Subject:
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Re: Lugnet - the talk-back radio of the world of Lego?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.loc.au
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Date:
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Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:15:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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6989 times
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> At some point Lego must now be taking the adult fans into
> consideration
> with the 500 dollars star wars set and several at 200 dollars. I also
> think
> they brought out the Factory series for the adult. Somewhere along the
> line
> they felt that the adults were a good target.
Yes, but it's not clear if everything aimed at the adult market has been
successful. Dan Siskind's Blacksmith's Shop was the "first" of the My Own
Creation series, but was there ever a second one? While I think most of us
would agree, it was a great set, I can only assume it wasn't such a great
success financially or we would have seen more? Perhaps this is why they
moved more to the Ambassador approach, because they were suspicious of the
"noisy minority" in the forum and wanted to be sure they were getting their
input through a more filtered source.
Unlike the gaming forums, I suspect Lego forum users are older on average
than the average user and probably less price constrained. I suspect too we
assert with great confidence about what kids want based on our own
childhoods, when we are in fact not in tune with what kids today want. For
example, I don't see a lot of kids into 9V trains except for where they have
a parent or other adult in their life who is into 9V. It just doesn't seem
to be something a lot of kids take up as a theme on their own (whether
through interest or cost I don't know) -- of course supplies of 9V are
pretty limited here in Oz so that may be a factor in my observations.
> The complaints about the changing
> of colors was, in my opinion, valid.
> They said that they changed them because study groups of children
> preferded the
> new colors. Can't say that I believe them on that one.
Well, as much as I have a large classic grey collection and resented the
colour change being foisted on us the way it was, I have to confess that I
think the new light grey and brown are nicer colours when you see them
side-by-side with their class counterparts (I'm less enamoured with the new
dark grey), so I don't think it's impossible that children may have
preferred them. Of course, like all studies, if you've already decided what
outcome you want, you can manipulate the study to achieve it :-)
There is a direct analogy between the colour change and the move from 9V and
events in the gaming community. There are a lot of users chucked out of
things like World of Warcraft (for various crimes against Blizzard, at least
as Blizzard perceives it) who argue that they have been forced to lose their
investment in characters that they have nurtured over many months of
subscription and many hours of play. Having said that, none of them have
attempted legal action and legal opinion is that they would be unlikely to
be successful under US law and that damages (if any) would be limited to the
extent of money paid (which is not significant to the company for an
individual user). Under Australian law, there are some interesting quirks
about monopoly infrastructure providers being able to be forced to open up
their infrastructure to competitors. It might be argued (if you were
prepared to spend the money on the lawyers) that if you set yourself up as
an alternative War of Worldcraft provider that Blizzard should offer access
on fair commercial terms to the WoW servers. Such a decision would be
consistent in Australia with access to things like telecommunications
networks and railway lines (even private ones) but frankly I think hell
would freeze over before games servers were regarded as infrastructure
because games are not regarded as serious businesses like telecommunications
and transport (no matter how much the games industry is worth).
Kerry
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Lugnet - the talk-back radio of the world of Lego?
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| (...) At one time Lego was messing up. They were losing money and for a private company, that is bad even if only for a couple of years. They tried to get back into the swing of things with Galidor and Bionicle. Bionicle was a hit and probably saved (...) (17 years ago, 15-Feb-08, to lugnet.loc.au)
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