Portal 2 LEGO set enters final review stage | Hacker News Reader

Portal 2 LEGO set enters final review stage

lego.cuusoo.com

48 pointsSukotto12 comments

In case you were wondering. LEGO Cuusoo is an official LEGO design incubator. Members can post an idea for a set. If at least 10,000 other members support the idea, then LEGO evaluates the idea against a set of metrics (playability, cost, branding, etc). If it passes that final evaluation, then LEGO will start selling the set as part of their official line.

(The person or group that made the initial submission then get a 1% royalty of net sales)

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/CUUSOO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Cuusoo

http://lego.cuusoo.com/guidelines

[I'm not connected to the groups submitting the Portal sets... I just happen to really like both LEGO and Portal]

I'm in the love with the first couple images, but not this [0] one. Why would they make it so tiny like that? Reminds me of what they did with the Minecraft lego set [1].

[0]: http://cuusoo.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/9cc0d/c0a44/45a9b/7...

[1]: http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Minecraft-21102

The two biggest factors in LEGO set price are licensing costs and piece count. That's why official sets tend to be simpler than fan sets. When they do make complicated and large builds, they tend to be expensive, like $100 for the Sopwith Camel.

That particular playset is a take on the Lego Heroica style sets [0]. They're meant to be played kind of like DnD, and to be <$30.

[0]: http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Draida-Bay-3857

Can someone explain what the relationship is between Lego, CUSOO, and the rights holders of the properties that the sets on lego.cuusoo.com are being designed around?

It can get complicated, for example this project http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/13519 used to look a lot more like the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachikoma#Design but LEGO was not interested in something from that universe (TBH GitS has a lot of sex and violence for a kid's toy). So he reworked the model into something functionally similar but without the branding issues http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/17553 which seems to have stalled out :(

It was the same with Firefly design, because the show has a lot of sex and violence. The same with Shaun of the Death.

Also, sometimes the legos will end up less promising than it seemed at the beginning - see the official Minecraft Cuusoo lego - http://www.jinx.com/p/lego_minecraft_micro_world.html .

And also, the LEGOs are not produced in so big numbers as normal lego boxes, so they are not sold in regular retail, but only on internet in limited numbers.

CUUSOO is part of LEGO. After a CUUSOO project reaches 10k supporters, it goes through a review by LEGO corporate which includes stuff like Brand Fit Analysis (too violent?) and Business Case Development (will this actually sell?) and License Agreements (can we license this?). If it passes that, then it gets a model designed by a LEGO designer which is not necessarily the same as the submitted idea.

http://legocuusoo.posterous.com/the-quarterly-lego-review-ho...

That is not quite right. Cuusoo is a Japanese company and independent from Lego. (In the beginning Lego Cuusoo also launched only in Japan – but it blew up internationally.) They offer their “social creation platform” (also called Cuusoo) to customers – of which Lego is now most certainly their biggest and most prominent one. I’m unsure of the exact relationship, but I think it’s fair to say that Cuusoo is a SaaS business.

Cuusoo seems to host the platform and I assume (but don’t know) that they take care of all technical issues, Lego seems to take care of the review process. So Lego Cuusoo is basically the Cuusoo installation run by Lego.

You are completely correct about the review process, though (basically everything you wrote after the first sentence).

Wow, I had no idea. I knew it was originally Japanese since the first two projects were very Japanese, but not about the separate company. Shoulda done my research.

Like Lego Star Wars and Lego LOTR, I'd actually enjoy to see a lighthearted, Lego Portal game.

If this goes through I await the inevitable set of blue/red TF2 class minifigs!

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