The Lego Man

Yes, exactly - there have been several attempts in the digital/virtual area from way back, and I think the reason that they're quite successful at the moment is because of a sort of 'back to the roots' strategy that we have. We're trying to stay loyal to what the Lego brick is about, and what the heritage of that is - and when we go online we try to do the same.

Basically we're asking what are the traits in the physical bricks that we can bring over to the digital side, so it makes sense on that platform - whether that's Lego.com or in the new games under development.

It's something that, when they see it, they know it's obviously Lego - they just haven't seen it before - rather than trying to get away from what Lego is about.

Exactly - it's that timelessness that we're trying to bring to the digital area as well.

I think the Traveller's Tales titles have just proved that there is relevance for our little Minifigure and the Lego bricks in the 3D world, and online. They also bring something of the humour and the movement of the Minifigure - they've been very successful in that sense.

That's the essence of it. Most of the leading forces in Traveller's Tales are ex-Lego employees. The story of the first Lego Star Wars game is that it was under development inside the Lego group, then they separated out - there was a sort of management buyout of the development.

That hasn't been decided in any way - we're going on a case-by-case basis, in terms of what makes sense for Lego products. Nothing definite at all yet.

The thinking behind it is that we actually take the starting point around some of the things that people expect if they've played the Lego Star Wars of Lego Indiana Jones games, but then we add to that experience given that it's an MMO - and given that we want to add creativity element to the game as well.

We're trying to make the translation from what happens on the floor, with Lego bricks, into the game - not the one translation where you can just do the same things as on the floor, but the full translation into the world, so you can live out the fantasies and imaginations you have when you're sitting on the floor with your bricks.

You can add behaviour to your creations, and share them with each other.

I think that's a fair comparison in terms of some of the games out there. I think people will be surprised about some of the user-generated content you can make. One of the biggest elements actually will be that the user-generated content in the game will be as high a quality as the things that we develop - given that you express yourself with bricks, we express ourselves with bricks, but what you make will be rendered in the same high quality. It will actually look very good when you add content to the game yourself.

There will be an ability for people to get their own piece of land and add structures as they see fit, and we'll add in other contribution areas in the game. Of course we're trying to manage it so that we maintain some ordered gaming areas, so you wouldn't be able to clutter a city area with lots of user-generated content, because that would disturb the gaming experience for other players.

But there will be specific areas that you'll be able to add your creations and creatures to.

That's actually an innovation we have in development right now, because obviously safety is very important to us - one of the strengths of our Lego.com platform is that it is a very trusted site from a parent's perspective. You're not exposed to marketing from any companies - any sort of posting on our message boards and uploads to Lego.com is always moderated and safe.

So that's something that we want to carry over to the MMO game as well. Given the number of expected participants in the game, that is the innovation challenge for us.

We're looking at a launch in the second half of next year - that's the timing we've communicated about. We don't disclose what our expectations for subscribers are, but of course it's several hundred thousand.

We're targeting 8-12 year olds, and actually that's a little higher in terms of age bracket compared to our normal Lego products, but what we've seen with our normal plastic Lego products is that it actually appeals to a much wider audience that what it's designed for.

That's also what we expect when we launch the game - it's something that will possible to play for an 8-12 year old, but it will have a wide enough appeal, offer a wide enough ability for you to express yourself, that it will be interesting for a much wider age bracket too.

There's a quote: "You are, what you are at launch." We're very dedicated to making sure that you're exposed to all of the right elements in the game when we launch. But one of the key options we have with an MMO - that you don't have with a CD or DVD product - is that you can add content and gameplay after launch.

So we'll launch with something that's actually a great and interesting game - you'll be able to see what it's about, and do all the things - but then actually add on a frequent basis new content, so that it stays fresh with the players.

Yes...it actually started with a discussion we had with the core users of our Lego bricks, and keeping to the tradition of what Lego is about, we wanted to understand what else is relevant for a normal Lego user.

And it just turns out that the normal Lego girl or boy is very used to working with computers and the Internet, good at using digital cameras, uploading and sharing things with their friends - so we wanted to go in there and provide that experience online that compares to the Lego play they have on the floor.

Part of our assessment on the risk is that if we can develop a game that is great for that audience, I think we have a good starting point. And then of course we want to reach a wider audience as well.

Well, I don't want to highlight specific things about games I don't think succeeded, but one of the things that we take away is to balance what the gameplay is about - we have three parts to the game. The socialising, the gaming aspect, and then the building aspect - and we want to make sure that these actually integrate and are fully balanced.

So it doesn't then become all a social game, or all a building game - it's taking care of all of the things at the same time.

It will be a subscription-based model, but we haven't made a final decision about what the price point will be.

We actually ruled it out relatively quickly, because of the audience that we want to attract - we just don't think that it's a model the parents will like, to not have control over what the kids spend online. We think they'll be more comfortable with that.

What we hope it will do is actually inspire the normal Lego players, so when you actually play in Lego Universe, and you're playing a specific themed area, it will actually inspire the imagination of the kids so they can take that into the floor with the normal Lego products.

We don't see this in particular as being a specific marketing effort to drive sales of normal Lego products - it's a standalone business that builds on what Lego is about. But we hope there will be some synergies on the imagination side for the kids.