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."

Comments

Here is a thought

[buswolley]

Child appropriate? I tell you what is child appropriate: Being outside, building models, playing in the sand, riding your bike.

Re:Here is a thought

[Knight Thrasher]

You're posting on /. - how could you possibly not see the irony in a post like this?

Slashdot - Geeks sitting inside on computers telling kids to go play outside!

=V

But more to the point on topic - kids are going to play video games, no matter how hard we shake our canes or yell at them to play on our lawns. I would rather kids have the option of playing a LEGO based MMO than, say, a GTA based MMO.

Re:Here is a thought

[Null Nihils]

Child appropriate? I tell you what is child appropriate: Being outside, building models, playing in the sand, riding your bike.

Or how about playing with actual LEGO blocks, and using some imagination?

Still, an MMOG has to be more creative than another freaking toy-brand-based television cartoon.

Re:Here is a thought

[nschubach]

Slashdot - Geeks sitting inside on computers telling kids to go play outside!

Kind of like your mom or dad slapping you across the head telling you not to smoke with a cigarette hanging out their mouth.

Child safe? How?

[Sierran]

One of the truisms of humans - they'll *always* find a way. I recall reading an excellent story online by a programmer who was working on a 'child-safe' online interactive environment; after being forced to abandon live chat, the sponsoring company went with text chat. Then they went with selection of pre-programmed words. When an eight year old swiftly produced something like 'I want to put my tall giraffe in your fluffy bunny' that was right out, and bang went communication. Not to be deterred, their li'l alpha testers swiftly realized you could take the adorable objects in the game and make, um, *interesting* shapes on the ground (and each other) with them, which was way more fun than the design gameplay. The sponsor gave up.

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.

Two words

[antic]

Lego sex.

http://drew.corrupt.net/lp/series1.html

Let us build!

[frostband]

For the love of jebus, let us build stuff with lego blocks! Let me build my own house!

Re:Child safe? How?

[MicklePickle]

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.

For the love of god...

[caitsith01]

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...

Re:For the love of god...

[daranz]

One advantage virtual Lego has over the real ones is price: few people are going to build huge cities of Lego in their homes - with games, you're limited by hardware only, and one brick costs the same as 50000.

Another thing is interacativity. In real life, children have to pretend they're Lego people. In game, they control Lego dudes themselves, and interact with the environment through them.

Re:For the love of god...

[adona1]

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

You want nerdier? I'll see your Star Wars, and raise you a Firefly. Lego Mal shoots first!

Re:For the love of god...

[SQLGuru]

Actually, the promise of a LEGO MMO sounds intriguing. Most MMO worlds (not counting the sandbox-y types such as SecondLife) are limited to one genre. LEGO has such a rich collection of models that you can dedicate whole areas (in other words quests and activities) to each one with enough content to go for quite a while.

Even if you only start with one or two worlds think about this:
LEGO Sports (soccer, basketball, etc.)
LEGO Town (airport, mall, cops, etc.)
LEGO Space
LEGO Western Town
LEGO Castle
LEGO Star Wars
LEGO Circus
LEGO Comics (DC and Marvel)
LEGO Aqua
LEGO Harry Potter

The list goes on.....and on.

Layne

Re:For the love of god...

[drinkypoo]

it was sanctioned by Lucas, so it proves he has a sense of humor about these things after all

Yes, and he's laughing all the way to the bank.

Microserfs anyone..?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It wasn't a game

[Cyno01]

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.

Buzzwords

[DerekLyons]

There isn't any concrete discussion of gameplay yet, but the general description does sound promising:

How precisely does a collection of buzzword boilerplate sound promising?

Re:Buzzwords

[nacturation]

As for gameplay, I think this picture gives some good clues. The monster that plummeted into the ground provides for the PVE aspects -- no doubt you'll have skills, weapons, etc. that you can level up as you fight the aliens. The other guy who's there repairing the street that the monster just destroyed is doing a kind of farming. The destroyed monorail in the background (cue Simpsons monorail song) provides an opportunity for a quest. Driving the garbage truck might be either a quest or even a profession.

That's just what I can see in the picture. I can imagine periodic earthquakes which shake pieces loose from buildings and need to be replaced. Some kind of "build this piece in a virtual environment using Lego Set #4987" type of stuff, etc. Could be interesting for those into that kind of stuff.

Re:Adult server?

[Aladrin]

Hah, too right. My first thought was 'That'd be cool, but having to watch my mouth/actions around all the kids won't be much fun.' I tend to watch it anyhow when playing MMOs, but at least with the adult ones, if I slip, it's 'Oh well, their parents let them play knowing that could happen.' With this, the onus is on me, instead.

(I assume all the profanity filters and such will be in place, but still.)

Re:Child safe? How?

[Eivind]

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 ?

"Lego Games" Escapist article

[Allen Varney]

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.)

Re:Child safe? How?

[njfuzzy]

I think you mean a "Truth" of humans, not a "Truism". A truism is something that (either obviously, or under analysis) doesn't say anything novel, only things that are true by definition.

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.

An MMO? Ew.

[morari]

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...

Of course it's child-safe!

[santiago]

Virtual LEGO bricks pose no choking hazards.