More shenanigans in Mm towers this week….

Chris here has a rather interesting Lab story to share with you soon, entitled ‘Spending your cache wisely’.
I’m not sure if you should take that sort of advice from a man dressed like this, or maybe that’s exactly the kind of thing you should do.

John Beech, one of our designers, is going on a two month long adventure. He’s going to Kayak around England, Scotland and Wales (yes he’s skipping Northern Ireland) in the name of charity. He’s going to be raising money for Games Aid - a UK charity that represents the games industry - and we would very much like you to sponsor him! Go on!

SPONSOR JOHN!

Hey everyone, my name is John, and I’m planning a likkle sailboat trip around the UK. It’s a bit like when you go to the beach for the day, but bigger. 2450 miles bigger! My mission should I choose to accept it (wait! I have already accepted it?!) is to Kayak around the country in a bit of plastic shaped like a toy boat, with nothing but my ‘massive arms’ , a paddle, and a power kite to carry me the distance.

I will be setting of from Guildford town centre on August the 8th, outside the Media Molecule Studio where I work as a games designer, and kayaking through London to the sea . From here I will paddle myself like crazy in an anticlockwise direction around the uk before finally heading back down through London and finishing back in Guildford. This should take about 2 months (the current world record for such an attempt) unless:
A) I die
B) I die
C) someone steals my kayak

Read more about John’s crazy mission, pledge some cash and track John’s whereabouts over on this special page we made for him.  Whether you sponsor John or not, why not wish him Bon Voyage via his twitter account, and keep him sane on his trip!

We’ll be sending John off on his journey this coming Monday, and will update you on his progress. Good luck John!

Is it just me, or does Tom appear to installing a PlayStation Eye Camera in the Mm Fridge disguised as a carton of juice?

Yup. That’s exactly what he’s doing.

We are searching for a lead audio designer with both the experience and talent required to take the audio reins on one of our exciting new projects!

This role, I am told, is not a junior position, neither is it a mid-level position for aspiring leads. That means it is a top level mega job. You must have proven experience in a similar role. We will only consider candidates who are able to provide an up to date show reel (although, if you’re experienced but out of practice then be prepared to do whatever it takes to prove your chops), have a minimum of five years experience working within a games team, and have shipped at least one title as a lead.

Is that you? Then read on!

There’s something weird afoot at Mm Towers.

Chris, one of our fabulous programmers and avid promoter of pub lunches, has written a deliciously nerdy blog post over on The Lab. What the heck is The Lab? Why it’s a section of this site that we set up for just this purpose, and then promptly ignored / forgot all about / were too busy making games to update it. Well no longer friends! For at least one more post has been written, and it’s a goodun!

In the post, Chris talks to us about doing exactly the right amount of work, specifically in terms of writing algorithms that don’t do more than they should. It begins like this, so you know it’s good:

The other day I was writing some code that needed to build up a list of strings in a large file, and identify any duplicates that occurred. On average, the file would contain about 10000 unique strings, and I’d be looking at finding at least 500 duplicates per string. That means that throughout the parsing of my file, I’d have to add about 10000 strings to the list, and probably do about 5000000 lookups on them. This needed to be a fast process…

Go on over and dive into the lab, your brain will be bigger as a result and that’s a fact!*.

*Not a guaranteed fact.

Mark, Alex and Kareem were at Develop in Brighton last week talking about things past present and future in their keynote talk with Phil Harrison. Some interesting factoids came out of that talk and spread onto the internet, including Mark’s analogy about how moving on from LBP is like a parent watching their child grow up and leave home, and afterwards the guys spoke to some press folk too.

One of the outlets that got their grubby paws all over our directors was GamesIndustry.biz, who have published an interview with Kareem and Mark about creating a successful start-up, how to look after creative people, and the love / hate relationship that goes along with starting up a company.

Ettouney meanwhile suggested looking after the more creative members of staff was essential to a productive team. “A big part of the investment, in my opinion, other than doing the good work and the creative work, is understanding how to work with creative people.”

“It’s kind of like an entertainer by craft, a person who does something and gets their kicks from the happiness that comes as a result. So if they’re not getting that their cycle is broken and they get weaker and weaker. So it’s important to remember these things and not just be completely objective.”

You should also expect and prepare to handle disagreements. Healey especially remembered times when the close team struggled to get along.

“If you’re going to do a start up with a bunch of other people take it for granted that you are going to hate those people at some point,” he warned.

Why not read the full article on GI.biz!

Not to be confused with the job posting below, we need some good men and women to join us here at Media Molecule - specifically artists and programmers, and a combo hybrid of those two, the fabled graphics programmer. we Reallllllly want one of those!

If you fit into one of those categories, then why not join us? You’d have a splendid time and meet new friends, we promise. Here’s some info on how to apply, and what it’s like to work for us (spoiler: it’s really good; lots of lovely people, champagne and a ping pong table). There are some other jobs listed there too, take a look see!

In this spotlight edition of the Media Molecule Podcast, Kenny, Daniel and Spaff sit down with Mm Art Director Kareem Ettouney to discuss his influences and passions, and how they affected the look at feel of the weird mish-mash that is LittleBigPlanet. We discuss generalities of art in games, games as art, how Mm works as a studio, how you can only be as mad as how serious you are, and Kareem sneaks in his obligatory Beatles Analogy.

After the podcast Kareem attended his art class, where he painted this picture… we include it here as a great example of Kareem’s personal interests, influences and non Mm work. There’s plenty more Sphinx magic for those who are interested, just visit Kareem’s website - kareemettouney.com

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It’s called Eyelevator, it costs £2.39, and it’s out now on the PlayStation store as part of The Studio. That’s pretty much all the informtion you need to know - go forth and decorate your XMB! Here it is…

Haha only kidding, It’s waaaaaay cooler than that, it has stickers of fun things all floating upwards towards the top and… oh just take a look for yourself it’ll be easier.