Media Molecule

• 1. Introduction

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  Media Molecule is a British video game studio built on a paradox: a company that wanted to make world-class games with as few people as possible. Founded on the 4th of January 2006 in Guildford, Surrey, by four former Lionhead Studios employees, it grew from a six-month funding arrangement with Sony into one of the most decorated independent studios in British gaming history. The founders, Mark Healey, Alex Evans, David Smith, and Kareem Ettouney, brought with them a philosophy that would attract the attention of Hideo Kojima and win over 90 awards for their debut title alone. What made a tiny team from Surrey capable of creating games that Sony considered defining for an entire console generation? And how did a scrappy side project built in spare time at another studio become the seed of all of it?

• 2. From Lionhead to the GDC Stage

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  Before Media Molecule existed, Evans and Healey were already veterans of British game development. Both had worked at Bullfrog Productions under its co-founder Peter Molyneux. Molyneux later co-founded Lionhead Studios, and Evans and Healey were two of its first employees. At Lionhead, in their spare time, the co-founders built Rag Doll Kung Fu, a game that Healey demonstrated at the 2005 Game Developers Conference. Valve employees were in the audience that day. The firm was looking for a low-risk, low-cost third-party title to test on Steam, and Rag Doll Kung Fu fit the brief. It became the first non-Valve game released on the Steam platform, in October 2005.

  Also in 2005, while still at Lionhead, the co-founders were experimenting with a separate concept called The Room, which involved clay tubes and portals. They demonstrated it at GDC 2005 as well. Valve expressed interest in hiring the team to develop The Room or another idea, but nothing came of those conversations. Evans later observed that if they had joined Valve, Portal might not have been made. The founders left Lionhead in December 2005 and immediately began talks with Sony Computer Entertainment about a new game idea.

• 3. Pitching Craftworld to Sony

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  Phil Harrison, the head of development for Sony Worldwide Studios, was the person the founders pitched to. Their concept was called Craftworld, a physics-based 2D side-scrolling game whose main character was named Mr. Yellowhead, who would later become Sackboy. Evans described the pitch as "pretty vague" and said it was "meant to be a 30-minute pitch for our idea for a game called Craftworld that soon turned into a three-hour brainstorming session". Smith credited Harrison's personal enthusiasm as a key reason Sony moved forward.

  In January 2006, Sony provided six months of funding. The team set up their office in Guildford, Surrey, in March, and around that time Siobhan Reddy joined as studio director, a role that led some to regard her as the fifth co-founder. On the 1st of June 2006, Media Molecule announced an exclusive deal with SCE, giving Sony ownership of the intellectual property and restricting LittleBigPlanet to PlayStation platforms. Pre-production ran until August 2006, when Media Molecule met with Sony executives, including Harrison, to decide whether to greenlight full development. Harrison later described that production pitch as the best meeting he had ever attended. Evans had written an interactive presentation rather than using standard slides, making the game itself playable during the pitch, a move Harrison cited in 2019 as evidence of their unconventional thinking.

• 4. LittleBigPlanet and Its Debut

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  Phil Harrison announced LittleBigPlanet publicly at the Game Developers Conference on the 7th of March 2007, in San Francisco. Healey recalled that he and others only realised upon arrival that they were part of Harrison's keynote. The demonstration included Healey, Evans, Harrison, and Peter Smith, who was the senior producer on LittleBigPlanet, walking through core gameplay elements. Sony positioned the game within its "Game 3.0" concept of user-generated content. Harrison had originally suggested making it free-to-play with downloadable content and a mechanism to compensate creators whose work proved most popular.

  By July 2007, Media Molecule employed 28 people. Kenneth Young joined that year as audio and music lead after seeing the GDC demonstration. LittleBigPlanet was released across different regions between the 27th of October 2008 and the 5th of November 2008. Critics received it with wide praise. It won over 90 awards, including the Award for Artistic Achievement at the 5th British Academy Video Games Awards, and it brought Media Molecule the Studio of the Year award from the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards. Sackboy, the game's central character, became a mascot for the broader PlayStation brand.

• 5. Acquisition and Expansion

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  By January 2009, Media Molecule had 34 employees. On the 2nd of March 2010, SCE announced it had purchased the studio for an undisclosed sum. Shuhei Yoshida, president of SIE Worldwide Studios, described the team as having "world-class credentials". The acquisition brought the total number of developers at SCE Worldwide Studios to fifteen. Evans noted in his statement at the time that the two companies had maintained a "uniquely close relationship" since the studio's founding.

  LittleBigPlanet 2 was announced in May 2010 and released in January 2011 to critical acclaim. The three LittleBigPlanet games Media Molecule developed or co-developed collectively sold 8.5 million units. In July 2011, at Gamelab in Barcelona, Reddy announced the studio was stepping away from LittleBigPlanet to explore new ideas. In August 2012, Tearaway was formally announced, led by Smith and Rex Crowle, with 15 developers working on it. At the same time, the rest of the studio was in the research and development phase of a separate project that would become Dreams. In November 2013, Tearaway launched for the PlayStation Vita. In October 2016, Media Molecule opened a satellite studio in Brighton, East Sussex, in a venue called the "Lighthouse", to reduce commute times for a group of developers.

• 6. Dreams and Later Years

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  Dreams was announced at Sony's E3 2015 press conference. It is a sandbox creation system allowing players to build and share their own levels and entire games, from puzzle-platformers to point-and-click adventures. Players navigate its world using an "imp" that functions like a cursor. In April 2019, Dreams became available through early access, making it the first Sony game to use that model. It launched fully in February 2020 and received generally favourable reviews according to Metacritic.

  In September 2020, Evans announced he was leaving after 13 years as technical director. He later joined Nvidia as a researcher. In April 2023, Media Molecule announced it would stop supporting Dreams in September of that year. Healey left the studio on the 17th of April 2023, and John Beech, who had been at the developer since 2009 and had served as designer, senior principal designer, and lead designer, was named the new creative director. In October 2023, the studio laid off roughly 20 employees amid around 900 layoffs across PlayStation Studios. In August 2025, David Smith also left after 20 years at the company.

• 7. The Small Studio Philosophy

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  Healey stated the founding intention plainly: "I am really intent on keeping us a small focused team. I've had enough of working on big, bloated teams, you get too much deadwood in those situations. Everyone at Media Molecule matters." In 2006, Evans said the studio wanted to stay below thirty employees while still producing a AAA title. By 2023, before the October layoffs, Media Molecule had grown to 135 employees, a number that shows how far the studio drifted from its original ceiling.

  Hideo Kojima visited Media Molecule in 2016 while rebuilding Kojima Productions. He modelled his new studio on what he saw there, praising the high proportion of female employees and the relaxed, family-like atmosphere. He then set a limit of one hundred employees at Kojima Productions, explicitly citing Media Molecule as the reference point. Rex Crowle and Moo Yu, who had worked on LittleBigPlanet, founded their own studio, Foam Sword, in November 2015, and released their debut game Knights and Bikes in August 2019.