After reviewing thousands of games over the last 15 years, I'm confident I have a good appreciation of what makes a great game, and can readily identify many of the traps that developers routinely fall into that can frustrate and discourage players.
But after spending some joyous hours with LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation 3 this week, I have a renewed appreciation for the skills and talent of games designers worldwide.
It's not because of how much fun Media Molecule's wondrous creation is (although it is almost certainly going to be one of the highlights of the year's gaming releases) but more because my first feeble attempts at creating a level were so awful.
My colleagues also produced platforming stages (and some wacky machines) that were unlikely to cause Miyamoto to lose much sleep. Yet all of our creations shared one trait - they were fantastic fun to make (whether alone or in tandem with others) and often hilarious to play, even in their most ridiculously broken and primitive state.
My time with LittleBigPlanet this week begun with a presentation by Nick Robinson, Senior Product Manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, then a few hours hands-on with the intuitive Create mode and some of the introductory levels created by developer Media Molecule.
For those that missed Screen Play's introduction to the game a year ago, Nick describes LittleBigPlanet as "a physics-based platformer that includes all of the tools, really intuitive and fun-to-use tools, that the developers use to create this game, so that you and your friends can create your own stuff".
Nick says he uses the word "stuff" deliberately. "We don't want to use the word 'levels' because you can create other things. We don't want to use the word 'content' because it's a bit dry.
"It's not mini-games either, because you can make a mini site about your cat if you want. You can make massive sprawling game levels, you can chain them all together and make platform adventures (complete with basic cut-scenes)."
The game's mantra is "Play, Create, Share" - with each element receiving equal attention from the studio. But Media Molecule also has another in-house rule - "Don't Cheat". Every single level and item contained in the "professional" levels on the disc has been created using the same tools as what players can harness.
"Everything they can create, you can create," Nick says, before adding that the tools allow players to explore and experiment with what gaming personally means to them - what you consider "fun".
In their levels, Media Molecule avoid hiding the mechanisms of how their cool toys and creations work, deliberately "pulling away the curtain" so that players can see how simple they are and get inspiration for their own designs.
Nick readily admits that "not everyone is going to want to create" but stresses that "the
depth is there for the people who want to do it".
"The 50-or-so levels that are actually on the Blu-ray are designed to be an inspiration for what people want to build," he says. "They are not designed to be the be all and end all of LittleBigPlanet. They're just the starting point."
Early levels introduce the mechanisms for levels and controlling your "Sackboy character" (run, jump and drag). The action can be presented on three planes, with movement in and out of the screen handled automatically. Media Molecule dub the system "2.5D" and in action it is as simple and accessible as any old-school platformer.
LittleBigPlanet presents a very physical, tactile world. Physics puzzles include simple see-saws, spinning wheels that propel you into the air, and soccer balls that you can grab and use to roll up around to a higher platform.
While described as a platformer, you can also create basic role playing elements - essentially conditional events with multiple options. If players make one choice, there will be a consequence, and the other choice will be closed off.
There are few creation items available to LittleBigPlanet users upon booting up the game for the first time - playing through the pre-built stages enables players to unlock items to use in the creation mode.
Essentially forcing people to play the adventure mode might be a controversial decision among those who are simply desperate to get in and start making their own creations, but after seeing how much material can be eventually unlocked, it seems wise to gently introduce players to many of the game's creative tools and objects so as not to overwhelm or intimidate.
The obsessive or completist will also find a compelling reason to replay stages and find the many hidden objects - some of which cannot be accessed until you discover tools from latter levels.
Every level has an entrance point for the Sackboy characters, and can also feature elements like checkpoints, start and finishing lines for races, and end-of-level scoreboards.
Every object is constructed using one of the game's basic materials, which include wood, bricks, cardboard, sponge, polystyrene, stone, metal, glass, rubber, feathers and cloth. These easily identifiable materials are a critical element of the game because players will instantly understand each material's properties and uses. Each has a different weight and friction, for example.
There are also a few more fantastical but easily understandable additions like "bubble" material that floats, and "dissolvable" material which is great for attaching to proximity-based triggers or physical switches to activate exciting events such as prizes falling from the sky.
During Screen Play's time with the Create mode, it quickly becomes apparent that switches are crucial for designing gameplay elements (rather than relying on the more unpredictable physics to cause drama).
Objects can be easily "glued" together or bonded to the ground so they cannot be moved, and the relatively recent introduction of "dark matter" to the list of materials is very useful, often providing a handy workaround for tethering aerial objects and creating anchored, unmovable objects.
You can also unlock materials with different visual textures, such as coloured cardboard, but each obviously has the same properties as the plain materials.
Even beginners will discover that just by placing a few simple objects and choosing a background scene you can create a fun little obstacle course for other people to enjoy - a process that can take just minutes. But our tinkering (and particularly Media Molecule's wondrous designs) also showed theirs is terrific scope for wasting countless hours constructing elaborate and unique constructions.
Customising Sackboy is also fun, with players able to change their character's clothes, eyes, mouth and hair, as well as adding amusing novelties like goggles, and items to hold.
Media Molecule wanted players to be able to communicate with others from around the world, so puppeteering elements have been added, which can be hilarious. By holding down the PS3 controller's triggers you can use the analog sticks to manipulate the character's arms, while you can move Sackboy's head by waving the pad around thanks to Sixaxis motion sensing support.
You can also switch between emotions like happy, angry, sad and scared via the directional pad. Both voice and text chat is supported, with Sackboy lip synching if you use a microphone.
Backgrounds for use in your designs include urban areas, deserts, temples, and the now-familiar garden. They are not simply flat images or photos - you can change the lighting and colour correction and add elements like fog to dramatically change their appearance and the subsequent atmosphere.
I drew inspiration for my level from the urban background, with Sackboy triggering a switch which caused a basketball to bounce down some stairs and into a basket, which then triggered the opening of a (very primitive) garage which included a cool race car (that Media Molecule had built).
The low-rider featured a switch in the driver's seat that propelled the car forwards when Sackboy pulled it. The level included a race start and finish, but I should have added a second car for two-player competition.
Using the "Popit" tool is reasonably simple and quickly becomes intuitive, and there are overlay grids available for placing objects precisely.
A thermometer style gauge on the side of the screen acts as a simple gauge representing each level's memory restriction.
Levels can be almost as wide as you like and infinitely high, but there obviously needs to be a limit on the amount of elements in each stage to keep file sizes reasonable for uploading and sharing online. Adding hundreds of objects seemed to have little impact on the gauge, but items like music made it jump appreciably.
Music and sound effects can be interactive - linked to an event such as an object being dropped or a character passing by a certain point in the level - but you cannot currently import your own audio because of "file sharing" copyright concerns.
The same restriction is easier to overcome with user-created stickers, with the PlayStation Eye support allowing you to essentially scan anything (as well as snap images of you and your friends or family to put into your worlds).
Amusingly, you can make Monty Python-esque creations using photos and then adding interactive elements like moving eyes that follow Sackboy around the screen.
Two of the most useful buttons in the Creator mode are "hover" which helps you get your Sackboy around the level quickly and easily, and "Pause" which essentially turns off the physics system and lets you more easily place moving objects like spinning cogs.
The realistic physics system will no doubt ensure endless laughs, but one trap I regularly kept falling into is forgetting to pause during construction and then carelessly triggering traps or knocking over elaborate compositions, which resulted in me having to reload my stage, often losing my most recent completed work. There is a helpful "undo" function which removes an object that you just placed, but I often wished for a "rewind" instead that would pick up the pieces that I just broke.
There are some other quirks of Popit that might annoy, such as the fiddly process of selecting items. I often had trouble after combining multiple objects together, then realizing I had made a mistake and finding it difficult to move a single element. But overall, Popit is an absolute delight to use.
Categories include "stickers and decorations", "tools" and a "goodies bag", with multiple tabs that are quickly and easily navigated using the shoulder buttons.
There are few limits on your imagination. You can easily create your own designs using raw materials and either adding shapes together or cutting.
Mechanical machines are constructed using parts like nuts, bolts, wheels, cogs, pistons, winches and motorized bolts, which can be tweaked for speed and strength. Media Molecule has even created bosses with varied attack patterns and multiple layers.
You can also easily make physical objects dangerous for Sackboy, imbuing them with poisonous, electric or flaming attributes.
Nick says some elements of LittleBigPlanet have been removed to ensure players are not overwhelmed by complexity or depth, but naturally there will be the opportunity to provide them later down the track when the community is more mature.
He says Sony is extremely unlikely to ever charge for additional levels because of the huge amount of free levels that will be available (some of which will be created by Media Molecule as both "official" and "unofficial" creations.
But of course the game has plenty of scope for other downloadable content allowing Sony to extract more money from players and to drastically change the experience. Things like mavity changes allowing space-themed levels and weapons or tools for Sackboy to have deeper interaction with his environment immediately spring to mind.
"One of the things that Media Molecule are very keen on is seeing what the community
wants," says Nick.
"There's loads of ideas that they've got, and some of them have even been built, but they're not in here yet. There's a lot of things that completely change what people make. We want to see what people start to make and then we'll decide."
For example, support for keyboard and mouse has not be ruled out (but will not be available at launch) and the same goes for an audio editor to create your own music and sound effects.
"Whatever 'power creators' want to create things, we'll look at doing it," Nick promises.
Can't wait.
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