I've been falling asleep to screaming the last couple of nights, after tearing myself away from an addiction. The incredibly beautiful Little Big Planet has taken over my household, and the world shakes because of it. This is not a review of the game (for reviews look at IGN, Gamespot, or 1Up) this is a review of something that I've noticed whilst playing, that translates beautifully to "The Real World[TM]".

In LBP the levels require working together to reach a common goal, your standard teamwork type structure. There's an incredibly interesting spanner that gets thrown into it however due to two reasons 1) by having a winner at the end of each level, your standard title for any finite game, and 2) different personalities are driven by different sub-goals in the level (e.g. collecting stickers). Assuming 4 players are madly thumbing their keypads, the structure of what happens is this:

The level starts, 4 sock puppets come thrashing onto the beautifully structured level screen and almost at once chaos ensues. One player is in the background collecting stickers, another thinking that they are an invincible ninja is using up all the shared lives by attacking box-robots, whilst yet another is proactively running forward trying to get to the end of the level. The fourth is doing nothing but shaking their head in dismay whilst they are trying to work out how the levels tricky bits work and strategise around them.

Back in TRW (The Real World[TM] - Again) there is a couch of players hurling abuse at each other, because of the fact that they need each other to succeed, yet because of their various sub-games within the game are making each others lives increasingly difficult.

The solution that my family has finally reached is this: Be aware of that the sticker collector will want to collect everything, so point the stickers out to them. Create open communication about what is going to happen, before you act. Solve problems together. Let the guy who wants to win for the title win (Don't let him know though). Be patient with both the level, and your teammates, and of course...The obvious one: Align your sub-goals to the greater goal, and work together.