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How many rounds of kids did you have to go through, focus testing-wise?
RS: Oh, we've been through thousands of kids. It's interesting; we started with a group of 19 kids before we even had a line of code or a drawing on paper, brought them into our offices in Louisville, Colorado, and asked them, "Hey, what would you want from an online LEGO game? What do you think that would be? What would be cool to you?"
And the same group of kids, all of them -- they were about eight to 12 at the time, now are 12 to 16 -- are still coming back and testing it on a weekly basis.
So every week we have kids coming into the office, and of course the beta has tens of thousands of people playing, and that's been going on for over six to seven months now.
We've been gathering metrics and feedback on a weekly basis from that, so there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of kids who have played this game to give us feedback.
And you do not have PVP combat, right?
RS: Not day one. We have a great prototype we build almost a year ago that looks really promising. There's a lot of potential for the way you get specialty kits and all your abilities on the different factions for PVP scenarios, but what were trying to do is tie it to a piece of combat that makes the most sense.
We don't want to just slap it in there and say, "Hey! Here's PVP, but it doesn't make any sense!" We actually have some plans for some future play themes that are going to be integrated in that will make perfect sense, and that will be the introduction for that.
Do you envision your expansions being brand-oriented?
RS: A little bit of both. We wanted to establish a unique identity that was LEGO Universe by itself, because we could easily lose ourselves in things like LEGO Castle or any of their bigger, what they call "evergreen" themes that are always around.
Rather than do that, we came up with our own thing, the Nexus Force, the Maelstrom. We reference a lot of the stuff that's there, especially the legacy stuff, like you'll see in the Nexus Force world, you'll see classic pirate stuff going on in there, ninjas, and things like that. But none of them are 100 percent there.
As we go forward, we'll definitely be integrating very much one-to-one -- there will be entire worlds dedicated to certain play themes, but we'll also continue the Maelstrom story, the Nexus Force.
What I'm excited about is when we develop and get more of those play themes in, we'll be able to start doing mash-ups of them. For example, what happens if you take the Castle guys and put them with the Space guys? There's actually story and directed content built around that. It'll be very interesting, and I don't think any MMO has that opportunity, where you can mash things up and they will still make sense.
Are you going to be able to integrate those external licenses, like from the Traveller's Tales games?
RS: It's certainly on the table; we haven't really entered discussions with all the IP holders. That was another thing -- that would have further complicated what is already probably the most ambitious MMO I can conceive of.
We did specifically make a point to architect our fiction and our world structure so it could work. For example, you could have a LEGO Star Wars world or a LEGO Harry Potter world in LEGO Universe. We'll just have to take those discussions carefully one at a time with each of the IP holders and respect what they want to see as well.
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"...hopefully someday -- we're talking with the manufacturing guys -- you'll be able to order your minifig in real life, and even the models you build in real life, as well."
This part is interesting to me. I blogged about this before, but I wonder why they don't push this farther, and even go in the other direction: have a way to "scan" your real-world Lego creations and bring them into the game. If you made Lego pieces with microchips inside that could all "talk" to each other, I'd think it would be easy to plug that into a PC and determine the "anatomy" of an entire Lego creation.
I'm also surprised that they seem to be rejecting microtransactions to such an extent. Parents are already used to being "nickel-and-dimed" by Lego, I think: you have to pay money to get a pack of physical Lego blocks, right?
You'd think they would do this in the game, selling themed packs of Lego blocks, etc. I guess it's not that much of a concern for them though - they're right, their license gives them the clout to make it subscription-based, and if you CAN get those monthly fees, there's little reason not to, from a business point of view.
:)
Second, the game inherently bases it's gameplay loop on player investment. It's better to use subs to charge "access" to that investment, so that a fully invested player will continue to pay even when they have nothing new to aspire to. Subs are like the mortgage you pay for the right to live in your house and not forfeit your equity. MTX is like that Ikea Catalog that you get every month but start ignoring once you've decked your place out.
I also totally agree with the "nickel and diming" effect, as the experience of buying tangible toys is different than virtual goods, least in this country. LEGO toys sit on shelves until you voluntarily travel to the store to make a purchase, unlike the constant upsell that an online game would have to depend on if it were to MTX new content.