Playstation teams up with design school for LittleBigPlanet design event

Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. (SCEA) and the prestigious Parsons The New School For Design today announced its partnership in hosting a 24-hour LittleBigPlanet(TM) Game Jam. The event will take place September 21-22 in New York City at Parsons and will consist of a 24-hour video game design competition featuring more than 120 students from disciplines such as technology, music, fashion design, illustration and photography. Participants in the Game Jam will be tasked with creating the most inventive and challenging game levels within a 24-hour period for the highly anticipated PLAYSTATION(R)3 title, LittleBigPlanet.

"We are thrilled to be partnering with some of the most imaginative talents in the world at Parsons The New School For Design," said Scott Rohde, vice president of Product Development, Worldwide Studios America. "The LittleBigPlanet Game Jam is the perfect way to showcase the original and innovative aspects of LittleBigPlanet as well as the exceptional design abilities of the students at Parsons."

During the Game Jam, students will break off into teams of five. Each team will demonstrate their distinctive artistic talents by creating levels utilizing LittleBigPlanet's easy-to-use creation tools over the course of one day. At the end of the 24-hour period, teams will present their levels, which will be judged by a panel consisting of Media Molecule, the award-winning development team responsible for LittleBigPlanet, various Parsons faculty, and members of the media. The winning Game Jam levels will be featured in a specially branded Parsons section within LittleBigPlanet when it launches this October.

LittleBigPlanet is a community-based game for the PLAYSTATION(R)3 that allows players to play, create and share the levels they build with other users throughout the world via PLAYSTATION(R)Network. Playing as customizable SackBoy(TM) characters, players have the power to move anything in the game's glued and stitched-together 3D landscape; they have the power to design, shape and build both objects and entire locations for others to view and play. Once the level has been completed, players can invite anyone within the LittleBigPlanet community to come and explore their world - or can go and explore everybody else's. LittleBigPlanet was recently awarded several prominent accolades from its showing at the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo and is launching exclusively on the PLAYSTATION(R)3 in October.