The Next Web

Lego launches massive multiplayer online game

Written on May 1, 2008 – 8:27 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The legendary Danish toy manufacturer - who hasn’t played with the colorful bricks? - once again proves to be a modern company. After near-dead experience five years ago, Europe’s largest toymaker has been embracing the new possibilities of this digital era - like crowd sourcing - to keep children hooked to the pirates, knights, ordinary and science fiction figures. Next Web editor and crowd sourcing expert Eric Bun admitted in March that even he was tempted to download the Lego programs and start designing Lego projects.

Lego blogger

During a press conference at the Lego HQ in Billund, Mark William Hansen announced the launch of Lego Universe, a MMOG that lets players create online versions of themselves and interact with each other. It isn’t just some - let’s do something with online games- idea, as Hansen ended up at Lego after writing his doctoral thesis about mass customization.

The PC game Lego Universe will mix real-world style environments with the funny-looking characters and buildings made of plastic bricks. After creating a personalized avatar, users can spend virtual money to buy virtual bricks. Yet they don’t need real money to acquire this online currency. Hansen explained to Reuters: “The more a child plays, they collect more coins and more bricks. The more you play, the more you get to build things. We want kids to come and play together”.

I love this tactic, and hope it will prevent fraud and theft scandals as happened with Habbo Hotel. And if it doesn’t, at least kids won’t spend all their pocket-money on virtual bricks, they should spent that on soccer cards for crying out loud. Or real Lego bricks, and that’s probably what the Lego executives are hoping for.

I hope you like that post!

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denmark, habbo, lego, Lego Universe, mmog, Toys, virtual toys

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Escape to a virtual world wherever and whenever you want

Written on February 22, 2008 – 6:02 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Virtual worlds are big business. They’re here for 13 years now and will only get more realistic, sensational and more intense. A timeline of virtual worlds, ripped from a Dutch presentation, shows the developments of the last decade:

Now there’s a new chapter: a virtual world on your mobile phone. In December 2007, the Finnish company Sulake launched a miniature virtual world that works on Nokia Series 60 phones. The new world is called MiniFriday. The makers are trying to find out if real-time virtual worlds make sense on mobile devices and consider MiniFriday to be a ‘research project’.

Well, this research project has enjoyed quite a nice viral boost after the launch with already 300.000 registered users. Next Web WebTipr Timo Paloheimo told me that besides the Nordic countries many of the users come from Russia and Indonesia.

The success of MiniFriday doesn’t surprise me though, since Sulake is also the company behind Habbo. The ‘hangout for teens’ that allegedly generates a huge amount of cash by selling virtual objects. It operates in 31 markets globally and has sustained up to 100,000 users concurrently, said Habbo lead designer Sulka Haro at the 2008 Worlds in Motion Summit.

Critics of virtual worlds often say that people who ‘live’ in virtual worlds are actually just running away from daily reality. If this were true, those virtual citizens can now escape to their second life wherever and whenever they want. The question is whether the less-complex world of MiniFriday is captive enough. Is ordering beers and having short chats enough to get people hooked up? Judge for yourself:

[WebTipr: Timo Paloheimo, Finland]

habbo, minifriday, mobile, mobile virtual worlds, sulake, virtual worlds

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