sandro

Why isn't Cuusoo more popular?

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I've been looking around the LEGO Cuusoo site, and while I admit it's hard to find projects on there, I'm wondering why it isn't more popular.

They seem to be willing to take almost any suggestions from the community (new sets, re-issues, etc) as long as we can get 10,000 supporters for the idea, but I don't see a lot of great MOC's up there.

And the ones that are there don't seem to have much support.

So far the most popular project is a Lego Minecraft project with close to 5,000 supporters, but this seems entirely driven by the Minecraft community, and I wonder how many users here are supporting that project.

Can anyone tell me why Cuusoo isn't more popular?

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I think there's a lot of resistance to the concept partly because people aren't entirely sure what sorts of uses it would have. There's a wide range of suggestions for bringing back older sets and themes, but few that really fit the "mold" established by the two to have reached 10,000 votes in Japan back before the site went global. And I'm not even sure if TLG knows how far the potential of this site reaches.

I have a few things I'd like to suggest, but it's a lot of work creating presentable images that accurately represent my ideas. If I could put together real-life prototypes for them I could make those suggestions a lot more easily.

It's possible the idea is just something that doesn't quite mesh on a global level the way it did in Japan. And that's unfortunate, but if so there's not much TLG can do about it.

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Well I have had a look at the site and I actually found it quite hard to navigate and find anything, at least without quite some time which I assume a lot of people will just not bother to give it.

Then after giving it some time there are some things that appear to have duplicate entries or at least themes that are very similar to each other and as such have spread what could be combined interest rather thin.

I think it would possibly be better if they had a general 'I would be interested in this type of thing' option rather than a specific model. Not sure how it would work though? If it had an option for something along the lines of:- Would you be interested in buying seperate railway trucks? or Would you be interested in buying a modular terraced house, or something along those lines, (Maybe a bit more detail describing a theme or something.) then perhaps they would get an overall feel for what people wanted? I don't know really what others think?

Then when I actually found something that I did want to potentially support it asked me how much I would be willing to pay and how many I would buy? This was a bit off putting as to be honest I have no idea and what I would pay or be expected to pay in the UK is not going to be the same as someone in the USA or Asia and as such it is almost impossible for me to estimate especially without seeing the finished finalised project. Also how many would I buy? An odd question, most of the time I only buy one of each set especially the big ones?

It just seems that the way they have set the site up is in such a way as to almost gaurantee people will be put off from nominating anything.

Edited by Hrw-Amen

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I like the idea, but since none of the "winners" can be bought by me it's hard to get excited. When one wins that I can buy then I'll start caring.

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I like the idea, but since none of the "winners" can be bought by me it's hard to get excited. When one wins that I can buy then I'll start caring.

I thought since Lego opened up Cuusoo worldwide, that the models were going to be available worldwide from now on.

Is it only restricted to Japan??

(I know the first two were, but they also only needed 1,000 supporters instead of the current 10,000).

Edit:

Actually, I'll answer my own question. Here's the clip from the Cuusoo site:

So far, the LEGO CUUSOO service has been available in Japan only, with sets produced by LEGO for sale in Japan only. While we are pretty happy about our accomplishment in Japan, we know fans of LEGO around the world are eager to use our system to create their own sets, perhaps even a new series! This is why today, we are extremely excited to present to the world the new, international version of LEGO CUUSOO! (in Beta!)

So Siegried, looks like it might be time to get excited!

Edited by sandro

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I'm sure there's a slew of reasons it isn't yet as popular as it could become, including all the various ones discussed by other posters above. I also suspect most people haven't even heard of it, and have no idea something like Cuusoo exists.

Edited by Blondie-Wan

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I think it would possibly be better if they had a general 'I would be interested in this type of thing' option rather than a specific model. Not sure how it would work though? If it had an option for something along the lines of:- Would you be interested in buying seperate railway trucks? or Would you be interested in buying a modular terraced house, or something along those lines, (Maybe a bit more detail describing a theme or something.) then perhaps they would get an overall feel for what people wanted? I don't know really what others think?

I think that is actually how it's supposed to work. Somebody puts up a general idea, if it gains enough votes Lego consider producing a set based on the idea. Even if you submitted a specific MOC and it "won", the final released model wouldn't necessarily be identical to the MOC but something along those lines.

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So Siegried, looks like it might be time to get excited!

I knew that and I'm still not excited as I can't buy anything. Until I know things like pricing (including postage) getting all interested seems rather premature. The site is really slow and it all looks unfinished. For example;

Report a problem or Have a question?

Somthing isn't working properly? Or, having a question?

Just click "Feedback" at the right side of screen. Quickly connect with other users and the LEGO® CUUSOO TEAM.

(This sercive is currently in beta phase.)

Somthing? Sercive? Honestly did they hire a 5 year old kid to write that page?

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I knew that and I'm still not excited as I can't buy anything. Until I know things like pricing (including postage) getting all interested seems rather premature.

Ah, I take your point then. Unfortunately, unless people get excited I don't think there will ever be anything to buy.

I have three projects I proposed so far:

Single Color Parts Packs

Zombie Apocalypse

Reissued UCS stickers

So I'm trying a gamut of ideas from reissues to a full theme. I don't have a single MOC that I'm proposing because that's not my strong suit.

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Ah, I take your point then. Unfortunately, unless people get excited I don't think there will ever be anything to buy.

Well there's an easy solution; release the first two. I'd love both.

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Well there's an easy solution; release the first two. I'd love both.

Hmm, good point, I wonder why they don't release both.

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Hmm, good point, I wonder why they don't release both.

Can't handle the volume? Permissions? Who knows? (If someone does know please tell!) But it's just one more reason that I'm not very excited.

Reissued UCS stickers

I doubt that would be possible.

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At the risk of being insensitive, I'm not really interested in buying somebody else's design or sets in general, so there's really not a hell of a lot of incentive for me to go voting for something.

As for submitting MOCs myself: I build stuff that I enjoy. My models are not designed to be attractive to other people (even though, judging from the reactions I get on flickr, mostly, some people do enjoy them) and certainly not designed to be sets. When I found out about Cuusoo, I had a little look round my collection of models wondering if there was anything there that I might consider suitable as a set and that might have sufficient popular appeal. I found nothing. Too complicated, too many parts, old parts and mostly in a niche genre.

Cheers,

Ralph

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There are probably a number of reasons why it isn't more popular, and most of them have been mentioned: Bad design on the webpage, the user interface is very difficult to use, everything seems very amateur-ish and not like what we're used to from the Lego company, the price questions seem misplaced, the only thing the company promises is that they will consider making the set if the suggestion reaches the needed number of supporters; and not least, 10,000 is a very big number.

My guess is that this will never become anything else than a niche product. It will never grow to a substantial size.

Then again, there were people who predicted miserable failure for a little project called the Internet...

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Just my observation, but after browsing that site a bit, it seems like there are a LOT of "reprint this" or "reissue that". That sort of defeats the purpose of the site, doesn't it? LEGO could reprint/reissue if they wanted. The demand is pretty clear given the prices online (and I can't imagine they don't notice the price some of the older sets fetch), so it's pretty clear they have other reasons for not reprinting/reissuing.

But again, that site seems like it could be a cool idea if there weren't so many requests for reprints.

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There's an interesting discussion on why some believe Cuusoo is a flop here.

I don't necessarily think it is a flop, in fact I'd go further and suggest it isn't necessarily a flop even if no proposal ever reaches the necessary 10,000 votes to be made into a reality. It really depends on what the underlying business motivation behind Cuusoo is and there are certainly potential benefits to TLG that are perhaps less direct than simply courting new ideas.

I'll grant you that the execution could use some polish, but to be honest I think that's probably true of rather a lot of TLG's web presence.

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Ah, I take your point then. Unfortunately, unless people get excited I don't think there will ever be anything to buy.

I have three projects I proposed so far:

Single Color Parts Packs

Zombie Apocalypse

Reissued UCS stickers

So I'm trying a gamut of ideas from reissues to a full theme. I don't have a single MOC that I'm proposing because that's not my strong suit.

Off topic, but if you need UCS sticker sheets, have you tried asking LEGO Customer Service for them? If you give them the seven-digit number at the bottom of each sticker sheet they should be able to tell you whether or not they have any in stock.

Unfortunately I can say I'm "part of the problem". So far no idea has garnered my votes, and most of my comments have been explaining why I don't feel "bring back X" is a good idea.

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Off topic, but if you need UCS sticker sheets, have you tried asking LEGO Customer Service for them? If you give them the seven-digit number at the bottom of each sticker sheet they should be able to tell you whether or not they have any in stock.

Oh yes, I definitely have. In fact I think I end up asking about the same stickers every year when I'm on the line for other reasons. I've even gone so far as to ask them to pass the reprint suggestion up the line.

The sets I'm interested in are the older sets where the stickers crossed multiple bricks and/or were used on windscreens (7191, 10129, 10019). As far as I recall those were the worst offenders.

Unfortunately I can say I'm "part of the problem". So far no idea has garnered my votes, and most of my comments have been explaining why I don't feel "bring back X" is a good idea.

I don't really support them either, but since I saw that Lego is willing to accept reissue requests as part of Cuusoo, I don't mind them so much.

(Note: I voted for 10190, mostly since I think that set is a good parts pack).

Mostly I see Cuusoo as TLG attempting to give us some direct input into the future of the brand, and I want to do everything I can to support this trend.

So far the most interesting thing for me has been to see the official comments from TLG on the projects.

When the Minecraft project hit 3000 supporters LEGO indicated they had reached out to the creators to check on the possibility of a license, and that they felt it would be possible to strike a deal so the project should continue.

I was shocked to see that LEGO was taking the idea that seriously, and that they had gone through the trouble of making official contact with another company with less than 50% of the supporters they indicated would be needed.

I think the community has a real opportunity to work with LEGO on making CUUSOO all that it can be and to get the kind of input I've seen requested time and again.

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Then when I actually found something that I did want to potentially support it asked me how much I would be willing to pay and how many I would buy? This was a bit off putting as to be honest I have no idea and what I would pay or be expected to pay in the UK is not going to be the same as someone in the USA or Asia and as such it is almost impossible for me to estimate especially without seeing the finished finalised project. Also how many would I buy? An odd question, most of the time I only buy one of each set especially the big ones?

Hrw-Amen, I agree the cost and quantity question is hard to answer given we know so little about some of the ideas. But since Lego isn't asking us to commit to buy any, I treat it as the hypothetical question that it is. "If TLG made an official set like this MOC, how much would you spend on it".

One thing I recommend for those who haven't done so already is to check out the original projects for the two production CUUSOO sets. The initial models weren't as nice as the final versions, and the official comments from LEGO that were made along the way are really interesting behind the scenes looks at the process they're using.

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Just my observation, but after browsing that site a bit, it seems like there are a LOT of "reprint this" or "reissue that". That sort of defeats the purpose of the site, doesn't it? LEGO could reprint/reissue if they wanted. The demand is pretty clear given the prices online (and I can't imagine they don't notice the price some of the older sets fetch), so it's pretty clear they have other reasons for not reprinting/reissuing.

But again, that site seems like it could be a cool idea if there weren't so many requests for reprints.

I totally agree with this. There's way to much of "bring back X theme" or "do a Pokemon theme", and to a lesser extent "reissue this particular piece again". It's too bad people don't realize that we don't need a thread for each pop culture thing under the sun.

I do like Cuusoo though. I've seen some good stuff on there, and I log in and follow the ones that catch my eye.

The website could use some work. I think they need to make it easier to browse through projects and see things. Because you run into this initial wall of "look at these popular ones" and there's only like 10 of them. Then you have to go to a particular page on a slightly hidden tab to actually be able to page through any quantity of projects. This is stifling the usability and foot-traffic on the site, I think.

I would like to see an EB thread for our members to post things they truly think are worthy. Maybe with a thread rule of excluding "do pop culture theme XYZ" and pitfalls like that. Maybe such a thread already exists here...?

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Organization, for me.

'Do so-and-so licnsed theme' and 'bring back so-and-so set' takes up a majority of the site. The one thing I asked for a Jabba's Palace set, I never completed anything on it, just brought it up. Haven't checked since. But from what I saw then, it was probably one of the most fairly reasonable things on the site. Others wanted particular MOCs by particular people released - most of 5,000+ parts. But again, I've only been there once, so I'm way off currently, just say the word.

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Just to point out, the Minecraft one now has an official submission BY Mojang that has over 10,000 votes. When Mojang heard about this, they decided they REALLY wanted LEGO Minecraft to happen. :wink:

The reason I'm not using Cuusoo is because I don't trust Lego Corporate with my ideas. I've spent almost 2 years designing one particular model to balance it between detail and play, but when I heard about the way Corporate treated the employees of LU, I lost all trust I had for them. (I'd explain more about the specifics of that situation, but it'd be off-topic, and really it's best not to get me started on it. :tongue: )

Basically, I can't be sure they wouldn't double-cross me; they could easily accept an idea, get a feel for it, suddenly say "oh, this doesn't fit our plans" and kick you out in the cold, and then two years later you see a modified version of your model on shelves. The legal agreement is just too vague. Either say "all submissions become the property of LEGO" (like the Galleries) and have a company policy of hiring on builders who impress them, or else state "whether your model is or is not chosen for production, your submission remains your own property; we will not try to steal your idea."

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I just learned about the page earlier today after supporting a friends piano. I think once a couple of amazing sets are made a grabs TLG's attention, then I think Cuuso will get it's name spread around.

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I just added one of my buildings to CUUSOO. The interface is not that intuitive. The signup process involves email verification, that is a turn off for many users. We should have a vote here at eurobricks and together vote to get one past 10,000.

Edited by Follows Closely

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