Today Funcom announced that it has entered a partnership with LEGO to create a new massively-multiplayer-online game. This time around it’s based on the phenomenally popular collectible Minifigures, which LEGO has been licensing out with surprising frequency, with them now appearing on everything from suitcases to pencil carriers and lunchboxes. Funcom’s most recognizable game to date was the dubiously successful Age of Conan MMORPG, which like nearly all MMOs that are not owned by Blizzard, withered away quietly to the deserts of free-to-play a short time after release. Funcom touts that the game will “focus on maximum accessibility,” which doesn’t bode well for sustaining the long-term interest and depth required to support such an expensive endeavor as an MMO necessitates. I am curious, however, about what sort of plot and world Funcom intends to tease out of what is, essentially, simply a random collection of figures. The press release is scarce on details, but that’s to be expected this early in development:
LEGO® Minifigures are the inhabitants of an unimaginable number of spectacular creations put together by both kids and grown-ups over the past several decades. Whether it is a knight in shining armor, a brave firefighter or just an oddball in a gorilla suit, these figures breath life into elaborately constructed cities, castles and even space stations around the world.
I do sincerely hope that this game will be more successful than LEGO’s last ill-fated foray into the world of MMOs, but the MMO market is notoriously hard to get even a foothold in, much less create a rousing success.
See the full press release from Funcom here.
via RockPaperShotgun.