Matt MacLaurin, lead programmer on Kodu, has said the two projects are quite different despite sharing the same genre.
Kodu is ”all about programming” whereas LBP is ”a super-cool level-editor” he says. To clear any misunderstanding he notes they’re ”about as similar as pinball and cross-country skiing.”
”I’m a big music fan, with very diverse tastes, and one thing I noticed is that when you start to listen to other genres - like jazz or reggae - your first impression is that everything in that genre all sounds the same,” said MacLaurin in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
”Reggae all has that backwards bass line. Rock always has a backbeat. Jazz always has that spangalang thing on the cymbal,” he continued. ”When you’re new to the genre, that’s all you hear. When you develop an ear for it, the differences leap out.”
Dropping the music analogy, MacLaurin went back to speaking game.
”More fundamentally, Kodu is all about programming - a legitimately new programming language that is being patented and studied by some of the top language theorists in the world,” said the dev, adding, ”LittleBigPlanet is a super-cool level-editor that by-and-large avoids programming, as far as I understand.”
”So, yeah, you can reposition objects and hit ‘play’ in both. Beyond that, they’re about as similar as pinball and cross-country skiing. In the end, the more tools, the better.”
The lead programmer goes on to admit he hasn’t actually played LittleBigPlanet, explaining they have to ”be cautious about contaminating our invention process by studying other projects too closely.”
