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!

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!

Nu söker vi på Tarsier Studios AB en Controller till vårt kontor i Karlshamn. Vi söker dig som vill vara en del av ett spännande företag i en ung och dynamisk bransch. Du trivs med att ta ansvar och tycker om när du har möjlighet att påverka. Det är ett plus om du har erfarenhet från spelbranschen men det är inget krav. Du är väldigt duktig på det du gör, du trivs att arbeta i team, du är entusiastisk och initiativrik. Att det finns hundar och även ibland bebisar på kontoret stör dig inte det minsta.

Arbetsuppgifter

I rollen som Controller kommer du arbeta brett inom ekonomiområdet i allt från löpande redovisning till ekonomisk styrning i våra olika projekt. Du kommer till stor del fungera som stöd i allt som rör ekonomi, du kommer jobba med budgetering, kassaflödesanalyser samt rapportering till VD och styrelsen. Du kommer få vara huvudansvarig för företagets ekonomi och arbeta nära vår VD och dessutom kommer du ingå i företagets ledningsgrupp.

Du kommer bland annat:

• Göra lönsamhetsanalyser, investeringskalkyler, kapitalförvaltning,samt analysera nyckeltal.
• Arbeta med fakturering, löpande redovisning och bokföring.
• Sköta moms och skattedeklarationer, inkomstdeklarationer samt årsredovisning.
• Ansvara för månadsbokslut och göra det förberedande arbetet inför årsboksluten.
• Ansvara för lönekörningar, viss personaladministration.
• Löpande redovisning ner på projektnivå samt projektredovisning.

I övrigt kommer du:

Skicka din ansökan (märkt ‘Application: Controller’) till 

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!

Press Release in English
Press Release in Swedish

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/

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

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.

Upon hearing the distressed meow-ing of said moggy, our hero squeezed into his best spandex and leapt into action. Leading the massive 58 minute operation was Andreas, who had this to say…

“In situations like that, you don’t have time to think. Your body becomes an instrument of pure cat rescue. I just couldn’t let it suffer like that…and I didn’t want my engine clogged up with cat bits.”

Assisting the operation was Björn, who was tasked with pushing the cat’s rear end.

Björn has not spoken since.

Artist’s impression of what a recently rescued cat might look like.

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!

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!

Tell us a little bit about how you got started with LBP? Was it love at first sight? Is there room for any other games in your life right now?

Ahhh, my first meeting with LittleBigPlanet™. I read a preview of it sometime in 2008 and I had absolutely no idea what it was. Then when I watched a video I was absolutely super-mega-woop-hooked! The idea of creating anything was, for me, revolutionary. I spent weeks annoying the sack out of my friends, hyping this game that would turn my grades upside down.

I remember making my dad drive to the store that was somehow releasing it a day earlier. There was such anticipation before putting the disc in my PS3, and then watching that intro narrated by Stephen Fry. Then I sat up and raged at the Create mode until my dad made me go to bed. It was wonderful, simply wonderful.

I do have time for other games though! I am just about to beat Demon’s Souls and I totally bought (and loved) Portal 2. Then we’ve got Skyrim coming up on 11/11/11. I’m also going to mash through the new Batman game, the new Rayman game and probably a few Zelda games.
But yeah, I usually go through about four main titles every year, the rest of the time is spent creating in LBP2. It’s great to do something else for a bit of inspiration.

So you’ve sacrificed your school summer holidays for the the greater LBP good? How have you found your time at Tarsier? They didn’t treat you too badly did they?

Honestly I have had a fantastic time here. I had no idea what to expect before I came, but everyone was really friendly, helpful and supportive. It’s also interesting to see how all of the folk here are normal gamer people. They’re just a bunch of nerds teaming up to follow their vision and make something fun and enjoyable. Just like me really, but with more education and less hair!

To LittleBigPlanet™ regulars, you’re probably better known by your PSN ID. Have you found any big differences between working as a one man show and working in a game development studio?

Oh yes, yes indeed. When I create on my own I usually have a vague idea for a story and some small gameplay ideas. Then I create the gameplay motifs, scenery and cut-scenes as I go along. It’s a lot of fun working that way, but the thermometer tends to become all sad and overheated. When you have to ditch gameplay pieces that you have decorated nicely but just don’t feel fun, it can be a painful experience!

At Tarsier it’s a bit more professional. Here the designers create the motifs in basic cardboard, and then we look at each other’s stuff and give feedback. Lastly, we put them together in an order that creates a nice flow throughout the level, then we decorate it and then finally we add cutscenes.

It was pretty hard adapting to this new way of creating in the first few weeks (I found myself secretly adding visual effects to the gameplay pieces, such as small glowing dots and confetti. But I only did this in the evenings when nobody was looking!) In the end, though, I found this method worked better, since you have so much more control over your gameplay and flow. Sure it can feel a bit frustrating when you want to do everything at once, but it’s way more efficient if you want to end up with something amazing.

It must be pretty sweet getting paid to make games though right?

YES! This is pretty much my dream job and I’m loving it to bits.

As someone who’s worked with LBP as both a developer and a Community creator, you’re kind of in competition with yourself to see who can come up with the coolest stuff. Who’s winning?

It’s very close, but I think the ‘community me’ is just ahead! I have the freedom to create pretty much anything I want in my personal projects, so the possibilities are endless. I can also do the really crazy stuff that the main LBP story mode couldn’t contain, simply because it’s too random.

So, is this something you’d like to do for a career? If so, what kind of games would you like to make?

Yeah, that’s the plan right now! I know it’s sort of a hard path to take but there’s nothing wrong with trying! I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to create in the future to be honest. I’d like to introduce completely new experiences and ideas to the world, but don’t we all! The main goal right now is to learn as much as possible outside of LBP, so that I can create games in some form, and then hopefully get cracking. To be honest I’m pretty happy as long as I’m having fun, and I’m having fun right now so I guess I’m on the right track!

And how do you think the new features of the PlayStation Vita® is going to change things for creators?

The touch allows you to activate things without putting your sacky in a control seat or even moving him, making menu activation a whole bunch easier and a lot more fun. I also think that creating is going to become a bit faster with these new touch elements and, unlike the move pack, everyone in the community can enjoy the wonders of touch!

Finally, do you have anything to say to the millions of people who have yet to play LBP Vita? Should they be getting a little bit excited?

I definitely think they should! The touch is working great and adds a whole bunch of gameplay opportunities. You will be able to create masterpieces on the go and the create mode has been improved and customized with the new fancy touch controls. I am really liking this game and can’t wait for the final experience!

LittleBigPlanet™ Vita has been nominated for IGN’s People’s Choice Awards!

Visit this site right now and vote on your favorite game!