Lego's latest brick trick: a virtual world

By Reed Stevenson

BILLUND, Denmark (Reuters) - Millions of children pick up Lego bricks each year to spend hours -- 5 billion, in fact -- creating their own imaginary worlds.

Now the manufacturer of the little plastic playing blocks wants to take them online to "Lego Universe," a virtual world for fans of the ubiquitous toy.

Lego Universe joins an established trend where toys and video games are cross-promoted, such as Nintendo Co Ltd's Pokemon TV show, game card, toys and video game franchise, and Mattel Inc's Barbie online shopping and gaming portal at barbie.com.

To launch next year as a massively multiplayer online game, or MMOG to those in the gaming community, Lego Universe will let players create online versions of themselves and interact with each other.

"We want to make the connection between digital play and physical play," said Mark William Hansen who is in charge of Lego Universe. "The physical experience is our core, the digital experience will never replace the physical experience, but it's a nice add-on."

Hansen, speaking at the headquarters of Europe's largest toymaker, said he had been working on his doctoral thesis with Lego Group on mass customization and ended up joining the family-owned company to create the game.

Lego Universe will blend real-world style environments with characters and buildings made of digital plastic pieces. A forest would have less bricks in the background, while a city would lend itself to being made nearly entirely with bricks.

Each player's avatar, or online persona, will be a customizable digital version of Lego minifigures, the tiny characters included with most Lego kits that also feature in existing Lego video games such as Lego Star Wars.

That's not surprising. Lego employees are just as likely to pull out a Lego figure of themselves, with name, phone number and e-mail address rather than a traditional business card.

Lego Universe will initially launch as a PC game, available in stores or as a download, and may eventually be available on other gaming platforms. It will operate as a pay-as-you-go subscription service at a "competitive price", Hansen said.

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.

The other crucial element of Lego Universe, like other MMOGs, is that users will be encouraged to interact with each other, to build and play with virtual Lego bricks as they would on a carpet littered with real Lego pieces.

"We want kids to come and play together," Hansen said.

BRICK-BY-BRICK