LittleBigPlanet, probably the most anticipated videogame this year (about which we have talked before) has been for delayed a few weeks. Usually, such a stall would be down to last minute bugs found in the code or something rather mundane. No-one expected something like LBP to be delayed due to an outbreak of corporate religious sensitivity.
The problem was discovered in one of the pieces of music licensed for the soundtrack, specifically a piece by Toumani Diabate which contained two expressions which are found in the Qur’an. This discovery appears to have triggered a spasm of corporate religious sensitivity with Sony immediately recalling all copies globally and Guildford-based developer Media Molecule left ‘shellshocked and gutted’. A new date for the game has since been announced.
Sony’s Playstation 3, on which the game is based, has had a previous well publicised conflict with a major religious organisation. Last year they fell into a well-publicised dispute with the Church of England over the use of the interior of Manchester Cathedral as an environment within their ‘Resistance : Fall of Man’ title. Clearly, they don’t want to enter the same kind of conflict again – and in particular not with something as family-friendly as the LBP brand.
Perhaps what’s most interesting here though, is the precedent implied for LBP as a platform for user-expression. It’s one of the flag-bearers for the idea of user generated content, the game itself is essentially a tool to allow the player to create more levels and share them with others. On the evidence of the beta version, which players have been using for a few weeks, it’s a startlingly powerful one. LBP is intended to be a place for free creativity and expression, so it’s going to be very interesting to watch the corporate reactions as the game evolves with the public expressing themselves within it.
After all, the previous poster-child was Will Wright’s Spore – and we all remember what happened there…
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