Each player will start by assembling a personal Lego miniature figure to serve as his or her avatar. The sprawling Lego fantasyland will be able to support more than half a million “brick heads” from around the world. Everything built in the game must be buildable in real life.īut unlike traditional Lego play, the online version will offer unprecedented opportunities for players to share and interact. It can’t afford to disappoint users looking for the familiar interplay of studded plastic pieces that families have been clicking together for generations.
In addition, Lego must stay faithful to its meticulous engineering. So with Lego Universe, the company’s reputation as one of the most venerated and parent-friendly toy brands is at stake. It’s one thing to unleash bawdy mayhem in a fantasy game like EverQuest and quite another to nurture a virtual play space where kids can be kids-and not fall prey to predators or bullies or other unwelcome Internet lurkers. But Lego Universe seeks to capture the grade school set and the estimated $20 billion children’s game market. Most massively multiplayer games cater to an older crowd, where norms of behavior need not be strictly enforced. The company has had occasional troubles before, such as trying to create its Lego theme parks. Success for this project-estimated to cost over $10 million to create, though the Danish company does not make the budget publicly available-is by no means assured. On launch, subscriptions will be available to over 20 countries from Austria to the United States. With the game, the creators are aiming to pull off three incredibly difficult feats: translating the creative, distinctly tactile Lego experience into a virtual arena creating an online environment that’s both kid-friendly and kid-safe and opening up a new market for the US $2 billion toy company.Īnd because this is an international project and brand, addressing these issues is a global challenge. Lego Universe marks the legendary company’s first foray into massively multiplayer gaming, and for the iconic building-block maker, it’s a major gamble. It’s a children’s product, but it’s also serious business.
Ten years in the making, the game is being created here at a company called NetDevil, with supervision from the Lego Group. The boys are play-testing Lego Universe, an online computer game due out in October.
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