LittleBigPlanet

A PlayStation 3 game handed its players the tools to become designers.

Media Molecule released LittleBigPlanet for PlayStation 3 in 2008 around three linked ideas: Play, Create, Share. Sackboy ran and jumped through handmade, physics-driven stages, but the bigger invitation was to start making your own.

Players received the same basic design tools and materials used to build the game’s levels. With a controller, they could construct stages, mechanisms and strange experiments, then publish them directly through PlayStation Network. More than a million community levels were available within a year.

Level editors had appeared on consoles before. LittleBigPlanet’s breakthrough was making creation and online distribution central to the experience. Sony carried its “Play, Create, Share” model into ModNation Racers, while Media Molecule kept pushing the idea toward Dreams.