Today marks the LittleBigPlanet Union’s 15th Anniversary. I want to take a moment to touch on some of this month’s most important updates, and reflect on how LBP Union grew into what it is today.
This Month’s Updates
A lot of great stuff has been happening this month! Firstly, LBP Reconnected 2024 came to a close, and judging has finally concluded. I’m proud to announce that the results of LBP Reconnected 2024 will be announced this Saturday August 31st at 12:00 PM EST. When the results go live, you’ll be able to find them on our homepage.
Promotions
Another important thing that’s been happening this month and the last has been some internal team promotions. I’ve been absolutely overjoyed to see such a great amount of talent, passion and care for this community that I’ve cared about so much since I was a kid, so I want to take a moment to talk about each of these awesome people.
Peacekeeper Captain: Soy
Soy replaces Dom as Peacekeeper Captain, who I’ll talk about shortly. Soy isn’t afraid to stand up to me, which is a good trait to have, as I repeatedly demonstrate my buttheadedness from time to time. When Soy has a goal that he wants to achieve, he attacks it full force. That’s the spirit of someone who leads the moderation of our ever-growing Discord server. Soy is a great communicator and touches base with the rest of the security team regularly and is also a delegate to the LBP Discord Cross Moderation Alliance. I have no doubt in my mind that it was a good choice to promote Soy from Senior PK Lieutenant to the Captain position, and I’m looking forward to working with him as our Discord server continues to grow.
Peacekeeper Senior Lieutenant: Sudokoko
Koko is an extremely hard worker. Balancing her day job, school, keeping Beacon from catching on fire, and paying attention to LBP Union’s most advanced technical threats isn’t easy. Despite all that, Koko presses on and supports the team however she can. Even if she’s not able to be around much in a given period of time, she hosts Zipline, LBP Union’s evidence repository to help us keep track of moderation cases across Discord and Beacon. Koko’s transition, or perhaps I should say, addition of the Senior Lieutenant role highlights Koko’s niche in LBP Union. She cares deeply for the technical advancement of Project Lighthouse and Beacon, while simultaneously using her skills to protect the people who enjoy it as much as she does. I’m overjoyed to see Koko in her new role as Senior Peacekeeper Lieutenant.
Pathfinder Captain: August
August has had a bit of a tour around the Ministry of Security. Serving previously as a Pathfinder and later a Peacekeeper, August understands both sides of our Discord security team, and that’s what gives them huge potential to lead the Pathfinder team to success. Now, August’s goal is to unify that knowledge in their term as Pathfinder Captain. Their goal now is to reorganize the Pathfinder team and utilize new strategies to achieve community advocacy and ignite engagement on our Discord server. I’m excited to see how August will apply their experiences to unite the Pathfinder team to make our growing Discord server a better and more welcoming place for everyone.
Pathfinder Senior Ranger: P10
The Senior Ranger position is brand new, inspired by the Senior Lieutenant positions of the Peacekeeper and Starguard teams, and I’m happy to see P10 taking on the challenge of being the PF team’s second in command. P10 has a similar vision to August in improving the effectiveness of the PF team. He’s also from a European timezone, meaning that we can continue to expand the security leadership team’s timezone coverage to provide better support during more hours of the day. I’m excited to see how P10 brings his experience as a Pathfinder Ranger to this position.
Minister of Relations: Dom
Finally, I want to recognize Dom’s promotion from Peacekeeper Captain to the Minister of Relations. As a Protector and LBP Union administrator, Dom brings a lot to the table. His experience with the Incredible Crew as voice actor, animator, storywriter, and marketer apply perfectly. If you’ve seen any of the films he and his friends have made, you’ll understand what I mean. His tenure on the Union Security Team only solidifies my confidence in his potential taking on the last seat of the Protectors. Things will be a little slow to start because I have kept all of LBP Union’s marketing so close to my chest all these years, but I’m looking learning together with Dom as he applies his vision and experience to our social media, this blog, and elsewhere.
Special Mention: Union Space Corps Director Fetetra
I wanted to make a special mention — it’s true that Fetetra has been with the USC for several months now, so this isn’t exactly a promotion announcement, but instead a recognition of the massive help that Fetetra has been in those months. Fetetra has been instrumental in helping resolve dozens upon dozens of Beacon support issues on our Discord server, not only by himself, but alongside his support team. Thanks to Fetetra, we’ve been able to make connecting to LittleBigPlanet custom servers easier than ever before. Not only that, but Fetetra has been hard at work reverse engineering important technologies that will help us better understand how to protect Beacon and improve server features. I’m looking forward to seeing how Fetetra continues to grow the support team as our playerbase continues to rise.
Commemorating 15 Years of Playing, Creating, and Uniting
On August 27th, 2009, Godman2k7 announced that he was building a headquarters for the LittleBigPlanet Union, an alliance of anti-H4H groups dedicated to standing together against spam and cheating. Leejk30, Kazmord, myself, and many others made up the Union when we were kids. It was a child’s fantasy, and oh boy did we all bicker. None of us really agreed with how we should go about that mission, and eventually the divide proved to be insurmountable.
Although Godman’s Union didn’t last more than a few years, the Union would return in December of 2013. Looking to take lessons learned from before with just a little more age and experience, LBP Union was back, albeit trying a bit too hard to simulate real world politics. That reformed Union met its end in 2016 once again in disorder.
Things are far from perfect today. We still fight; we don’t always get along, but something has changed after all this time. We have finally found our purpose. From the very beginning, the goal of the Union was to help the community, but nobody really knew what it was that we needed to do to accomplish that. At first it was to fight spam and cheating. Then, it was to broker peace between groups at odds. Now, LBP Union finds a new purpose: providing a platform for the LittleBigPlanet community to Play together, Create together, and Unite with their diverse perspectives and backgrounds.
LBP Union is not monolithic. It’s all of us. When the servers first started to shut down in 2021, LBP Union was a light in the dark for the community by providing reliable information that people could count on. Working as a team, we built a Lighthouse to light our way through the darkness — but the real magic of LittleBigPlanet isn’t owned or operated by anybody. The true spirit of LBP Union is the fullest potential of the entire community — where every person plays a part, even when we don’t always agree. That’s why I’m so proud to see such strong advocacy in this community for open source projects, and I’m excited to see our future through.
Thank you for being a part of this amazing community, I’m so proud to be here alongside you. Happy 15 years of LBP Union!
