Media Molecule | Code Like It's 198x

Media Molecule made a game out of the idea that players would rather build than be told what to do. Its first release, LittleBigPlanet (2008), was a PlayStation 3 platform game in which every level of the main story had been built with the same tools players got to make and share their own. The studio began as a handful of people in rooms above a shop in Guildford, founded by friends who had been making a game together in their spare time while working at Lionhead. Sony bought it in 2010, and its later games, Tearaway and Dreams, carried the same handmade feel.

Fast facts

Founded: registered 4 January 2006; formed by Lionhead staff in late 2005.
Founders: Mark Healey, Alex Evans, Dave Smith and Kareem Ettouney. Siobhan Reddy, who had worked on Burnout 3 at Criterion, joined as studio director.
Base: Guildford, Surrey.
Owner: Sony, since 2010.
Games: LittleBigPlanet (2008), LittleBigPlanet 2 (2011), Tearaway (2013), Dreams (2020).

Out of Lionhead

The founders came out of the Guildford games cluster of Bullfrog and Lionhead. Mark Healey’s first game at Bullfrog was Theme Park. At Lionhead he made Rag Doll Kung Fu in his spare time, a fighting game with floppy, mouse-controlled puppets, helped by Evans and Smith. It went on sale through Valve’s Steam service in late 2005. “I learnt everything I know about games at Bullfrog and Lionhead,” Evans told Edge in 2007, “and Peter Molyneux was very supportive of us when we first left.”

Evans later told the story of leaving. He, Smith and Healey had been working on a research project at Lionhead called The Room while finishing Rag Doll Kung Fu, and Evans asked Peter Molyneux if they could go and start a company. Molyneux asked them to stay until Christmas, for a reason he could not explain yet; Evans guessed afterwards that it was the sale of Lionhead to Microsoft. Then Healey had second thoughts and went on holiday, and on the first day of the holiday, as Evans told it, Molyneux came in and said, “Screw it, leave now.” Evans had to phone Healey to tell him.

Healey told Edge in 2006 that Rag Doll Kung Fu was what made the company possible. “Rag Doll showed to us that we could make something great,” he said, “and it reminded us a lot of why we loved to make games.” Without Steam, he added, the game would not have been as successful, “and if Rag Doll hadn’t been as successful, then I wouldn’t have had the confidence to come and do this”.

LittleBigPlanet

They built a demo called Yellowhead, which Evans said had “a lot of Lionhead and Bullfrog in it, a lot of Rag Doll Kung Fu in it, and then a lot of Dave’s physics”. Smith had written a 2D physics engine that became the foundation of the game, Ettouney brought the idea of a miniature world, and Healey brought his love of switching on a home computer and starting to program. Sony’s Worldwide Studios saw it in 2006 and signed the studio to make a PlayStation 3 exclusive. Sony’s Phil Harrison announced it on stage at the Game Developers Conference in 2007. “It was terrifying,” Reddy remembered. “What we showed on the stage was pretty much everything we had. Every byte we had ever written.”

Edge played it that spring, still without a title, and thought it “could be a huge, defining release for Sony”. Your button-eyed, zip-fronted little character could run, jump and pull faces, with the Sixaxis controller tilting its head. Press a button and a menu came up that let you place objects, set their physical properties, reshape them, paint them and add stickers and sound, and then share the result over the PlayStation Network. The team, fewer than 20 people, said old children’s television such as Button Moon and Chorlton and the Wheelies had shaped the look: “We always wanted to make it feel like someone had actually made a real set, and then filmed it with a camera.”

LittleBigPlanet came out in the autumn of 2008. LittleBigPlanet 2 (2011) widened the tools to let players make other kinds of game and short films, and by 2013 Retro Gamer counted three sequels and a kart-racing spin-off.

Sony, Tearaway and Dreams

Sony bought Media Molecule in 2010. “It was brilliant,” Evans told Edge. “We were really happy working with Sony.” By 2012 the studio had moved from its rooms above a shop into an office in the centre of Guildford and grown from 27 people to 47, split between two projects. One was Tearaway (2013), a papercraft adventure for the PlayStation Vita whose use of the rear touch panel let players poke their fingers into its world. Edge picked it as one of its games of 2013.

Its next game, Dreams, was a toolkit for making games, music, animation and art on the PlayStation 4, which came out in full in February 2020. Wireframe, in 2021, found its players making everything from pixel-art shoot-’em-ups to train simulators, with tools designed around visual scripting instead of programming languages.

After Dreams

The founders left over the next few years. Evans left after Dreams was released, and Ettouney early in 2023. In April 2023 the studio announced that it would end live support for Dreams on 1 September to work on a new project, and a week later Healey announced that “after 17 years of co-birthing and building Media Molecule” he was leaving. In October 2023 Media Molecule began consultations on redundancies, reported as around 20 of its 135 staff.

Sources

Companies House, Media Molecule Limited, company number 05665849 (web): incorporated 4 January 2006. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/05665849
Edge issue 168, November 2006: interview with Mark Healey and Alex Evans (Rag Doll Kung Fu, Steam and the decision to start the company).
Edge issue 174, April 2007, pp. 49–53: preview of the then-untitled LittleBigPlanet (Sony’s Worldwide Studios; the team of fewer than 20 in Guildford; the creation tools; children’s television; “Molecular biology”: formed by Lionhead employees in late 2005; Evans on Bullfrog, Lionhead and Molyneux).
Edge issue 215, June 2010, pp. 49–55: LittleBigPlanet 2 (Healey, Evans and Ettouney; the new tools).
Edge issue 246, November 2012, pp. 122–125: studio profile (founded 2006; 47 staff; key staff; the old and new offices; the GDC 2007 announcement and Reddy’s recollection; the 2010 acquisition; Tearaway; Evans on leaving Lionhead, Yellowhead, Smith’s physics engine, Ettouney’s miniature world and Reddy’s Burnout 3).
Edge issue 262, January 2014, p. 72: Edge’s games of 2013 (Tearaway).
Retro Gamer Collection volume 3, 2009, p. 45: Bullfrog profile (Theme Park as Healey’s first game; Healey at Media Molecule).
Retro Gamer issue 110, January 2013, p. 63: Media Molecule “put together by Mark Healey, Alex Evans, Dave Smith and Kareem Ettouney”.
Retro Gamer issue 114, May 2013, p. 75: the LittleBigPlanet series’ three sequels and kart spin-off.
Wireframe issue 52, June 2021, pp. 37–38: Dreams and its creators. Issue 63, May 2022, p. 112: Tearaway and the Vita’s touch panels.
“Media Molecule is ending support for Dreams in September”, Video Games Chronicle, 11 April 2023 (web, secondary): the 1 September date and the new project; Ettouney’s and Evans’s departures. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/media-molecule-is-ending-support-for-dreams-in-september/
“Media Molecule co-founder exits following Dreams live support stoppage”, Push Square, 17 April 2023 (web, secondary): Healey’s announcement; four Lionhead founders. https://pushsquare.com/news/2023/04/media-molecule-co-founder-exits-following-dreams-live-support-stoppage
“Media Molecule reportedly faces layoffs”, Shacknews, 24 October 2023 (web, secondary), and Game World Observer, 24 October 2023 (web, secondary): the consultation, about 20 of 135 staff. https://www.shacknews.com/article/137502/media-molecule-layoffs and https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/10/24/media-molecule-layoffs-strategic-changes-playstation
Wikipedia, “LittleBigPlanet” and “Dreams (video game)” (web, secondary): release dates of LittleBigPlanet (October and November 2008), LittleBigPlanet 2 (January 2011) and Dreams (February 2020).