Media Molecule’s upcoming Vita game Tearaway is almost relentlessly charming, and in every way a reflection of the studio that made it. Media Molecule is one of the most charming studios working today; a British-based group of highly creative individuals lead by a seemingly incorruptible ethos that games should be, above all, playful.
For a studio with only a single franchise behind them – LittleBigPlanet - it’s quite remarkable that we can isolate a personality at all, let alone one as endearing as Media Molecule’s. But LittleBigPlanet had such a distinctive voice, it comes as no surprise to find Tearaway shares similar sensibilities. There’s a fascination with crafting, for example. There’s folklore. There’s a joie de vivre. And, despite the fact that Tearaway Creative Lead Rex Crowle doesn’t quite see it, there’s a bit of (charming) British whimsy, too.
“I don’t know if Tearaway is especially British,” Crowle says, “because our team is from all over the world…”
“I think that Molecule has a lot of influence from British kids TV,” chimes in Media Molecule Co-founder Siobhan Reddy. “A lot of the things that unites everyone is kids’ television, like Tony Hart and stuff like that. I’ve discovered that. That’s what they all have in common."
Tearaway is, essentially, Media Molecule’s ‘difficult second album,' and has been built specifically to showcase everything the Vita can do, while a second Molecule team is currently working on a PlayStation 4 title. One can’t help but wonder how readily accepting Media Molecule is of these mandates, designed so pointedly with Sony’s hardware in mind.
“We were just excited about the opportunity, really,” shrugs Crowle. “You know, new toys mean new adventures, so we couldn’t resist.
“With LittleBigPlanet, we created the game all around the PlayStation 3 and the fact it was the first connected console, and all that gameplay came out of that. And with the Vita we just wanted to create something really tactile, we wanted to use all the inputs. It’s the first time we’ve done a handheld game, so we were keen to explore how that would affect our game crafting.”
So the small team (there are 15 people working on Tearaway) explored, and came up with the idea of a world made entirely of paper, a world that can be folded, creased and torn.
“It became the ethos behind our game. Because it just represented what we were trying to do so well. We want you to want to touch it. If you see something that’s not stuck down, you want to flatten it out and stick it down. If there’s something that suggests you can unfold it, it’s hard not to start unpeeling and opening out the scenery.”
The Vita’s tilt functionality, rear and central touchpads and accelerometers are used sparingly but creatively; tap on the back of the Vita to bounce your little character off a drum, for example, or roll a ball with the accelerometers while manoeuvring your character with the thumb-sticks. Tearaway makes Sony’s handheld feel like a proper, fully rounded piece of kit, a sensation rarely elicited by other games. In fact, Tearaway feels like a celebration of the Vita, a console that quite frankly, needs to be celebrated. Is Crowle at all surprised at the handheld’s mediocre sale records thus far?
“I’m just getting really excited about how the catalogue is broadening. We’re seeing all of these really very different games appearing on it, which aren’t available on other handheld devices. I’m just enjoying what I can play on it.”
Despite similarities to LittleBigPlanet, Crowle stresses that there is no Media Molecule mission statement plastered on the walls of its Surry office. Media Molecule’s games are born from experimentation and support of the passions and ideas of individual “moleculers,” as the pair affectionately call them.
“We’re a small team, so what we make is very personal to us” explains Crowle. “There are no real design documents showing us what our look is or how our games feel, because they’re the products of everyone being involved and having their game jams and putting all of their personality and their loves - and hates - into what we ultimately create.”
While Media Molecule operates under Sony’s protective corporate umbrella (it’s a “great relationship” enthuses Crowle), these are words that could easily come from an indie developer. It’s unsurprising that the team keep tabs on the indies for recruitment purposes, but what of the studio’s “if you build it, Media Molecule will come” reputation? Famously, new recruits have been brought on board with no game design experience at all, just some excellent LittleBigPlanet user-generated levels. It’s a process that is surely far from typical for such a high profile development studio.
“There’s a tremendous amount of the newer Media Molecule generation who have come from making levels in LittleBigPlanet,” says Crowle. “Some of our star designers were construction builders a few years ago, they worked in very different fields, but got noticed because they were making great levels and the community raised them up and then we spotted them. They come from all directions, really.”
Considering LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway share much in common, including that aforementioned whimsy and focus on play, surely there’s something that unites the team?
“I think it’s maybe… you’re already on quite a small island…” Crowle pauses. “And several of us grew up in really rural areas, so there wasn’t a lot of pop culture noise around us.”
“Rex has never seen Star Wars,” interjects Reddy.
“I think probably we were a little distanced from the more, uh, explosive pop culture that was going on,” laughs Crowle, “we were too busy splashing in puddles and climbing up trees to be influenced by those sorts of things.”
In comparison to the explosions and bombast that so typify many of gaming’s biggest blockbusters, it’s easy to look at the happy little paper figure running through his paper world on the Vita’s bright screen and see that influence reflected.
Will we ever see Media Molecule shake off its nice-guy reputation and turn to the dark side?
“I have absolutely no idea what a Media Molecule first person shooter would look like,” Reddy laughs.
“Maybe there’d be, I don’t know, clown guns.”
Lucy O'Brien is Entertainment Editor at IGN AU. Follow her ramblings on IGN at Luce_IGN_AU,or @Luceobrien on Twitter. If you like what you're reading, follow the whole IGN Aussie team on Facebook.
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