SAN FRANCISCO — "How do we come up with a digital brick?"
There have been many games that use the Lego brand over the years, but the toys were mostly used as a clever visual style: Lego Star Wars, for example. But Mark Hansen, senior director of Lego's Digital Play studios, is tasked with coming up with a game that does what the tiny colored bricks have done for more than 70 years — unleash a player's innate creativity.
Lego Universe, to be released on PC in 2010, could change all that, merging the fast action of previous Lego titles with creative play, all in a massively multiplayer online world. I spoke with the game's creators at a downtown hotel during last week's Game Developers Conference.
"It's about playing on the floor, going virtual, then going back to the floor ... really expressing yourself and showing off," says Hansen.
Lego Universe is designed for younger players. (In case you've forgotten, Lego is technically for kids.) Hansen says the idea is to supplement, not replace, the physical play experience with a digital one.
Lego's currently available virtual playground, called Lego Factory
, is a fairly robust tool, but it doesn't quite meet the needs of the average child, Hansen says: "It's very AutoCAD-for-kids, not the best play experience.""The vision of Lego Universe is to really experience life as a mini-figure," explains Ryan Seabury, creative director at Lego Universe developer NetDevil.
Universe will play much like your standard MMO game: There will be a story, combat and conflicts, and collectible Lego bricks that will help you customize and construct objects. I wasn't given any details about how the building process would actually work, however. All Seabury would say: "We certainly want to empower players to create what they want to create."
He says NetDevil is paying a lot of attention to things that players have expressed interest in making. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something akin to the creative Xbox 360 game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, with players combining specific types of bricks to create objects that fall into particular categories, or obey certain rules.
This is all baseless speculation on my part, but I can't think of a better way to avoid the torrent of giant, jet-propelled penises that the internet's denizens would immediately create en masse.
Lego Universe will bring together a wide variety of characters and locations. Thus far, we've seen screenshots of ninjas in their natural habitats, pirates manning their fearsome war vessels, reporters in the city covering disasters, and players out in space, customizing rocket ships.
"Players have the option of making their design unique," Seabury says. "We really wanted to (take) the next step, where we can deliver ... more customizable experiences, and start getting your own creativity and expression into it."
From what I've seen, Lego Universe is bursting with a silly, energetic charm. The mini-figures are the stars of the show, and while I didn't get to see the full game in action, I was allowed to watch the character-creation process. Mini-figs are endowed with a creative spark, a "soul" that will never die. They're also fairly exuberant: They'll start mashing the "randomize" button on their own if you take too long to begin the customization process.
Customizing a mini-fig is much like building one from parts scattered across your living room floor: Snap on a hairpiece or hat, pick the right head and shirt piece, and then pick a color for your legs. It's a simple process that leaves plenty of room for that individual, creative touch — to say nothing of the accessories and costumes that players will discover along the way.
There are a lot of strong ideas resting on the back of this historic franchise, but there's still a long wait ahead for the final product. Perhaps staring at the concept artwork below will help tide you over. 
Images courtesy Lego
Lego My MMO: A Universe of Virtual Bricks | Game | Life from Wired.com
