicated fanbase will find a way to bring the games back with online functionality.
“There’s a massive LBP mod community thing going on there,” he continued. So yeah. And I think that’s always a real test for a platform holder to see what they’re going to do with that. So yeah, we’ll watch that space with interest, but ultimately, you know, it’s been a real privilege to be able to work on a game like Little Big Planet, which had a huge community of people, many of whom now make games themselves, some of whom have gone on to be composers because they had their first exposure to that was using the music sequencer in LittleBigPlanet. So it’s just been really nice to sort of see that community grow up and go from kids into adults.”
For more coverage of video game soundtracks, check out God of War composer Bear McCreary’s thoughts on the direction of the game’s score, or even find out why the composer adores Genshin Impact so much.
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