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LEGO MMOG Named and Given a Launch Window
Kotaku has the press release expanding on details for LEGO Universe, the block-based Massively Multiplayer Game announced earlier this year. The title is slated for a Q4 release next year. There isn't any concrete discussion of gameplay yet, but the general description does sound promising: "The full-featured MMOG will be complete with character advancement, expansive social and community features, and will provide a child-safe alternative to other MMOGs on the market. As a player, you'll be able to customize your mini-figs and interact in the universe as any character you choose, providing unique opportunities for players to expand and explore with their creations."
Child appropriate? I tell you what is child appropriate: Being outside, building models, playing in the sand, riding your bike.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The only way to ensure a child-safe environment is to police it. The problem is that getting people to agree on what their children can be exposed to will never happen; someone's perfectly 'of age for the project' child will always know (or just have heard and faithfully attempt to repeat) something that someone else will find it a crime that their child has been exposed to. Realistically, the only way to prevent situations from getting out of control is to have an active and dynamic response to situations like that arising...which, traditionally, has meant teacher or chaperone. Unless LEGO wants to spend a crapload of money on nannymoderators, I just can't see this working.
Of course, I'm a pessimistic shmuck who is obsessed with tall yellow stiff giraffes and soft fluffy inviting bunnies.
And to whoever's excellent anecdote I just thefted, my apologies, I'll try to find the link.
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
Lego sex.
http://drew.corrupt.net/lp/series1.html
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
For the love of jebus, let us build stuff with lego blocks! Let me build my own house!
Mod parent up please. This is exactly the issue with 'safe' online MMPOGs. Every parent's level of what's "safe for their child" varies greatly. None of the MMPOGs I've seen give parents ANY ability to limit what their child sees or does. It's a case of some parents having to sit there and watch what happens.
Case in point: my 8 year old daughter likes these MMPOGs, which is fine I had no issue with it. Until I walked in one day and found my daughter talking to someone, (probably a "child" IE read 50 year old pedo), on IMVU. The other "child" had just said "Want to Cyber sex?". WTF? Where's the parental control? I searched on IMVU - none.
So, it's banned in our house until they come up with a way to give parents the ability to limit what goes on, or ensure that children are safe.
The thing is what works for one parent won't for others, and I BET anything that someone will respond to this post saying "What's wrong with that?". Well, yeah you might want to let your daughter do that, but I don't, and MMPOGs don't provide any ability to limit what goes on or provide parents with the ability to.
What I'd like to see is a way of gradually limiting what the player can do. All the way from full access to just logging in. Trouble is, (as the parent post said), there will always be a way around it.
-- main(s){printf(s="main(s){printf(s=%c%s%c,34,s,34
Occasionally this site just hits the "nerd" killswitch in my brain.
Honestly, could this get any nerdier? A massively multiplayer game based on playing with Lego for god's sake? I assume a Star Wars theme will be included somehow. Grown men, sitting at home on their PCs, playing with lego interactively with other grown men. I have goosebumps.
Am I alone in just not understanding this whole "virtual lego" thing? Isn't the whole point that they are a tactile, physical toy that kids (and adults) physically play with to create real objects? Why would someone want a computer simulation of that, rather than either a simulation of something real, or (gasp) real lego bricks?
Every time I see this kind of story, I have the Comic Book Guy's voice echoing in my head: "No Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills... you're from two different worlds! Oh, I've wasted my life."
Cue responses pointing out that it says "News for Nerds" right there in the title...
Read Pynchon.
Legos are still "child safe" compared to WoW, that's the point I believe.
Found the article -- http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000058.html Very interesting.
Lego has been offering something like this on their site already, called Lego Digital Designer, which allows you to put 3D models together, upload them to the site, and (if you really want to) buy them with a customized box of your choosing. While it's not an MMORPG, it does allow you to build virtually. But it sucks. I think it seriously cramps the creativity of building with your hands. It lacks sensory perceptions (sight, feel).
IMHO, we've got too many kids (and adults) glued to their screens playing games all day. The MMO looks creative, but it takes the fun out of building when you have to use a mouse and keyboard.
This being Lego, and Lego being a danish company, child-safe probably means little to no graphic violence, they couldn't care less about language, and will probably not even censor the word "fuck".
It was Douglas Coupland book where he describes a Lego based game, although I don't remember if it was an MMO or not. But the concept, if I remember correctly, revolved around being able to create your own little worlds, much like Lego.
Bang on, and connects with something I've been wondering about for a while.
Is anyone thinking about how to make an age proof system for the interweb? Obviously some things require you to be above a certain age to access (and we all know what that is), but there's also things like this that require proof the other way.
I have no idea how as to even begin to think about how to devise such a system but I hope someone out there is.
It was some object oriented programing tool that functioned effectively like LEGO. It was a framework for whatever you wanted. Good book though, i need to re-read that sometime. If you havn't you should check out some of his other books, Generation-X is my favorite and girlfriend in a coma is good too.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Sorry, my fault.
I thought she was one of those 50 year old men pretending to be a little girl. Sorry mate.
How precisely does a collection of buzzword boilerplate sound promising?
LEGO is producing for a global audience, Danish moral is irrelevant.
I very much doubt "safe" refers to either graphic violence or sex, but mostly to pedophiles making real world contact with the children. The buddy system where you can only interact meaningfully with real world friends (who have told you their buddy code) should work well. Communication with strangers should be much more restricted than the GP suggest, only a limited number (15 - 20) of fixed phrases allowed.
It's not perfect but Neopets has an okay system. You can't access the chat boards until you're old enough (12 I think) or your parents fax/send in a parental permission form. They also have monitors on the boards who quickly delete any creative offensive messages that get through the filters.
Is is just me or does anyone else hope there is also a server for us adults?
+----------------- | What is the question!
Personally, I think that a simple multiplayer Lego game (like Blockland) would make more sense than a Lego MMO.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Try Club Penguin They claim to achieve kid friendliness through actually having on-line chaperones as you describe.
My 8yo son is a member, but lost interest quickly and now prefers Runescape.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I'd agree in general with most of your points, but I will point out that Disney's Toontown online has been remarkably successful in implementing mechanisms that do make it a (relatively) safe place. Of COURSE, no responsible parent should be letting kids play online without regularly checking what they're doing (or (heavens!) playing WITH them?)
I'm positive that it's intensively moderated, but their in-place systems do a good job. So, for example there IS no text chat except for canned phrases like "let's go!", "you're silly!", "Yes", or "Wait!" - IIRC about 150-200 phrases are reachable through a point/click menu system. The ONLY way that a player can actually chat with another is by the 'secret code' mechanism...if you request the ability to chat with another player, the game will give you each a secret code. There is no way to communicate this in-game*, so you have to share this with each other OUTSIDE the game, ensuring you know each other. When the codes match, you can text chat with that character only. I like that, it's a rather elegant solution that works well.
* yes, I'm fully aware that between two colluding parties with an agreed-upon system could nevertheless communicate that code in-game. But this is pretty unlikely to be stumbled upon by the player demographic without coaching.
-Styopa
Way to miss the point.
The point of the GP is that technology *cannot* distinguish offensive from non-offensive. It's flat-out impossible given human inventiveness.
Filtering bad-words don't work. Allowing only "good"-words don't work. Allowing only "innocent" items don't work. Blocking all communication works, but then why make it an online game at all ?
I surveyed the surprisingly large field of Lego games a few weeks ago in an article in The Escapist #97, forthrightly titled "Lego Games." (Link goes to plain-vanilla HTML text version.)
32 years old and yes I have to get a Lego fix every couple of months. Now, my wife is pregnant (oops), and I can't figure out what I dread more. The thought of sharing access to the boobs or my Legos. Only time will tell.
Hopefully this game will play off of all the different genres of Legoland (Blacktron, Aqua Raiders, Castle, of course Star Wars, maybe even the girly pink Beauville (sp?) crap). Then let you build your own little parts of the world to enjoy and I guess defend from being taken over or destroyed by evil Amazons with green hair.
Now I can finally have someone help me find that blue flat 2x4 piece I can't find in the pile.
Are they aiming for one point oh?
This whole mess stems from a mistaken premise: that you can separate children from adults on a single Internet. That is false.
And since you can't, the only solution if you want to "protect" children is to ban them from this (the adult) Internet. If any manage to overcome the bans/blocks/etc (and they will of course), then that should be regarded as a passage to adulthood. Nothing more is possible.
Give the kids somewhere else to play, and stop bothering the rest of us.
For example, some people think the Aristotelian Mean (the idea that the right amount of a virtue always lies in the middle) is a truism, because it just says that the best point lies between too little, and too much.
I don't think it's a Truism that "Humans will always find a way". Often we don't.
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With 200 canned phrases, you can easily assign one to each ASCII character. Then "type" your code for anyone to hear.....
Publish the "alphabet" online for all to share. Publicize it.
Done.
Now, you can share your secret code with anyone -- in game, even.
Layne
Hot Gas Pump attendant LF Red 1x6 beam to fill my bases.
I thought it was a Lego Moog. Just imagine, a synthesizer built with Legos blocks!
Circumcision is child abuse.
I'd like to see a regular action RPG, maybe along the lines of Lego Star Wars. Have a character creation system similar to "The Original Trilogy", but not just limited to Star Wars pieces. Furthermore, I'd like to see a simple level editor like the downloadable Lego Builder game. Perhaps you could even make your own vehicles like that? The sad truth is that ACTUAL Lego products aren't doing well nowadays because it's almost all licensed Harry Potter, Star Wars and Spider-man crap. I would buy a game in a heartbeat that could recapture my childhood of building entire room-sized cities out of Legos, each character with their own distinct personality and place within the story. Maybe I was in the minority when it came to looking at Lego in such a grand way though. But hey, nothing ever got cooler than infiltrating the vampire castle to steal Excalibur only to be bitten and infected yourself and having to fight alongside those bloodsuckers against Anubis, the Mummy and a horde of shambling skeletons. Of course, after that the cyborg pirates would always come out of the shadows...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Virtual LEGO bricks pose no choking hazards.
And how exactly is that going to enable you to pass your code to (and become "friends" with) kids who aren't even looking for such a loophole, and probably wouldn't be able to find it even if they were? No one cares if you can pass your code out to other adults or teens in the game with your special "alphabet".
Remember, we're not talking teenagers here. We're talking kids young enough that they wouldn't be allowed unrestricted (and likely not even unsupervised) access to the internet, if their parents actually give a shit. So how exactly is 6yo Jimmy going to stumble on your "alphabet" if he's not even allowed to use the PC except when Mom or Dad is there helping him?
Granted, kids can have a lot of ingenuity with computers and *might* be able to stumble upon something like this with unrestricted access... but then parents who give their kids unrestricted internet have no reason to care about them being in an uncensored MMO either.
Here's the source for the parent's anecdote:
http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000058.html
The guys who write the Habitat Chronicles blog have been in the graphical multi-user online service game for a long time. If you're in to MMO design, and haven't already read it, The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat paper is a good starting point.
It's amazing how many things they point out in that paper (which is now 17 years old), that MMO designers *still* screw up to this day.
QED
(rolls eyes)
Yeah, I'm sure an ASCII reference table is the first thing an 8 year old would think of.
-Styopa