Exquisite Tweets from @glassbottommeg
Funny story - we were asked to make dong detection software for LEGO Universe too. We found it to be utterly impossible at any scale.
glassbottommegMegan Fox
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
The moderation costs of LEGO Universe were a big issue in general. They wanted a creative building MMO with a promise of zero penises seen.
Megan Fox
They actually had a huge moderation team that got a bunch of screenshots of every model, every property. Entirely whitelist-based building.
Megan Fox
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
This is a roundabout way of saying "never build an online game for kids / I have no idea how Minecraft hasn't been sued over this yet"
Megan Fox
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
I'm.... relatively positive I can talk about this stuff. The agreements signed when the studio shut down had more to do with defamatio, etc.
Megan Fox
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
And they basically can't compete with Minecraft, because Minecraft can just shrug that entire problem off. So they've focused elsewhere.
Megan Fox
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