Coin-OpEd: Sony recalls a Little Big Problem

This sort of thing has happened before. Microsoft's fighter Kakuto Chojin for the Xbox contained background music with passages from the Qur'an in it, which the company realized only after the game had gone gold and entered duplication. In that case, Microsoft opted not to recall the game upon discovering the music and simply hoped that the issue would go unnoticed. A few months after the game was released, people heard the passages and Microsoft wound up recalling it after all. In that case, I think it might have been better for Microsoft to hold back its tepidly anticipated game a couple of weeks to make sure the potentially offensive version was never released in the first place.

But Little Big Planet is different. It's a highly anticipated game, for one. It's also driven by user-generated content. And it's already out there, not just in the hands of game reviewers but also lucky gamers who snagged copies from street-date-breaking retailers. Put all that together and you'd better believe that people will use the game to express how they feel about this mess. I guarantee you there are user levels being formulated right now that are exponentially more offensive than the background music that caused the recall.

This is one of the reasons that game companies have been so skittish about user-generated content. The nongaming world doesn't understand that a game like this is just a tool that people will use to express themselves, no different from a writer's pen or a sculptor's clay. When people use Little Big Planet to create horrendous things (and they will), the outside world will blame Little Big Planet first for allowing them that freedom.

The only question left in my mind is whether the Little Big Planet creations from the caustic underbelly of gamer culture will be sufficiently scandalous to surface on the mass-media radar. After all, with a presidential race reaching its denouement and a global economic crisis to worry about, perhaps we'll all get lucky and they'll stay focused on the news that really matters.

Brendan Sinclair is a GameSpot news editor, and has been covering the game industry since 1999.