The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Time to Lego Penis

The Phrase ‘Time to Penis’ was the MMO answer to ‘Time to Crate‘.  It was coined by designer par excellence Jeff Freeman who sadly is no longer with us, and was used to describe the length of time, in a game with user created content, it would take for players to fell the game with phalluses.

Here’s a series of Tweets from a senior developer who worked on Lego Universe – the ultimate child-friendly user-created-content IP.  

And just how expensive was it to do regular penis sweeps?

The whole thing’s a fast, good read.

12 Comments

  1. Vhaegrant

    Is the ‘Time to penis’ urge driven by a desire to confront and test the limits of authority?
    I have a huge crate of real LEGO and in the several decades of ownership have never felt the need to build a plastic phallus. Sit me down in front of a creative design piece of software and one of my first urges is ‘I wonder what the Devs will let me get away with?’.
    I guess the social dynamics of locker room bragging come into play as well.

    • Damion Schubert

      ‘Time to Penis’ is actually nothing more than a real breakdown of the numbers. Not everyone in these environments is building penises – it’s actually very low. However, human nature is to exclude the good content that people create and remember the most problematic thing they saw. Because penises are easy to build (try building a vulva out of legos in less than 10 minutes), what it means is that the majority of objectionable content you see will be penises.

      • Vhaegrant

        I think there is something in human nature to focus on the phallus, for whatever anthropological reason be it fertility, protection or just overt masculinity the penis has long been represented in culture both buildings and worship. Of course there is also the somewhat immature objective to shock the older folk.

        Oh, the pink LEGO brick comment below was meant to follow on from the vulva comment but I forgot to hit reply :/

  2. Vetarnias

    Paging Dr. Freud.

  3. John Henderson

    And yet, Lego Universe was a flop, because there was already an online Lego game that was a huge hit — they just called it Minecraft. It didn’t have quest givers.

  4. Soren Johnson

    So, why were dongs never a problem for Minecraft? Because it’s less fun to make penises inside of a non-branded game? Because by the time parents noticed, the game was already a hit? Genuinely curious…

    • Ettesiun

      Because Minecraft mostly does not host public multiplayer server. And Minecraft is not a brand builded on children toys : if newspaper make a huge first line on In Minecraft you can see penis, most of the adults will say ” what is MineCraft?” or “videogames are bad”. Whereas the headline “Lego is perverting your children” is far more damaging.

    • John Henderson

      Because Minecraft is only Lego in function, while Lego is a brand that’s been around a lot longer.

  5. Josh

    We do have some filtering software for UGC where I work. It catches flagrant violations, profanity, etc, but our UGC is fairly limited, nothing like what you can do with a handful of lego bricks. We also only allow sharing of content with friends. Any public UGC goes through our moderation system and a human runs through it. Humans really are the best dong detectors.

  6. Vhaegrant

    So, from reading previous comments about chat moderation in MMOs, is it safe to assume monitoring and acting on anti-social behaviour is one of the most expensive parts of running an age certified (less than 18+) MMO?
    Does the cost add up to more than other aspects of content creation such as new maps/levels?

  7. Vhaegrant

    It’s a lot easier now they have pink LEGO bricks 😉

  8. Adam Ryland

    All this effort to filter out a penis.

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