LBP Reconnected Contest Results: Winner, Creations, and More!
About eight months since it was first announced, we have finally completed LBP Reconnected, a contest aimed at celebrating the return of the official LittleBigPlanet online servers. Although the contest wound up being bittersweet due to the permanent shutdown of the LBP PS3 and Vita servers, the community presses on. In this article, we'll talk about the results of the LBP Reconnected contest and the amazing creators and creations that were part of the event.
LBP Reconnected: A Brief History
LBP Reconnected was first conceived for a few reasons. Firstly, some of us here at the LBP Union realized that there had not been a major community contest for LittleBigPlanet in several years. Originally it was hoped that a real prize crown would be able to be given for it, but the official LittleBigPlanet team yielded no response on Twitter.
The contest was announced on March 26th, 2021 with another motive: inspiring hope in the community. With the servers shut down, many people worried that it was the end for LBP's online features. However, pinning hope behind the contest was a great way to motivate people to keep creating. Soon enough, many people had signed up for the contest with a fantastic lineup of creations.
Postponement
However, LBP Reconnected had to be postponed due to extended server outages. These outages lasted all the way until this past September when it was revealed that the PS3 and Vita servers would be discontinued permanently.
However, this opened up a critical question for Reconnected: if the contest was meant to celebrate the return of the LittleBigPlanet servers, did it make sense to include levels from the titles that had been discontinued?
A Contest in Flux
Although there were several changes to what submissions would be accepted, ultimately all playable levels published with '#LBPReconnected' in the title were accepted so long as they had signed up in one of the two sign-up threads on our forum. There was a great deal of talent here that deserved to be recognized, even if those levels were not selected as the ultimate winner.
In addition, there were various other creative non-competitive creations like music and logic demonstrations that deserve recognition.
Results of LBP Reconnected
It's important to note that the purpose of LBP Reconnected was not rooted in competition but instead in celebration. LBP Reconnected was intended as an event with the objective of bringing people together in one of the darkest times for the LittleBigPlanet community. Although the contest recognizes a single winner, everyone who participated deserves great recognition. Thank you for signing up and for helping bring hope to our community!
We'll start first with the winner of the contest and then cover some highlights of the levels. Not all can be featured here but be sure to search up '#LBPReconnected' on LBP3 PS4 to find all of the great submissions for the contest!
The winner of LBP Reconnected is FK2P, now using the account Skeleton2797. Their submission for the contest was Deathray Guts, a fascinating isometric stealth platformer.