Rock, Paper, Shotgun

These still aren’t properly in-game, but they’re nevertheless a lovely target for Lego Universe to aim for. Apparently the idea of “build” underlies this latest release of images and, according to LEGO themselves, it “represents the power of building and customization that is core to the LEGO Universe experience.” And furthermore “players will be able to build with an abundant supply of virtual bricks. And they’ll be able to add these creations to their own personal space or to areas within the game’s diverse environments.” The game is due some time in 2010, and is being developed by NetDevil in conjunction with the toy brick geniuses themselves. Go click on the images below for full size shots.

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The official Lego Universe site has some images of the game “in action”. They all look at little concept-y to me, but if it’s a rough approximation of what we can expect from the game then I’m interested. Gleaning what little we can from this shots, we can see that it’s going to have a Lego minifig spin on the traditional avatar creation and customisation, while the game is probably going to feature collaborative building projects of some kind – we can see a monument and a rocket here.

It’s also going to feature pirates and ninjas. Which makes sense. Could this be the next big thing for Lego videogames? It’s certainly intriguing, and the idea of being able to construct things from virtual Lego and then port them into the game world makes this an interesting overlap with the Second Life world-building themes that usually get left out of game-like MMOs.

The most recent Lego Universe video is a “behind-the-scenes” documentary advert which shows tantalising glimpse of the game, without actually giving us anything concrete. It’s largely annoying PR fluff. Honestly, it’s awesome that they’re having fun making the game and everything, but the rest of the world just wants to see it running! Show us the footage! Clickwards for the video.
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Nothing to do with PC games.

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Reuters have revealed some of the first details on the LEGO Universe MMO, having talked to project director Mark William Hansen. From what we’ve managed to gather from this article and early discussion of the project at GDC, this could be the first children’s MMO with mass appeal. Crucial to its success will be getting this bit right:

Most social online worlds have their own currency or monetary system, and Lego Universe will also require users to spend virtual money to buy virtual bricks. But rather than winning or beating an opponent, players build capital by spending time in the game.

“The more a child plays, they collect more coins and more bricks. The more you play, the more you get to build things,” Hansen said.

If it can be a game purely of building and simply economics, it might just avoid the level-grind trap. What’s most fascinating, however, is the news that there will be a fully fledged LEGO building system in the game, and that users will even be able to order their creations and have the actual plastic kit delivered to their door…

Lego Portal, now there’s a franchise collision we could all get behind. Anyway, it’s not a game but rather an animation by designer Nick Larsen. You can view the full thing here. It’s moderately amusing. In other Portal fan news: this.

Look! More Lego Indiana Jones footage! Including the giant boulder!

Gametrailers. I don’t hate these guys.

So far, so Lego Star Wars – I was hoping there’d be a little more focus on controlling solely Indy, as he’s the reason we’re all signed up for this, but the character-swapping mechanic seems as prevalent as ever – but it sure is pretty and adventuresome. Plus, I now want a pet Lego crocodile.

Lordy lawks, this is the best thing my eyes have ever seen:

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No, not some incredible hybrid game announcement, but an awesome piece of Lego modeling over on Brickshelf.

Today, incidentally, is Boxing Day, or the UK’s official “Day After Christmas Day”. It is traditionally the day that gamers spend the entire day locked in a room playing something awesome. (To be fair, we spent most of yesterday playing videogames too, but hey.) If gaming were a religion, this would probably be our holy day. So that’s what I’m going to to do, right now… But what to play? That copy of The Witcher is looking peculiarly tempting.

What did you get for Christmas, readers?

[Lego Star Wars remains one of the most quietly radical yet enormously successful games of recent years. I've done more than one post mortem on it too. Here's a different one I did over at the Escapist. In fact, I think Jim's done at least one too. Anyway, as always, this one originated back in PC Format. The interview was performed well before the second trilogy came out.]

“We didn’t have a view necessarily on Lego or Starwars… we don’t think we ever did anything that was not Lego or not Star Wars,” says Giant’s Development Director Jonathan Smith, “We were just doing Lego Star Wars. That’s what it’s it”. Sometimes these post-mortems are a story of woe, death and tears ending with an eventual bittersweet pleasure. Not so with Lego Star Wars. This is the one when everything went right.
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