We’re two days late, but here you go. We’ll resume our regular storyline Wednesday.
LEGO Universe was a funny product. I don’t mean ha-ha funny, more like what-the-heck-was-it-trying-to-be kind of funny. It was a game where children (presumably their target market) could go online, explore a virtual world, complete quests and vanquish enemies. Sounds like any other MMO game until you get to the part where you can take virtual bricks you collect throughout the game and build something. It sounds like a good idea, but the reality is that LEGO created a game that was basically competing against LEGO itself. The amount of time that an MMO requires by its very nature is time taken away from kids playing with their real life LEGO collection. Add a monthly subscription fee that could have been spent on LEGO sets and you create situation where children would have to choose between playing a game or building with LEGO and where parents would have to choose between paying a fee every month or purchase a set once that can last for years. Also, there wasn’t exactly a hole in the market for MMO’s targeted to children. And even if there was, the demand couldn’t have been too high. Of course, this is all just MY opinion. But I honestly couldn’t see the game succeeding. And $50 million dollars later, sadly, I was right.
The silver lining in all this? Galidor is STILL LEGO’s most embarrassing mistake.
Anyways, enough of my long-windedness. The game closes on January 30th, 2012.