Media Molecule

Media Molecule is a British video game developer based in Guildford in Surrey. The studio was founded in January 2006 by former Lionhead Studios employees Mark Healey, Alex Evans, Dave Smith, and Kareem Ettouney. Before starting the company, the founders worked together on Healey's independent game Rag Doll Kung Fu while still at Lionhead.

The studio's first game is the PlayStation 3 title LittleBigPlanet, which was announced and demonstrated at the Game Developers Conference 2007. The plan was always to produce a chart-topping game, but to keep the size of the company as small as possible so as to keep a tight rein on costs. Evans in particular was keen to avoid what he calls the "cycle of debt". It was chiefly this concern that led the founders to consider user-generated content. LittleBigPlanet 's best selling point became its set of level-creation tools and the ability to publish that content on the Internet. "Every time you boot up there are more levels to play," says Evans. Media Molecule won the Studio of the Year award at the Spike Video Game Awards 2008. LittleBigPlanet scored a 95 on Metacritic. The game also won numerous game of the year awards leading to a 'Game Of The Year Edition' a year later.

Media Molecule also helped SCE Studio Cambridge develop LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Portable released in 2009. Their next project has been revealed to be LittleBigPlanet 2, aimed at a Q4 2010 release, but the company still updates LittleBigPlanet through patches and DLC regularly.

On 2 March 2010, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) announced that it had acquired Media Molecule.