LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita Beta coming soon!
Update: Hello again everyone!
We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the number of applications we got for the LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita online beta! In order to assure as many of you early adopters as possible get a place, we’re going to take the registration pages offline tonight.
It’s been truly amazing to get such a positive response from you all, and we would like to thank you very much for your interest.
We hope to see many of you soon in the beta! :)
Original Story:
At last! I can finally reveal the exciting news that I teased you with a couple of weeks ago!
You can now sign-up for a chance to participate in the Beta for LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita!
Those of you in the European and North American regions, can register your interest by heading over to LittleBigPlanet.com now and following the instructions there.
Provided that luck is on your side, you will soon be the proud recipient of an e-mail with your Beta code, giving you an exclusive first look at LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita. Your feedback during the Beta will help us improve the game and squash some of those pesky bugs before the release later this year.
Everyone here at Tarsier Studios and our partners over at Double Eleven are terribly excited to see what you, the community, will create in the Beta! So go to LittleBigPlanet.com right away and get yourself signed up!
Remember to follow @TarsierStudios and myself (@Syroc_LBP) to get the latest news regarding the Beta and LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita!
Introducing your new Community Coordinator!
Hello fellow Sackpeople!
I’m Tarsier Studios’ new Community Coordinator, Simon. And I’ll be looking after the LittleBigPlanet on Playstation Vita community. I’ve been publishing my own levels since the first LittleBigPlanet beta, under the PSN name Syroc. Some of you may also know me from my blogs on LittleBigLand.
I started working at Tarsier Studios as a QA Tester, but now it’s time to begin a new adventure. I hope my past experience with the LittleBigPlanet community will help me provide the content you’d like to see, and I’ll be sure to pass on any feedback you have to the team!
I’ll be working closely with the existing LittleBigPlanet community team at Media Molecule, Steven (@StevenIsbell) and Spaff (@thespaff), and together, we’ve got tons of plans to make the community bigger and better!
Feel free to contact and follow me on Twitter (@Syroc_LBP) or send me messages on any of the awesome community forums. Of course you can also get in contact with the whole LBP community team on Twitter (@LittleBigPlanet) or through Facebook.
And don’t forget to follow Tarsier Studios on Twitter (@TarsierStudios) for all the latest news on LittleBigPlanet on Playstation Vita and what’s happening at Tarsier Studios.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that there will be some exciting news very soon! Watch this space!
Studio of the Year
Tarsier Studios have been named Studio of the Year by the Swedish Games Industry!
This year marks the beginning of the first ever annual Swedish Developer Awards, hosted by the Swedish Games Industry (Dataspelsbranschen).
At a ceremony held in Stockholm this past Friday, a jury consisting of representatives from the Swedish games industry decided on who should take the first round of awards.
Personally, we couldn’t think of a better way to kick off this marvellous new tradition than by our being named Studio of the Year, and luckily…neither could they!
“With turnover increasing by nearly 100% per year over the past three years and with a newly established satellite studio in Malmö, Tarsier Studios have managed the feat of putting Karlshamn on the map. Through hard work and high quality productions, they have grown from a small and unknown Studio to a large and proven one, all by themselves. This year’s Studio is Tarsier.”
We bow our aching heads, bend our creaking knees, and dance an ill-advised jig in honour of this honour! Stuff like this makes all of our hard work…well, it’s still hard, but we’re at least smiling a bit more now!
We’re so happy with this award, and really hope it can help put Tarsier Studios on the map. We’ve not done much colonizing and putting flags in the ground yet, but we will soon…promise! Just have to get this game finished first!
Double Fine Adventure time!
All this talk of Notch funding Psychonauts 2 made us feel that we should fund a Tim Schafer game too. So we did…
A whopping 1% of it to be exact!
The Kickstarter programme lets fans like you (and us!) make a direct contribution to games that simply have to be made! And since Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert are responsible for some of our favourite gaming moments of recent years, we felt compelled to cough up some cold hard cash. Our employees may starve for the next few months…but we’re okay with that!
You don’t have to be Billy Big Bucks to get involved either. You can pledge anything from $1 to $150, 000, and any pledge over $15 will receive a wonderful one/four/loads of-a-kind gift!
So put…that coffee…down! Don’t force your heroes to work for the man…let them work for the fans!
Pledge here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
And check out Double Fine right here:
http://doublefine.com/
Tarsier Studios receives the Gazelle award!
With the office trumpet having gone un-tooted for quite some time, we thought this latest news deserved an almighty honk! Tarsier Studios is the 2011 Gazelle award winner in Blekinge, Sweden!
The Gazelle award, presented by the Swedish financial magazine Dagens Industri, is awarded to companies that “has achieved a continuous growth in revenue or gross profit for the last four financial years, and which has, in total, more than doubled the revenue or the gross profit in the period”.
We’re not quite sure what that means either. But it must be good, because they gave us flowers and a certificate and everything!
Onstage, representing for Tarsier, were Mattias Nygren, Andreas Johnsson and Peter Lübeck. Upon receiving a bouquet of roses, Nygren fell to his knees and sobbed “You love me! You truly love me!”
No, Mattias, we love your continuous growth in revenue or gross profit for the last four financial years. But you’re a pretty good guy in any case!
The prize for quip of the evening, though, has to go to the flame-haired gentleman in the red velvet blazer – Mr Andreas Johnsson. Regular visitors to our site will know that Andreas has already made quite a name for himself in Malmö as the saviour of cat-kind. But he will now forever be remembered for his witty antics at this year’s ceremony.
When asked “What has been the toughest moment in the company’s history so far?”, Andreas replied “The first five years.”
The remark was greeted with much laughter. Although, curiously, not from Andreas himself. He merely pretended to break down in tears and curl up into the foetal position onstage.
What a guy! Deadpan til the last!
Click here to read the full article in Dagens Industri (in Swedish).
Photo: Peter Enckell
Cat Rescued From Car Engine Terror
We don’t just make ace games here you know. We also patrol the streets of Malmö, looking for cats trapped in car engines, and selflessly rescuing them from a life of oily incarceration. To be honest, our work on this front has been pretty thin on the ground, but that all changed a few weeks ago when a foolish feline took a wrong turn and ended up wedged in the engine block of a parked car in front of the office.
Read more »
LittleBigPodcast Trailer Analysis
Some guys over at LittleBigPodcast have broken our Gamescom trailer down into almost atom-sized chunks and put together a video analysis for your pondering pleasure. Sadly, while we can neither confirm nor deny any of their hypotheseseseses, it’s an honour to have members of the LBP Community paying such close attention to what we do. (And guys, if you’re reading this, we think there may be some vacancies over at CTU that would be perfect for a couple of eagle-eyed operators like you!)
Anyway, we will shortly be posting a thrilling tale of heroism and daring-do, hitherto unseen on Planet Tarsier; but until that time, we hope you enjoy this video as much as we did.
Cheerio for now!
Meet A Tarsian: Sebastian, Creator
Today begins the first instalment of a (hopefully) long and popular series of staff interviews. Since he has sadly had to leave us and return to his studies, we thought it only fair that we take a peek inside the mind of Mr Sebastian Larsson.
First of all, can you tell these fine ladies and gentlemen a little bit about yourself?
Hi, my name is Sebastian, I am sixteen years old and have been a serious LittleBigPlanet™ addict for the last two years!
I spend most of my free time creating in LittleBigPlanet™. It’s such a great place to unleash your ideas and creativity. Before LittleBigPlanet™ came and filled my life with Sackboys and fluff, I liked to do a bit of drawing too, but ever since the first LittleBigPlanet™ hit the stores, I have barely had any time for my old interests!
IGN’s People’s Choice Award Nominee
LittleBigPlanet™ Vita has been nominated for IGN’s People’s Choice Awards!
Visit this site right now and vote on your favorite game!
LittleBigPlanet Vita praised at Gamescom
OK, so we’ve been totally rubbish at keeping you posted on the comings and goings of LBP Vita since E3. No doubt many of you have been staring at our site since then, hitting the refresh button every 10 minutes and being rewarded with nothing but a picture of a bowl of strawberries. To those people we can but stare at our feet and say “sorry”. You do have our heartfelt assurance that the strawberries did, in fact, taste absolutely glorious!
LBP Vita is being shown off at Gamescom as we speak, giving people the opportunity to see our really rather excellent Create mode in action. Yes, the rumours are true…it really is rather excellent!
To make further amends, we would like to offer you a gift…these two links:
IGN: LittleBigPlanet – Far From a Gimmick
The best use of the Vita’s unique capabilities.
Kotaku: LBP will show off your fancy new PlayStation® Vita
Every new console or handheld needs that one game. That one title that you show first to friends, family and co-workers. The one that makes them go “ohhh, that’s neat”, and makes you feel better about spending all that money you’re already slightly regretting. LittleBigPlanet is that game for the PlayStation Vita.
Both are full of praise for the game, and it’s great to see that our goal of making this the best LBP game ever remains firmly on course.
Anyway, enough of our jibber jabber, we’ve got to get back to work but we’ll see you again really soon. Scout’s honour!
