Sony Unveils Community-Led PSN Project With The Bearded Ladies

Sony Europe is announcing a new community-led game design project where, along with Swedish Landit Bandit developer The Bearded Ladies Consulting, it'll solicit user concepts for a new PlayStation Network title. On the European PlayStation Blog, Sony explains that The Bearded Ladies is "currently working on an action platformer that will be released on the minis category of the Store and they want your help to design every aspect of it, from the design of the lead character to the storyline and the name." Launching with the action-platformer concept, users are encouraged to submit their concepts to the forums. Top contenders will be chosen from these submissions and put to a vote on Facebook, and winning ideas will be implemented into actual development by The Bearded Ladies. In an interesting experiment in user-generated game design, Sony will post a new challenge to the community every Friday for eight weeks. Each week constitutes one voting period, and the creators of the winning ideas will be included in the final PSN game's official credits. For example, the first challenge asks the community to design a protagonist for the game, including a visual representation if possible (although art skill is not part of the concept criteria). Representatives from The Bearded Ladies also join in to offer user tips: For example, notes character animator Kalle Soderberg: "Giving the characters features that make for contrast between limbs and body is great for a 2D platformer where there is limited resolution. Think of Mario’s plumber outfit: it makes his arms really stand out in the animations." The official PlayStation blog will house an ongoing developer diary for the community project.