789 replies to this topic

[just2good]

drdesignz, on 25 October 2012 - 01:46 AM, said:

While it is disappointing that the vast majority of these people are only interested in this specific project, because it is of their mascot, I do believe this can be looked at as a positive thing because many more people have been exposed to Cuusoo who were previously unaware of such a thing.  Surely many of these students had Lego growing up, so this may very well encourage those who have "outgrown" Lego to rediscover the hobby as an AFOL.  Being young people who are more likely to use social media, I think sharing this project on Facebook, Twitter, etc. will have a positive effect for the Lego fan community.

I guess you're right. I just don't want a Cuusoo quarter set release to be used for this set.

[drdesignz]

It's over 7,000 now, so they may just reach their goal.  I also just noticed it's promoted on Purdue's homepage, and found the page likely being used at the kiosks, as well as their news article.  Tim Courtney commented, too:  "While the overwhelming majority of votes received are genuine, some have unfortunately signed up and voted using multiple throwaway accounts. This is not allowed. Any votes of this nature will be removed by our staff. Each account/vote must be tied to a real person via email address or social profile and we allow one vote per person."

[BrickG]

Purdue Pete...  had to Google that.
Not to sound like a downer but that sounds like one of the most useless and uninteresting things there.  A mascot?  Nervermind that I'm not a sports person.  I know some people are.  But...  this seems to be of relevance to very few people besides those at that university and if they were to do one for a university I'm pretty sure there are better universities to do them for.


No offense but I hope that doesn't ever become a set.  ;p

[Faefrost]

BrickG, on 25 October 2012 - 05:21 AM, said:

Purdue Pete...  had to Google that.
Not to sound like a downer but that sounds like one of the most useless and uninteresting things there.  A mascot?  Nervermind that I'm not a sports person.  I know some people are.  But...  this seems to be of relevance to very few people besides those at that university and if they were to do one for a university I'm pretty sure there are better universities to do them for.


No offense but I hope that doesn't ever become a set.  ;p

I'm still thinking on this one. While not anything that I would want, I can understand the fan base and support base. It's impressive how they organized it to get people ready for when it went up to try and break the record. Granted they have an advantage as tens of hours ands of them all live on the campus. Overall I don't see any downside or benefit to CuuSoo on this one, just so long as every college in America doesn't try to repeat it. An interesting little idea that incorporates school spirit and Lego. Although the crew in Billund, never having encountered American college football fans may not quite know what to make of this one.

[CM4S]

BrickG, on 25 October 2012 - 05:21 AM, said:

Purdue Pete...  had to Google that.
Not to sound like a downer but that sounds like one of the most useless and uninteresting things there.  A mascot?  Nervermind that I'm not a sports person.  I know some people are.  But...  this seems to be of relevance to very few people besides those at that university and if they were to do one for a university I'm pretty sure there are better universities to do them for.


No offense but I hope that doesn't ever become a set.  ;p

This.

-Sci

[RoxYourBlox]

To me, the Purdue project is (indirectly) disheartening for 2 reasons:
- It continues to be evident that an artist needs to gather an organized effort to pass a project in a timely manner.  (This part is not easy because not only do you need to get a fanbase not interested in Lego to be interested in Lego, but you also need a few other Lego fans to altruistically volunteer to promote your work.)
- Only a minority of supporters stay to vote for anything else.  This is not really Cuusoo's fault.  The people of the world today almost exclusively support their own interests.  It is not even a matter of time, money, or connectivity; it's a mindset of indifference.  :(  

Re: the recent(?) survey, it has only started to pop up for me this week, too.

[SilentMode]

RoxYourBlox, on 25 October 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

- It continues to be evident that an artist needs to gather an organized effort to pass a project in a timely manner.  (This part is not easy because not only do you need to get a fanbase not interested in Lego to be interested in Lego, but you also need a few other Lego fans to altruistically volunteer to promote your work.)
- Only a minority of supporters stay to vote for anything else.  This is not really Cuusoo's fault.  The people of the world today almost exclusively support their own interests.  It is not even a matter of time, money, or connectivity; it's a mindset of indifference.  :(  

How many "FOLs" are guilty of both? Too many.

[drdesignz]

I understand why people are disappointed, but I honestly think this project is a positive thing.  I published an article about Purdue Pete on Brickset earlier, if anybody's interested.

[Haltiamieli]

Fresh from the Cuusoo blog, news of no news: "The LEGO Review board is still working on some of the final details of the Summer Review, which must be complete before we are able to announce any of the results. Projects in each quarterly review happen in batches, so we announce the results for each project at the same time. We're sorry that we cannot yet commit to a date where we will share the news."

[Meatman]

drdesignz, on 25 October 2012 - 04:53 PM, said:

I understand why people are disappointed, but I honestly think this project is a positive thing.  I published an article about Purdue Pete on Brickset earlier, if anybody's interested.

I would say that a very large majority of the supports for that project have absolutely no intentions of ever buying it if it were made into an actual set.  They only supported because it was more of a school spirit thing to do.

[Aanchir]

I think this project might have an interesting impact on the future of Cuusoo, depending on how TLG wants to respond to it. While there was clearly a concerted effort to organize the solicitation of votes from students at Purdue, part of the project's ability to mobilize supporters owes itself to the target audience already being a semi-organized group (people with ties to Purdue or interest in their athletic teams). So this success the project is seeing could probably be repeated without much difficulty by various other groups.

Now, one thing that really differentiates this from other successful projects is that it's not a particularly "nerdy" subject. And that might have interesting effects on the sorts of projects we see in the future. Many of the past projects to reach success have based that success on their ability to reach members of a fandom with a strong online presence, but in this case the solicitation of votes included a well-planned offline component (promoting the project at kiosks on the Purdue campus).

This is also one reason why compared to a lot of successful projects, interest in this project was fairly localized, rather than based on establishing global, media-driven appeal. This could present major roadblocks should TLG attempt to market a product based on this proposal. But on the other hand, there's no hard and fast rule that Cuusoo products have to be global-- in fact, since the Cuusoo platform was Japan-only for the first two successful Cuusoo proposals, there's more precedent for localized Cuusoo products than for global ones.

Overall, if TLG accepts this proposal, they will have to do some serious rethinking of how Cuusoo is treated. And I'm certain we'll also see changes in what kind of proposals begin to show up prominently on Cuusoo. Now that people see how easy it is to mobilize supporters if you present something they hold dear to their hearts for reasons other than its pop-culture appeal, there might be a shift back towards more localized Cuusoo projects. A Mount Rushmore proposal could easily motivate patriotic-minded Americans. A lot of architectural or historical projects could easily gain support from those in the surrounding area faster than they might by aiming at a global audience. Of course, whether a trend like this really takes off depends on whether this Purdue Pete project sees actual success, and furthermore we might see changes to Cuusoo's regulations if it starts to seem too easy to assemble 10,000 supporters behind a project of fairly limited interest.

As always, I will be keeping an eye on how the Cuusoo platform continues to develop. Every time it starts to seem like the success of Cuusoo projects is becoming formulaic and people are losing interest in the platform, we see something of this sort that fails to conform to the expectations previous successful projects have given us.

[ShaydDeGrai]

drdesignz, on 25 October 2012 - 04:53 PM, said:

I understand why people are disappointed, but I honestly think this project is a positive thing.  I published an article about Purdue Pete on Brickset earlier, if anybody's interested.

I think it's very true that _most_ of the people jumping on the Purdue Pete bandwagon probably won't go out of their way to buy the set (if produced), but I have noticed that  since sandsanm changed her tags to be more generic and CuuSoo friendly, I've definitely seen a bump in several of _my_ projects and (tracing the activity feed) most of the new support is coming from accounts nominally created to support 'Pete.  Granted, I'm talking about 1 in 400 Purdue Pete supporters sticking around to support at least one of my projects, but I'm only tracking my stuff and some of the new users I've checked out are already supporting over a dozen projects.  

Purdue does have a good engineering program, and engineers do love their toys after all, so maybe -just maybe- this project might have the side effect of bringing a small number of people _back_ to LEGO or at least carrying a few other CuuSoo projects along with it (even if only a few dozen scattered votes here and there).

[Faefrost]

ShaydDeGrai, on 25 October 2012 - 09:16 PM, said:

I think it's very true that _most_ of the people jumping on the Purdue Pete bandwagon probably won't go out of their way to buy the set (if produced), but I have noticed that  since sandsanm changed her tags to be more generic and CuuSoo friendly, I've definitely seen a bump in several of _my_ projects and (tracing the activity feed) most of the new support is coming from accounts nominally created to support 'Pete.  Granted, I'm talking about 1 in 400 Purdue Pete supporters sticking around to support at least one of my projects, but I'm only tracking my stuff and some of the new users I've checked out are already supporting over a dozen projects.  

Purdue does have a good engineering program, and engineers do love their toys after all, so maybe -just maybe- this project might have the side effect of bringing a small number of people _back_ to LEGO or at least carrying a few other CuuSoo projects along with it (even if only a few dozen scattered votes here and there).

The big downside I see on this project is more he very limited ceiling on support or purchasers. Typically I am sure Lego's calculations withCuuSoo's 10k supporter number is that a certain fraction of the voting supporters will convert to purchases, while a certain percentage of those who otherwise would not know of CuuSoo would buy such a set. But in this case, with such a tight and narrow Comunity. The number of supporters is probably roughly analogous to most or all of the maximum market. (Really show of hands here, how many non Purdue graduating AFOL s would have any interest or plans to buy this thing? Whereas you would buy the Zelda or the Birds sets.)

[ShaydDeGrai]

Faefrost, on 25 October 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

The big downside I see on this project is more he very limited ceiling on support or purchasers. Typically I am sure Lego's calculations withCuuSoo's 10k supporter number is that a certain fraction of the voting supporters will convert to purchases, while a certain percentage of those who otherwise would not know of CuuSoo would buy such a set. But in this case, with such a tight and narrow Comunity. The number of supporters is probably roughly analogous to most or all of the maximum market. (Really show of hands here, how many non Purdue graduating AFOL s would have any interest or plans to buy this thing? Whereas you would buy the Zelda or the Birds sets.)

You'll get no argument from me on the question of the breadth of appeal, but to be fair, that's really something for the review stage to suss out.  I think part of why non-AFOL projects leap past many, very good MOCs is that too many of us  want to _play_ reviewer rather than just be a supporter (or not).  We get overly critical of this, cite some reason why TLG would never do that , claim that we could build a better model than the one provided and before you know it, the project has slipped off the new and active radar screen to languish in the Hell of Forgotten Projects.

I, for one, wouldn't buy Purdue Pete (except possibly for parts if the price were right) but I could see a clever marketer coming up with a limited poly-bag DTC line where the 'consumer' in this case is the university bookstore or an alumni association looking to buy 10,000 units to give out at reunions and fund raisers.  In _that_ capacity, the idea is brilliant, especially for universites with engineering schools (we engineers are big on construction toys)  Purdue could have their Pete, MIT could have a Beaver, Tufts could have Jumbo the Elephant, Stanford could have Tree (maybe the Realistic Trees project should give them a call), etc.  I suspect putting these on a shelf at ToyRUs would redefine failure, but as "contract sale" in bulk to an institution willing to assume the risk of resale (or to write off as development promotional items) I could see TLG turning a modest profit for minimal risk.

[drdesignz]

10,000 supporters just now, seconds ago.

[CM4S]

drdesignz, on 26 October 2012 - 01:16 AM, said:

10,000 supporters just now, seconds ago.

Wow.  

-Sci

[lightningtiger]

Serious....a giant figure with a a sledgehammer has 10000 supports......the world has truly gone mad !
It has only local interest, it's not a global icon.....it's not a landmark......it's not a special vehicle......it's not something historic. Though granted it did require imagination to create it, but who would buy it ?
Take the Exo-suit or Mini Shop Series, they would sell - Exo-suits to sci-fi geeks and the MSS to us townies around the world.....oh, well it's in Lego's hands now.

[just2good]

On Purdue Pete getting 10K, I really think they'll make a special model JUST for Purdue University. That way LEGO could make a limited amount, make some money, and not have to waste a whole quarter set spot for this set.

Edited by just2good, 26 October 2012 - 03:05 AM.

[KristofBD]

Purdue Pete... ugly, but I guess you cannot prevent such things.  And if it gets media attention to LEGO, I guess that it is a good thing.  Do hope we do not get a wave of such fairly low quality projects.

[RoxYourBlox]

I hope that Lego produces this set as a Boilermaker Special train with a Purdue Pete minifig rather than just Pete stacked together with 2x4's.  Glenbricker's model is more universally appealing.  

[Gunman]

here are my 2 projects, i hope you like them :)

photography store
http://lego.cuusoo.c...deas/view/29588

karaoke bar
http://lego.cuusoo.c...deas/view/29607

[Faefrost]

lightningtiger, on 26 October 2012 - 02:24 AM, said:

Serious....a giant figure with a a sledgehammer has 10000 supports......the world has truly gone mad !
It has only local interest, it's not a global icon.....it's not a landmark......it's not a special vehicle......it's not something historic. Though granted it did require imagination to create it, but who would buy it ?
Take the Exo-suit or Mini Shop Series, they would sell - Exo-suits to sci-fi geeks and the MSS to us townies around the world.....oh, well it's in Lego's hands now.

This isn't madness yet. Madness will be when the Georgia Bulldog people show up.

[TheLegoDr]

To show some love from my Hoosier alma mater, instead of Pur-do more like Pur-don't!

All kidding aside, that is interesting that it reached 10k, but good for them. I don't plan on buying it, but I'm not into college sports.

There are a lot of great sets on CUUSOO, but I haven't supported anything yet. Although I am interested to see what happens with the Western set.

[Aanchir]

KristofBD, on 26 October 2012 - 08:06 AM, said:

Purdue Pete... ugly, but I guess you cannot prevent such things.  And if it gets media attention to LEGO, I guess that it is a good thing.  Do hope we do not get a wave of such fairly low quality projects.

I understand that its appeal is limited, but what makes it low-quality? As far as I can see the model itself is already the same level of quality as models by Master Builders and LCPs in its use of a reasonable quantity of basic elements to create a cute, recognizable, and (as far as I can tell) sturdy depiction of the mascot. It greatly reminds me of the Statue of Liberty set from the early 2000s in that regard.

[IAmWillGibson]

You know, you're all correct. Cuusoo does need more votes for the Cthulhu project.