Boku, Microsoft's 'LittleBigPlanet' heading to 360, PC

by Jason Dobson on Nov 3rd 2008 1:30PM

Little Big Planet captured players' hearts and free time with its unmistakable mix of ingenuity and cute. Now it appears that Microsoft has its own plan to tap into players' creative wellspring with Boku, a new XNA project billed by The Seattle Times blog as a "visual programming language for kids." Hello World.

Following a previous demonstration of the project in 2007, Boku was officially unveiled this week by project lead Matthew MacLaurin during Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. The effort looks to build upon Microsoft's ongoing work with the more complicated XNA Game Studio, allowing players to program their own games using a more inviting set of icon-driven instructions on either the PC or Xbox 360. Sort of makes us want to go back and revisit Carnage Heart.

No official release date has been announced yet, though MacLaurin noted during his presentation that players will be able to start playing with Boku sometime "early next year." Until then, check out a video of it in motion after the break.

[Via Gamasutra]

Source

Tags: boku, carnage-heart, little-big-planet, littlebigplanet, microsoft, PC, user-generated-content, Xbox-360, xna, xna-game-studio

Reader Comments (81)

Interesting, looks cool.

it's missing the charm of little big planet

I agree, pretty barebones and generic in the look. I do like the 3D aspect of this "game". It does appear that you could do 3D or 2D with this. Let's see what MS does with this.

LBP for the win!!!!
"That one" for the win!!!

SO you're saying LBP wouldn't be fun if it didn't have sackboys? That doesn't say much for the game.

we all know you hate LBP Marty. thanks.

Its up to the creator to add charm to their home made games. This game isn't too comparable to lbp.

lol hello world

as usual microsoft bits off the competition. they cant innovate on there own. waste your crap money on dlc. what else is new. microsoft makes me sick. nickle and dime you for every little thing. enjoy the rrod. i already had two.

I don't mind one bit that MS has latched onto console user generated content gaming. The more the merrier. MM and Sony have a console difining winner and I cannot wait for what MM and Sony have in store for LBP2.

Yeah, XNA is such a ripoff of sony.

A world/game creator is nothing new. The only thing microsoft is doing here is making it easier for people who want to get into making games.

Making interesting things for PS3 = good for gamers.
Making interesting things for 360 = good for gamers.

Why the hate? I mean, this just looks like a drag and drop GUI to overlay there XNA.

Do you cry and slam the keyboard when you type those mini rants? I imagine you as an angry Mr. Peepers.

Do you just skim articles for things you don't like, and then type out massive rants about something you clearly didn't understand?

This isn't really anything like LBP, it's more similar to something like RPG Maker, but for a wider range of games and not just RPG's.

I also highly doubt they've thrown this together in a matter of months to compete with LBP, it looks like something that's been in the pipes since XNA was announced. i.e. before LBP.

Chris my main man...

The whole industry "feeds" off one another, in terms of design. As with other items, clothing, appliances...

Its been this way for eons, when markets reach a "plateau". ie: Touch screen cellphones. I guess T-Mobile, Verizon, and BlackBerry make you sick too.

:/

It's really hard for me to not hate this as I do fault MS for their tenancy to copy idea over developing their own. But this does look to be an order of magnitude greater in terms of flexibility of creation, yet it still has a ways to go in the style department.

I just hope that they don't charge people to play the good community games. I see it as a double edged sword for developers taking advantage of the XNA community thing. I am an XNA developer myself and I'd never publish my product on their XNA community thing because, even though I'd maybe make myself and MS some money (if my games were any good), I'd lose the ownership of my license to MS. Neither Steam nor Penny Arcade's Greenhouse have this caveat. MS is just too greedy for my tastes.

If you're an XNA developer, then you should probably know that you do NOT lose ownership of anything you publish with it. MS take a (rather large) percentage of whatever you make from it on the 360, but that's it.

Hey, uh, fucktard, Boku was announced the day BEFORE LittleBigPlanet was announced.

Looks cool hopefully the creator is ROBUST...seriosuly

But LBP is the most important game of this generation and will breed a lot of children in this industry Congrats MM

And MS your game in no less important this game may open the doors for people to get in the INDUSTRY so pleze do a good job!

Importance is important once importance is attached.

The last thing the industry needs is a bunch of level designers. It's saturated enough.

Standard level design for most games has little in common with LBP.

Oh and, why the fuck are people comparing this to LBP in the first place? This is a game creation tool, one of the subtools being a level designer that has nothing to do with LBP.

Careful with that hyperbole, there's still 3 years of generation to go and already that statement is severely debatable

Im gonna stay true to that...I think LBP will launch bring back the 2D platfomer, and since it was the first game in the last 5 years to be this ambitious It can have the title until proven other wise....Most important game of the Generation...And this MS said something about Programming whats that about?

well i have and like LBP and all, but i wouldnt call it the generation definer. i would give that title (so far) to MS's XNA platform. just give that time to develop in the hands of amateur programmers and we will see plenty of amazing games appear on there.

either way, the generation is long from over so there will be plenty of time for other generation defining projects.

I have to agree with McCloud. LBP is the first one this generation to do something completely outside the box that still appeals to a massive amount of people regardless of age, sex, race or culture.

Looks definitely more advanced than LBP...

wow it also looks like its being played on the atari. wow. doesnt look like much. but please prove me wrong microsoft even though i hate you.

Why does everyone have this undying HATE for MS I don't get it?

Don't waste your time, all he does is complain about the wii and 360 in his posts.

The undying hate is something leftover from all the geeks who hated MS for the antitrust suit a decade ago. I've found that most people don't even understand why they say these things, save for the fact that everyone else says them too.

You are right that even though people like me say that they hate MS, we probably don't because we still use Windows instead of Linux or OSX. I think what I really dislike about ms is that, even though my PS3 cost me $100 more, I spent more on the xbox for the wireless controller, charge pack, charge cable, hard drive, and a year of live than $100. Plus I can't stream content from any standard media server, nor can take my save games to my friends house on a flash memory stick.

I may play my 360 a little more than my PS3, but I would say the only thing it has going for it is a slightly bigger handful of better games. IMO, between the ps3 and 360, I ended up paying more for the privilege of convenience on the latter.

I'm thinking Atmosphir (http://atmosphir.com/) meets FarCry Terrain editor, and I'm liking the combo. Can't wait to see how this one develops.

Seriously people, just go learn to use a real IDE. These games are so retarded.

"Why would I want to learn IDE programming? What's in it for me, what can I make, what's possible and what isn't... ???"

"Oh wow, look at what I'm doing with this "LittleBIGPlanet" game and "Boku" tool. This is really fun, I'd like to look into this and see what other opportunities and technologies are out there for me to explore so I can do more of this."

These games are gateways to the real deal, much like some would consider GH/RB gateways to playing real Guitar / Drums. Don't knock 'em because you were fortunate enough to skip a step.

I was kidding I was just doing the whole

"Seriously people, just go learn to use a real guitar. These games are so retarded."

My apologies, sarcasm detector is borked. Consider it a preemptive strike!

Integrated development environment. Basically it's just a program that wraps itself around a language (or sometimes more) that allows you to easily work on a project instead of single files, and they usually include a compiler too.

When I was growing up, if a kid was interested in playing the guitar, they got a real guitar and picked at the strings. Likewise when I was growing up, if a kid was interested in making a video game, they got a C64 computer and typed in BASIC code line by line.

Guitar Hero and LittleBigPlanet let kids (and adults) feel like they have skills, without actually having any skills. And that makes it an even bigger let down when they eventually pick up a real guitar or IDE and realize that they don't know a thing about the real deal!

Besides, we already have a "gateway to the real deal" - it's called Flash. It's the modern equivalent to typing up games in BASIC. Anything less than Flash is just a game.

I wouldn't say flash is a good tool to get into game programming....something like Game Maker, Dark Basic or Blitz Basic would probably be a better idea. Personally I found Game Maker -> Blitz Basic -> XNA (c#) -> HLSL/C++/More advanced DX stuff to be a good series of stepping stones.

Evan, what are you babbling about? I got a guitar because of Rock Band and I've been trying my hardest to learn how to play ever since. I really love playing Today. ^_^ I still play RB of course.

Tiptup - Good for you! Do you want a cookie?

@Evan

You sound like some old fart whining about having walking to school uphill both ways as a kid.

*having

Honestly, I think I'll stick to Garry's Mod...

I would love if the 360 and PC versions were somehow cross compatible, create the levels on PC and play them on the 360, this is the sort of connectivity between the 360 and Windows PCs I want!

I think your on to sumthing here and for this MS would be smart if they did something like that..

For the most part, XNA games are cross compatible with each other. It all depends on how Microsoft releases this. If they do the tiered membership, pricing, and feature sets they've been using with XNA Creators Club, it definitely won't be a package accessible to the audience they claim to be shooting for. I'm just hoping for a single package, you own it on Windows and 360, and have access to a full feature-set for a nominal fee and an Xbox LIVE account. That seems more likely anyways, as Boku doesn't exactly scream commercial application in the same way XNA does.

If this is anywhere near as robust as 'Click N' Play' I'm sure you'll get a couple good but basic games out of it.

KnP ftw! I'm making my game in Multimedia Fusion 2. I used to use The Games Factory in high school, recently came back to Clickteam products after playing IWBTG and Iji (great great game, everyone should Google it, don't dismiss it because ofthe MSPaint style gfx)

I want to learn XNA got my next project though.

My god I loved the games factory. I used it back in Jr. High. Made all sorts of games, aw the memories.

Looks wierd.

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Boku, Microsoft's 'LittleBigPlanet' heading to 360, PC

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