Seabury: Four-Year Tests for LEGO Universe

Author: by Staff

Developer NetDevil has told Gamasutra that its upcoming LEGO Universe MMO has logged "thousands of hours" of play, some from groups of children who have been beta testing it for four years. The game's development began by soliciting ideas from a group of children who formed the basis of its testing pool, says Ryan Seabury, creative director of the game at NetDevil. "We started with a group of 19 kids before we even had a line of code or a drawing on paper, brought them into our offices in Louisville, Colorado, and asked them, 'Hey, what would you want from an online LEGO game? What do you think that would be? What would be cool to you?'" He explains. These players were then invited to play the game as it began to take shape -- and have continued to do so, says Seabury, "coming back and testing it on a weekly basis." "The same group of kids, all of them -- they were about eight to 12 at the time, now are 12 to 16," he says. The game has also been in closed beta, and from this combined data, the developers have harnessed "tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of kids who have played this game to give us feedback," says Seabury. The full interview goes into great depth on the business and development decisions NetDevil and partner LEGO have taken with the game, and explains why we may see cameos from popular LEGO licensed properties like Star Wars in the future, among other topics.