Lego is a massively successful and historic toy company that’s made a ton of a smash hit video games.
So why was Lego Universe a flop?
One reason the massively multiplayer game—an attempt at building a bigger version of Minecraft—didn’t work is that Lego had a hard problem to solve: penises.
Lego, trusted by parents to the highest degree, wanted to do everything they could to keep that trust. Anyone who has played an online game knows that you can’t keep things G-rated 100 percent of the time. Anyone who has been online at all knows you can’t keep penises away 100 percent of the time either.
Lego tried to beat both. The futility of it all was described by graphics coder Megan Fox. In the battle of Legos versus dongs, dongs won big time.
Funny story – we were asked to make dong detection software for LEGO Universe too. We found it to be utterly impossible at any scale.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
Players would hide the dongs where the filtering couldn’t see, or make them only visible from one angle / make multi-part penis sculptures.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
The moderation costs of LEGO Universe were a big issue in general. They wanted a creative building MMO with a promise of zero penises seen.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
They actually had a huge moderation team that got a bunch of screenshots of every model, every property. Entirely whitelist-based building.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
YOU could build whatever you wanted, but strangers could never see your builds until we’d had the team do a penis sweep on it.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
It was all automated, but the human moderators were IIRC the single biggest cost center for LEGO Universe’s operational costs. Or close to.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
And “that” is why Trove/etc were able to make better building MMOs. They didn’t have to worry about little kids seeing dongs. We REALLY did.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
We even had an employee very nearly fired for building a penis. It was on his own property, but a kid wandered into it during a kid test.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
We’re talking “test operator rushed forward, blocks the monitor, slams the game closed, four alarm fire to find who built the penis” here.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
After which a memo went out indicating our new absolute zero tolerance policy on building penises of any kind, anywhere, in the game.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
This is all obvious, simple stuff, and is why dealing w/ COPPA (which protects kids) is so damn hard in online games. Even DEVS build dongs.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
This is a roundabout way of saying “never build an online game for kids / I have no idea how Minecraft hasn’t been sued over this yet”
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
People saying “well just allow dicks” – LEGO’s brand is utterly trusted by parents. We had to uphold that trust. Which meant zero tolerance.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
I’m…. relatively positive I can talk about this stuff. The agreements signed when the studio shut down had more to do with defamatio, etc.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
Anyways, “all of that” is why every single successor to LEGO Universe has been small and missing build play. LEGO knows how expensive it is.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
And they basically can’t compete with Minecraft, because Minecraft can just shrug that entire problem off. So they’ve focused elsewhere.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
I expect stories of the sunk costs gone into LEGO Universe are told to young LEGO execs at bed time, as cautionary tales to never try again.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
“This is the answer to the oft-asked question, ‘Why didn’t Lego build Minecraft?’ commenter qq66 wrote. “Because big companies necessarily focus on risks to what they already have, while small companies focus on untapped opportunities.”
This also poses another big question: Are penises so offensive that the mere site of a phallic Lego should bring down a multimillion-dollar operation?
H/T Hacker News | Illustration via Lego
