According to their press release, the MMO was well-received and got a lot of good feedback, but there simply weren't enough paying customers to keep it going. I got the chance to play through a lot of the Lego Universe missions and worlds , and visiting NetDevil Studios last fall was a highlight for both me and my kids. It was a fantastic idea: combining the creativity of Lego toys with the humor of the videogames with the magic of a couple million people playing together.
Aside from picking a faction and leveling up and acquiring cool tools and gadgets, you could also create your own worlds where you could build Lego creations either brick-by-brick or using various modules collected in the game. LEGO Universe is a subscription-based game and, like so many others before it, had a very tough time convincing people to adopt another monthly fee on top of whatever game subscriptions they were already paying. Update: The original publishers, Gazillion Entertainment, dropped the game pretty quickly after launch, handing it off to the LEGO Group and making major cuts to the original dev team at NetDevil many of whom were picked up by the LEGO group to continue development on the game.
Sure, they said they did, and had the fanfare and big announcement right around the time that everybody and their mothers were going free-to-play. But the beauty of the free-to-play business model is that it gives the gamer options for what they want to buy, and how much they want to pay for it—and LEGO Universe didn't do that.
People are already accustomed to buying real-world LEGO bricks in microtransaction packs to build specific vehicles or space forts or islands with buried treasure.
The existing business model translates almost perfectly into LEGO Universe, where players can build anything on their properties, and breathe life into whatever they build with interactivity via animation and functionality scripting. For free-to-play to work, you have to give players options. People who make games need to think about the whole process. I know that billing isn't as sexy as framerates and polygons, but what good is a city of gold if the toll road to get there is crap? Edwin Joseph 10 years ago.
See when lego universe came out and i saw how much it was i laughed my fucking ass off but then i saw the free to play and i played it i thought it was pretty good for a kid mmo Randall Coston Sr. Director, Game Production, Cartoon Network 10 years ago. This is a real shame. I thought the game was very well done and offered something new to LEGO fans. I think the difficulty was finding the right revenue model to fit the game. The conversion to a free client download and free limited content, with an upgrade to membership, was later coming.
I agree with Thomas that it would have been good to see them explore other options, like ad-supported or item sales. It's a shame to see a good game shut down before it's had a chance to find it's legs.
Tim Carter Designer - Writer - Producer 10 years ago. The Lego people have lost sight of their original vision. Lego is about using blocks to make whatever suits your fancy, whatever tickles your imagination.
Lego, originally, wasn't about some strange tie-in to all kinds of movies and TV shows - but this is the direction the Lego people have taken it. Minecraft now suits the original vision of Lego better than Lego does. It's a world where you are given free reign to use blocks to build whatever you want - not some tie-in to a movie or whatnot. A more ingenious option is to buy a blister of unique blocks or expansion blocks No matter how great any MMO is, too much time and money is being wasted on these huge-ass projects where no one IMAGINES a day when paying customers will dwindle to the point where you have people losing their jobs over a bad business decision.
That, and as someone who's been interested in preserving game history, seeing yet another title fall away is a shame. Hell, even some sort of level editor so even if the online portion of a game DOES die, those that love it will continue to play and share content and hell, BUY a project that dev works on because they can rely on them to cover all those bases.
Oh well. Maybe someone will listen one day This is a shame. LEGO Universe is a very well crafted game. I spent quite allot of time testing it on the mac and even for an adult it was pretty fun to play. There was very limited content though, and a hardcore player could easily do everything in the game fairly quickly. It is my opinion that MMO games should not be marketed to young kids at all because they are surely bad for them in many ways physically and mentally.
I think the business problem with Lego universe is that it was too fun and light hearted and didn't require a deep time investment. It was geared towards kids and that was a good idea for the kids but kids don't care about your revenue model and don't feel they should be loyal to your brand and don't care if they didn't log in that day to quest for better armor they need to kill the dragon.
We should not expect younger children to be dedicated MMO players. We can surely expect that parents are going to be very happy to cancel that sub as soon as the initial interest has worn off. Skylanders Spyro's Adventure is the type of game people should expect will do extremely well with a younger audience not an MMO.
Subscription or micro transaction based it doesn't matter I would not let my kid play an MMO until they are ready to pay for it themselves but more casual games are totally cool and I would pay double out my pocket for something we can play together! An amazing point above too from Tim Carter "Minecraft now suits the original vision of Lego better than Lego does. I guess the thinking is that if they can't protect others copying the bricks then can protect in other ways by creating new areas of the universe with new styles etc, or by licensing other IP and branding their breaks with it?
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