The Real Indiana Jones

LEGO Ideas Discussion

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Definitely strong correlations between views and support, however.

Consider this project:

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/70603

I think it is really well designed - the part usage and functionality for the size is impressive. It's been up a month and has less than 1000 views, though a reasonable amount of support per views.

Now consider this project that came up just recently

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/74539

Also a very nice project and has amassed 5k views in 2 days. This project was noted on Glenbrickers page which probably increased it's view count.

Support per views, both of these projects are on 12%. Repeat views may add to the view count, though, all things being equal, the percentage would remain the same in broad terms. The ratio is probably meaningless when the numbers are smaller, though I hold that exposure to views remains the most important element in getting support for a project, especially given the time limit on projects now.

If a project has 10k views and less than 100 support, it seems a reasonable indicator that the project won't be able to achieve 10k support. If a project has 1000 views and 100 support and another has 5000 views and 500 support, I would consider they have the same chance of achieving 10k support, if they were viewed equally. Obviously, as time ticks away, the possibility of views decreases, so ensuring views is paramount, especially at the start.

NB - neither of the above projects are mine, so I have no personal vested interest in either.

Edited by ummester

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Once a project gets to 1K views, it stops showing the increasing numbers, until another 1K. Its hard to follow how many exactly have viewed a project between those increments. I think that is a flaw. Ideas is a nice idea with lots of flaws.

The only real way to get more hits and support is to keep making updates to the project, that makes it pop up on the activity feed. Otherwise, it slowly sinks into the quicksand of a million projects...

I have tried to drum up interest in my project, but its hard. There is a much larger group of supporters for certain categories than for the one I am in, which is buildings/modulars. The game is stacked against my type of project ever getting very far. I also foolishly didn't research the right tags to add to my project, and once its in there, it is set in stone, and you can't change anything about the initial posting, the text, photos or tags. I think that is kind of unfair. But I guess, live and learn...if I ever bother to try again with another project.

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yes, I have noticed that using the activity feed can generate views and support, talos. I also agree that the tags are important - better to have too many than too little of those, IMO.

re modular buildings, I would agree that, by and large, Ideas is stacked against them, for various reasons, including - TLG make fairly decent sets in this category already, it's difficult to make a modular building stand out from other modular buildings and support on ideas has a bias towards either popular culture (especially super heroes and especially Batman), Sci Fi, real life space vehicles or projects that suggest some kind of progressive political motivation. Note that the Ideas platform itself isn't stacked this way - just supporters seem to be.

Yes, views tick over in the 1000's after a project reaches 1000 views. I don't think this null and voids any view to support ratio in broader terms. For every 100 views up until 1000, a project needs 10 support to remain above 10%, then 100 support for every 1000 views after that. I think if a project drops below that 10% it could be dead in the water - the issue, or trick, I think is to keep increasing views on a project that remains above 10% because if new views stop, the project is likely dead in the water also.

Edited by ummester

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The

Curiosity Rover

WHY is it retired already? It lasted like 2 months. XP

At least the lego page says "retired".

Edited by BrickG

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The

Curiosity Rover

WHY is it retired already? It lasted like 2 months. XP

At least the lego page says "retired".

2 months? It was sold out in roughly 3 days. For some reason they elected not to go back and do another production run of that set. Probably because they anticipated sales or long term demand on par with the Hatabusa and Shinkai, and can't see the need for a minimum production run of another 10-20k pieces. I'm sad. I didn't get one and don't want to pay scalpers prices for it.

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I don't see the attraction to these space program sets. Unless you work for NASA or something. They're ugly looking models, even more hunk-o-junk-y than you-know-what from SW.

If I wanted a Mars Rover set I could grab a bunch from a local shop. No help for all those Americans who want one, because retail price here is $60 I think.

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I think there might be a lot of US supporters Artanis - explaining the attraction to NASA builds. Also, a friend suggested to me today that the placing of PC values on toys might be primarily a US trend, which could also explain the attraction to projects with that slant.

If you look around, there are some very attractive models up there, like these 2 (also not mine) which I would buy without hesitation, build and display but they just aren't supported.

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/59212

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/572

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2 months? It was sold out in roughly 3 days. For some reason they elected not to go back and do another production run of that set. Probably because they anticipated sales or long term demand on par with the Hatabusa and Shinkai, and can't see the need for a minimum production run of another 10-20k pieces. I'm sad. I didn't get one and don't want to pay scalpers prices for it.

It lasted over three months at most European S@H sites. It was definitely three months for UK S@H.

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I think there might be a lot of US supporters Artanis - explaining the attraction to NASA builds. Also, a friend suggested to me today that the placing of PC values on toys might be primarily a US trend, which could also explain the attraction to projects with that slant.

If you look around, there are some very attractive models up there, like these 2 (also not mine) which I would buy without hesitation, build and display but they just aren't supported.

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/59212

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/572

I'm not sure what "PC values" are, but I for one really like the look of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, and I'd desperately like to have one myself. Some of us just really like scientific exploration, discovery and research, and thus models of real-world craft (or institutions, tools, etc.) for such things are appealing. Moreover, this particular one has a lot of play value, what with rolling around and having the rocker bogies and the robot arm and all. It's a nifty model, and a nice parts pack at a good price (in the US, anyway), and I'm really disappointed that it's no longer available, as I wanted one myself (and another for my fiancee, actually). If it becomes available again I'll order at least a couple. I like to think there's still at least a slight chance it's not gone for good, but it doesn't look promising.

That said, I assume it's no longer available not because it's not profitable - obviously it sells well - but because TLG has done some number crunching and decided its production capacity can be put to better use on other sets. While the MSL Curiosity Rover might be a strong seller by the extremely modest standards of CUUSOO / Ideas sets, it's just not going to sell in the kinds of numbers as lots of sets from LEGO's "main" lines like City, Star Wars, Friends, etc., and they'd probably just rather allocate more of their production capacity towards the more mainline products that sell in huge numbers and so on.

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You can BL the curiosity rover for about US $30 more or less, depending on how many stores you ping and postage, so I don't understand the excessive markup for sealed sets. I built two this way, for a grand total of approx. $35,00 - albeit I used the original project building instructions and not the LEGO BI, and also changed the colors on the simulated Martian ground. The original Cuusoo project is on Rebrickable, with highly descriptive instructions. Its a nice accurate model of the actual rover, with neat suspension and other features, but it is not a playable set, being strictly for display.

The appeal for me, at least, is that my job is tangentially related to current space and future manned Mars missions. I imagine many of the US sales were to similar science-type junkies.

Edited by JGW3000

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Blondie Wan - PC values are Politically Correct values, toys that cater to concepts like sexual equality, ethnic minority representation and so on. It was suggested to me by a friend that this has become a stronger factor in how toys are marketed and purchased in the US.

Personally, I don't care what the model is of - it can be a dinosaur, disabled person, panzer tank or flower bed - what I care about is it's aesthetic value - how interesting it looks to build and how good I think it would look on display. I will try and support ideas that I find extremely good, even if I don't find the build aesthetically appealing, though my preference is for how it looks and how I can imagine it sitting on display.

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Blondie Wan - PC values are Politically Correct values, toys that cater to concepts like sexual equality, ethnic minority representation and so on. It was suggested to me by a friend that this has become a stronger factor in how toys are marketed and purchased in the US.

I thought it might be something like that. Well, I for one do think that sexual equality, minority representation and so on are fine and desirable things for which to strive. Moreover, I don't think they really apply in the case of the Curiosity Rover, so I didn't get the mention of the two together, but I get now that you were just discussing various CUUSOO / Ideas sets together.

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Yes, I was just discussing how the greater majority of supporters on Ideas may be from the US and that the 2 things, though not connected, are likely things that US supporters favor. NASA models, for instance, always seem to receive more support more quickly than models of Russian spacecraft - it's an observation of trends I am noticing and posted initially in response to the 'I don't see the attraction to these space program sets'.

I thought this thread was the best place to discuss how LEGO Ideas may function, what patterns there appear to be in project support and so on.

For instance, another pattern I have noticed is that although well made, big projects often get supported to 10,000 - they never get produced. The guidelines say to be realistic and take official TLG set sizes into account, with the largest being around 5,000 parts, though it seems to me that there might be a part cap limit for ideas projects that get turned into sets - probably less than 1,000 parts, or less than $100 US set, or something like that. These are the nuts and bolts of ideas that I am most interested in discussing in a thread like this.

Edited by ummester

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One thing I haven't seen discussed much yet is the dramatic acceleration of CUUSOO / Ideas releases. It started out small and slow, launching in 2008, some six years ago (!), and in that time has produced eight sets to date - half of which were released just this year (!!), and it's still only August. (That's not counting the subsequent Minecraft sets released in the wake of the success of the original CUUSOO set, either, of course.)

While I doubt there's going to be yet another set this year, and of course I'm well aware there were unique circumstances that led to the Ghostbusters Ectomobile, the Exo-Suit and the Research Institute all coming out within a two-month period (!!!), it still seems clear we've come a long way since the kind of wait we saw between, say, the Hayabusa asteroid probe and the Minecraft Micro world, or between that and the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine.

Just how regularly do you all think we might expect to see new Ideas sets released in the future?

Edited by Blondie-Wan

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Just how regularly do you all think we might expect to see new Ideas sets released in the future?

I would say a lot less. With the new 1 year window to get support, I can't see all that many projects reaching 10000 in time. Plus, most projects that reach 10000 are destined to fail review for obvious reasons that we've talked about a billion times already (too big, too "adult", too licenced, new moulds etc).

I think after the current batch in review, that it may be quite some time before another project is greenlit.

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I would say a lot less. With the new 1 year window to get support, I can't see all that many projects reaching 10000 in time. Plus, most projects that reach 10000 are destined to fail review for obvious reasons that we've talked about a billion times already (too big, too "adult", too licenced, new moulds etc).

I think after the current batch in review, that it may be quite some time before another project is greenlit.

I disagree... I think so many new users offsets both the increase in vote requirements and time limit (since most projects would more or less be dead within a year anyway, buried by new projects).

I think it would be cool if, when submitting the millionth Dr. Who Tardis, the site would inform the user "you know, there's already a million Dr. Who Tardis', maybe you should support one of those instead." Aren't submissions moderated now anyway?

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And now we have only three reviews each year, I don't think there will be more than three new sets per year, unless two or more projects pass the review stage for the same period. So... yeah, I think we'll now get three sets each year, sometimes less, sometimes more. Depends of how many projects get approved.

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And now we have only three reviews each year, I don't think there will be more than three new sets per year, unless two or more projects pass the review stage for the same period. So... yeah, I think we'll now get three sets each year, sometimes less, sometimes more. Depends of how many projects get approved.

I dont know. It's not an official rule of Ideas. Unless the review team has to find any excuse to reject projects, it could be that one year has many successful projects but the next year has very few. I think as long as the chosen projects are really welldone, the profits would be good enough to allow more production in the next year.

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I disagree... I think so many new users offsets both the increase in vote requirements and time limit (since most projects would more or less be dead within a year anyway, buried by new projects).

I suppose that after the first year has past, a lot of old projects will finally disappear, giving more visability to non-expired projects. But there will probably still be stacks and stacks of new kiddie mocs or those mentioned in my previous post to wade through that will never pass. The more attention Ideas gets, the more dumb or not quite awesome ideas will be submitted. I don't know... You'd just have to market your idea a lot to get support from outside the site, then hope you can get the ball rolling. Fine if there's a specific nerd market group like Ghostbusters, BTTF, classic space fans etc, but anything not attached to an existing IP?

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I don't know... You'd just have to market your idea a lot to get support from outside the site, then hope you can get the ball rolling. Fine if there's a specific nerd market group like Ghostbusters, BTTF, classic space fans etc, but anything not attached to an existing IP?

It's tough, but it can be done. The Shinkai, Hayabusa and Curiosity are all specific exploratory vehicles (and ones with undeniable nerd appeal), but not really IP licenses the way the various entertainment properties are, and while the Exo-Suit certainly draws upon Classic Space for some of its appeal, I don't think it's truly reliant upon it, especially since it got boosted a bit in the product design phase, and of course it's not from an external IP, either. And the Research Institute wasn't attached to anything specific at all, even though it still has the nerd appeal factor.

And that's just the projects that actually became products. A few others have gotten the required votes and made it all the way to the review phase without specific IPs attached, or with non-narrative, brand-only IPs (Western Town, Japanese Architecture, birds sculpture, ATLAS experiment, Apple Store, Landrover, Perdue Pete, Andy the Android). I actually think that rather lovely birds project in the current review batch is the likeliest candidate after either of the Doctor Who ones.

Edited by Blondie-Wan

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And that's just the projects that actually became products. A few others have gotten the required votes and made it all the way to the review phase without specific IPs attached, or with non-narrative, brand-only IPs (Western Town, Japanese Architecture, birds sculpture, ATLAS experiment, Apple Store, Landrover, Perdue Pete, Andy the Android). I actually think that rather lovely birds project in the current review batch is the likeliest candidate after either of the Doctor Who ones.

I hope the bird one makes it!

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It's tough, but it can be done. The Shinkai, Hayabusa and Curiosity are all specific exploratory vehicles (and ones with undeniable nerd appeal), but not really IP licenses the way the various entertainment properties are, and while the Exo-Suit certainly draws upon Classic Space for some of its appeal, I don't think it's truly reliant upon it, especially since it got boosted a bit in the product design phase, and of course it's not from an external IP, either. And the Research Institute wasn't attached to anything specific at all, even though it still has the nerd appeal factor.

And that's just the projects that actually became products. A few others have gotten the required votes and made it all the way to the review phase without specific IPs attached, or with non-narrative, brand-only IPs (Western Town, Japanese Architecture, birds sculpture, ATLAS experiment, Apple Store, Landrover, Perdue Pete, Andy the Android). I actually think that rather lovely birds project in the current review batch is the likeliest candidate after either of the Doctor Who ones.

Notice that most of those fit at least 1 of 2 categories. Commercial brand/product, or big and impressive. Big and impressive will get attention & votes, but won't pass. Commercial brand/product might pass, but it's not truly an original idea, is it. Original ideas are what I am thinking are going to be hard to get attention. ie, similar to that birds Idea, those projects are what I'd like to see get made - truly original projects. If it fails because it doesn't seem recognisable enough, then that sets a disappointing precedent.

I hope the bird one makes it!

For the sake of the future of Ideas me too.

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Notice that most of those fit at least 1 of 2 categories. Commercial brand/product, or big and impressive. Big and impressive will get attention & votes, but won't pass. Commercial brand/product might pass, but it's not truly an original idea, is it. Original ideas are what I am thinking are going to be hard to get attention. ie, similar to that birds Idea, those projects are what I'd like to see get made - truly original projects. If it fails because it doesn't seem recognisable enough, then that sets a disappointing precedent.

For the sake of the future of Ideas me too.

It does now seem very unlikely big ideas will pass review, but we don't quite know that for sure. Of the ones that have already made it that far but not passed, all the ones for which we do know the reasons they were declined (Western Town, UCS Sandcrawler, The Winchester, Serenity) were declined for some other reason. I do agree large projects are unlikely to pass; I just don't think they're completely out of the question.

One thing I do notice about the things that pass, though (from looking at the eight projects that have made it to date, and it's something I've commented on before), is that they all fall into at least one of three categories - frequently more than one, and occasionally all three:

A. vehicles

B. pop culture licenses

C. scientific exploration and research

It bears repeating: every single CUUSOO / Ideas set yet released to date falls into at least one of those three. Shinkai 6500 is A and C, as is Hayabusa; Minecraft is B, while Back to the Future's Time machine is A, B and C. The Curiosity rover is A and C again, the Ghostbusters Ectomobile is A and B, the Exo-Suit is A and perhaps, arguably, C, while the Research Institute is definitely C.

Now, I'm not saying a project absolutely has to fall into one of those three to be approved - I'm personally planning on submitting a couple of city buildings that don't fall into any of those, and of course I wouldn't bother if I thought it was a complete waste of time - but I do find it an interesting pattern, one for us to make of it what we will.

(I will just further note that Doctor Who's TARDIS itself arguably falls into all three categories, and not only does the current review batch have not one but two different projects based on it, but both projects also achieved their 10,000 vote marks faster in fact than any of the approved projects to date except for Minecraft, and the CUUSOO / Ideas team has indicated in the past that the time it takes a project to accrue its votes is a factor. There are no guarantees of anything until it happens, of course, and I believe Faefrost has pointed out here that the BBC can be a bit flaky for licensors to deal with, but assuming that particular obstacle doesn't prove too much, I find it extremely likely the next LEGO Ideas set will feature a certain enigmatic alien adventurer and his amazing blue box. But I guess we'll know for sure soon enough...)

Edited by Blondie-Wan

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And you can argue that Ghostbusters fits C as well.

I'm certain that Dr Who would sell big time, pending licence approval I expect it to pass.

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