Men are interesting beasts. When you give most any of us something to draw with (be it pen & paper, or tablet like device) you can make a pretty safe bet that we will draw a massive wang. Who knows why this is, –I’m no psychologist– but it sort of just happens. So when you try to create a game that is all about creation, protecting from the prodigious protrusion is always a concern. If you don’t believe me just load up any Let’s Play series on Mincraft, or any similar game, and be ready to see wieners wall-to-wall at some point.
So when NetDevil got to making the now shuttered MMO LEGO Universe they faced an uphill battle. I have a sort of tangential connection with LEGO Universe in one of those “family of a friend” kind of situations, so I may have to do some more digging into this. Still, it should be noted that LEGO Universe did not contain and dongs within it. That isn’t the issue here. Thee issue is just how much it cost and the loads of work involved with making it so.
Exquisite Tweets has collected a series of tweets from former LEGO Universe’s Senior Graphics Designer, Megan Fox about how this whole dong detection fiasco went down.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
BTW LEGO is every bit as cool to work for as you’d think. Every office has rows and rows of brick bins. I’d build stuff while code compiled.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 31, 2015
Via: (VG24/7)
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