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Media Molecule Ltd. is a British first-party video game developer based in Guildford, Surrey. It was founded in 2006 by Mark Healey, Alex Evans, David Smith and Kareem Ettouney; It was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2010. The company is most known for developing the LittleBigPlanet series, 2013's Tearaway, and 2020's Dreams for PlayStation consoles.

Before the company's formation, Healey worked together with the other co-founders on his independent fighting game entitled Rag Doll Kung Fu whilst working at Lionhead Studios. Drawing attention from both Nintendo and Valve, it ended up being the first third-party game on Valve's digital distribution platform, Steam. They left Lionhead at the end of 2005 and got a meeting with Sony regarding a game idea. They presented an early precursor of LittleBigPlanet dubbed Craftworld to Phil Harrison the head of development for Sony Worldwide Studios. It turned from a thirty-minute pitch into a three-hour brainstorming session and Evans described as a "pretty vague pitch". Despite this, Sony was interested in the game. In January 2006, they secured their funding from Sony for six months, they started to set up their office and Media Molecule was incorporated. Two months later, they moved into a studio in Guildford.

In June 2006, Media Molecule announced they signed an exclusive deal with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. This allowed Media Molecule to create LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation 3, with Sony owning the intellectual property. Two months later, they had a successful green-light meeting so LittleBigPlanet started production; it was released in October 2008 to critical acclaim. In March 2010, Sony announced that it had acquired Media Molecule for an undisclosed sum. A year later, the developer released a sequel, LittleBigPlanet 2. LittleBigPlanet spawned a series of games developed by other studios often in collaboration with Media Molecule.

The studio has also developed 2013's Tearaway in addition to its remake, Tearaway Unfolded. In 2016, they opened a small studio in Brighton, East Sussex. They are working on 2020's Dreams. The studio has won numerous awards including Studio of the Year from the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards.

History
Media Molecule was founded by four former Lionhead Studios' employees: Alex Evans, Mark Healey, David Smith, and Kareem Ettouney being incorporated on 4 January 2006. Evans and Smith are the technical directors; Healey is the creative director whilst Ettouney is the art director.

Before the founding of Media Molecule, Evans and Healey worked at Bullfrog Productions, working for its co-founder, Peter Molyneux. Molyneux later went on to co-found Lionhead Studios, with Evans and Healey being some of their first employees. Soon after, the co-founders, led primarily by Healey, developed Rag Doll Kung Fu in their spare time whilst working at Lionhead Studios. Healey demonstrated the game at Game Developers Conference 2005 and Valve employees were in the audience. Rag Doll Kung Fu initially drew attention from Nintendo, who was considering it as a potential Nintendo DS product. Valve was interested in the game, they were looking for a "low risk, low cost" third-party game to test on Steam; it became the first non-Valve game to be released on the platform in October 2005.

Also in 2005 whilst at Lionhead, the co-founders were working a game called The Room using clay tubes and portals. It was described by Evans or Healey as "more Portally than Portal" and "Portal, but with scale factor". They presented a demonstration of it at Game Developers Conference 2005 (the same GDC they presented Rag Doll Kung Fu). Students of DigiPen Institute of Technology were in the audience, who were working on a related game called Narbacular Drop, which similarly used portals and they discussed portals with them afterwards. Healey was already building a relationship with Valve via his work on Ragdoll Kung Fu. They met with Valve who were interested in hiring them to develop The Room or another game idea, but nothing came of it. Evans stated: "We were very tempted, but in the end, we decided to talk to Sony and they just got the game at the beginning." Evans also noted that: "But I wonder that if we had [joined Valve], maybe they wouldn't have hired the Narbacular Drop team, and we would have screwed the world out of Portal". The founders left Lionhead Studios in December 2005 and managed to get a meeting with Sony regarding a game idea.

They pitched an early precursor of what LittleBigPlanet was to become dubbed Craftworld to Phil Harrison, the head of development for Sony Worldwide Studios at the time. Craftworld was a physics-based 2D side-scrolling game similar to LittleBigPlanet. Its main character was 'Mr. Yellowhead', which would later become Sackboy. Evans stated that pitch was "meant to be a 30-minute pitch for our idea for a game called Craftworld that soon turned into a three-hour brainstorming session" and described it as a "pretty vague pitch". Despite this Sony were interested in the game, partly due to Harrison's enthusiasm for the game, according to Smith. In January 2006, they secured their funding from Sony for six months, they started to set up their office Media Molecule was incorporated and they started pre-production of the game. Evans described the company's formation as a combination of the boost from Rag Doll Kung Fu, some new ideas bubbling in his head, and the new wave of consoles around the corner. In March, they moved into a studio in Guildford, Surrey; around this time Siobhan Reddy, the studio director, joined Media Molecule. Reddy is occasionally regarded as the fifth co-founder. On 1 June 2006, Media Molecule announced they signed an exclusive deal with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. This "exclusive relationship" allowed Media Molecule to create an original game exclusively for the PlayStation 3. The deal included Sony owning the intellectual property and the exclusivity of LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation consoles. Evans stated "SCEE have proven to be the perfect partner for us. They immediately understood both our ambition for the game as well as our development style." Pre-production was extended up until August where they had a subsequent meeting with Sony executives, including Harrison, to decide whether to give LittleBigPlanet the green-light on production. Harrison described the pitch for production as the best meeting he ever had and went on to start full development. In November 2019, Harrison reaffirmed this sentiment citing Evan's different approach this being instead of using PowerPoint, he wrote his own interactive 'PowerPoint' so that the game was playable through the presentation. Harrison stated that this demonstrated their innovative thinking and the way they wanted to challenge conventions making him very impressed.

LittleBigPlanet was announced by Phil Harrison in his keynote at Game Developers Conference on 7 March 2007 in San Francisco; only upon arrival did Healey and others realise they were apart of his keynote with Healey noting that "that Sony were very, very much behind the game, much more then we had previously thought". It included a demonstration by Healey, Evans, Harrison, and Peter Smith (senior producer on LittleBigPlanet) showing core gameplay elements throughout a game level and explained that players could create their own levels with tools provided to them within the game. LittleBigPlanet was one of the games that Sony considered to fit their "Game 3.0" concept of user-generated content. Harrison originally suggested having LittleBigPlanet to be free-to-play with downloadable content along with a mechanism to monetise user-generated content to reward the best creators for their innovation. LittleBigPlanet was released between 27 October 2008 and 5 November across different regions. LittleBigPlanet was critically acclaimed by reviews and was "universally acclaimed" by critics on review aggregator Metacritic. It also won numerous awards including the Award for Artistic Achievement at the 5th British Academy Video Games Awards.

By January 2009, Media Molecule had 34 employees. It was announced on 2 March 2010 that Sony Computer Entertainment had purchased Media Molecule for an undisclosed sum. Shuhei Yoshida, president of SIE Worldwide Studios, praised the studio's innovation and noted they had "world-class credentials". It brought the total number of developers at Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios to fifteen. In January 2011, they released LittleBigPlanet 2. In July, Media Molecule announced they were stepping away from LittleBigPlanet. In January 2012, Media Molecule had spent £4.1 million on research and development trying to develop innovative games aiming to reduce the reliance on the LittleBigPlanet brand name. In August 2012, they announced a second project entitled Tearaway, with fifteen developers working on it. The rest of the 25 developers were working on another project which was in the research and development phase which would turn out to be Dreams. Tearaway was released in November 2013 for the PlayStation Vita. Two years later, Media Molecule alongside Tarsier Studios released Tearaway Unfolded, an expanded remake of Tearaway for the PlayStation 4.

Whilst Media Molecule may have moved away from LittleBigPlanet they have collaborated and contributed with other studios for other games in the series. This includes: 2009's LittleBigPlanet, 2010's Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves,  2012's LittleBigPlanet Karting,  and 2014's LittleBigPlanet 3.

In October 2016, Media Molecule opened Media Molecule Brighton a 'satellite' (small) studio in Brighton, East Sussex. They opened the workspace to accommodate a group of developers who had been commuting to and from their headquarters allowing them to reduce travel times. The venue where the office is located is called the "Lighthouse" and hosts offices for other organisations like Culture24.

Dreams, a sandbox video game with a game creation system, was announced at Sony Interactive Entertainment's press conference at E3 2015. In April 2019, the game was made available via early access, a first for a Sony game. In December 2019, Sony announced that the game would be released in February 2020.

Philosophy
Media Molecule aims to have as few employees as achievable. Evans, one of the technical directors stated "We want to stay as small as possible and still ship a full AAA title. We reckon that by picking our battles, we can keep it under 25-30". Healey stated "I am really intent on keeping us a small focused team I've had enough of working on big, bloated teams, you get too much deadwood in those situations. Everyone at Media Molecule matters." Evans also stated when they were starting the studio they did not want to have a 200 person team. He noted that there are always tensions between people in development, even with two or more people. However, once there are a large number of people it can cause too much tensions and compared it to being in a soap opera. Healey explained they settled on a small team with a maximum of 30 developers. Media Molecule now has around 50 developers.

This philosophy has been adapted by others, most notably Hideo Kojima. Kojima set a maximum of 100 developers for his new studio He praised Media Molecule He stated: "The studio that inspired me the most was Media Molecule in England"

When building his new studio he stated: "The studio that inspired me the most was Media Molecule".

Game collaborations
Media Molecule is also credited as a contributor or co-developer on other LittleBigPlanet titles.