Faefrost

They are indie games that are fairly cheap, well accessible and were built with long term and repeat gameplay in mind. Which makes them wonderful games. It does not necessarily correlate to wonderful Lego projects but sometimes can. Let's use the 2% conversion rule that some companies use for looking at licensed IP. It's crude and a gross oversimplification, but it is a good way to get a glimpse of what is involved. Essentially a good target number for licensed IP is you can get 2% of those familiar with the IP to buy into your related product, without having to go to huge marketing efforts on your own. (In other words the license fee alone should be able to return 2% of the potential customers). So lets look at a few IP driven CuuSoo projects through that filter; Minecraft - an installed paying used base of roughly 10 million customers at the time it was in review. 2% conversion means a potential purchaser base of 200,000 for a Lego set. Which is quite good for CuuSoo. It would be a safe bet for the typical CuuSoo production runs of 20k or so. Not an overly risky project based on the fast numbers. Eve Online Grifter - an installed paying customer base of roughly 1 million. 2% rule says potential Lego customer base is probably around 20,000. Which is very very borderline. That is pretty much one minimal production run with no potential for growth. Depending on other elements of the project it could go either way. But would be at best a risky project. Purdue Pete - aside from the other problems of being a geographically isolated or centralized fan base. We run into number problems here. Purdue University has 40,000 students annually. To get a reasonable fan base that care, lets go with a 5 year spread of that. 200,000. Yeah you will also pick up staff and local football fans. But those numbers are pretty static and buffered by the fact that undergrads are broke. So a fan base of 200,000 - 250,000 is probably pretty close. So with a 2% conversion we have 4,000 sets purchased. Not even half of the smallest potential production run that we know of. (And yes I know I am making a lot of assumptions here.) the only way that set can viably be made is if a third party, such as Purdue assumes the risk. They comission a special set, buy them all, then worry about selling them. In much the same way that some of the previous exclusive company sets have worked (Nestlé Qwik, Airline sets, etc). Let's be honest with ourselves, it probably ain't gonna happen. Does anyone know how well FTL has sold? I know it has done extremely well in terms of profit, the game only cost $300,000 or so to make I believe, and has easily done a lot better than that? But has it hit 3 or 5 million copies sold? That's probably the low end of the threshold it will need to be a viable set project?

Exactly. And honestly we as fans really don't have any true indications as to what the purchase conversion ratio will be between CuuSoo voters and buyers. If we have some business background and experience we can probably make some reasonably educated predictions (otherwise known as wild megablocks guesses, but done with a professional pedigree... Like the stock market shows on the business channel.) CuuSoo votes are a very very crude metric. They are an arbitrary threshold basically used as a gauge of interest, not as an indicator of sales potential. And really the only true indication anyone has is past product performance. What was the typical conversion ratios for prior similar niche products? There are some other things that come into play. Synergies and correlations. (Ie Minecraft was a uniquely positioned video game in that its gameplay and fan base had a clear and direct correlation to Lego's, which probably made the suits more comfortable with the risk. Whereas trying to make a set based on a Madden NFL game is probably less so.) but really its, how many actual fans can we reasonably guarantee exist vs what percentage do we need to sell to to turn a profit on this thing? That's always the risk with video game properties. (Although I think FTL like Minecraft is actually more of a long term property than a short term one.)

Actually GlenBrickers views and those I put forth are fairly similar, and really not in conflict. However we are talking about two entirely different things. GB's discussions and analysis is mainly talking about what it takes to get to the magic CuuSoo number of 10k. And yes that does take concentrated fan enthusiasm. Little guys with heart and enthusiasm and deep passion that they spread can get a seat at this table. And the faster they are able to run up those numbers, the better they are. But all that 10k threshold does is give you a ticket to pitch your project for real. It gets you a meeting and the opportunity for a rather deep business analysis to be done on your idea. That's the point where the discussion about the total potential market comes into play. Fan enthusiasm will get you the platform to make your pitch, but ultimately it will be raw numbers that will determine whether it is not simply a great project idea, but also a viable one as a product. Pretty much everything GB talks about is what is needed before a project hits 10k. Most of what I am talking about involves what happens afterwards. For a product to make it to the store shelf it needs both. The fan enthusiasm, persistence and drive, and deep organization that GB documents, and the raw identifiable potential market interest in place that I am describing. Otherwise to use the old non politically correct phrase "you are trying to sell snow to Eskimos".

One interesting thing to note from those gameplay videos. It looks like Lego could very easily use a similar approach to several "big figs" that TT does? Starting from one fairly blank round or domed headed fig they could get a fairly broad stock of characters just with clever printing. Iron Monger, Hulkbuster Iron Man, Juggernaut, Thing, and a few others all look like they could easily be done from the same basic mold, just by making clever use of detailed printing (and maybe swapping arms or hands.) Ooo! And while we are talking or speculating about Big Figs. Don't forget that there is probably a Thanos somewhere in the pipeline for the next Avengers movie. Believe it or not Guardians of the Galaxy probably has the potential to have the best "story" out of any of the Marvel movies, and the one that may best transition to film. It's basically a "Dirty Dozen" or "Magnificent Seven" type story told as Space Opera. A bunch of prisoners, rejects and mercenary types thrown together for a suicide mission. It's the sort of thing that Hollywood has long done well, without really needing all of the convoluted origin baggage that comes with super heroes. It also has strong potential to be a good driver of Lego sets, as it will be one of the few Marvel properties that can get around some of the Lego Superhero limitations. Namely the sets are normally all about the figs, without anything really worthwhile to make a set out of. Only Batman really gets around this with his vast array of vehicles and other wonderful toys. But GoG is Space Opera. So we get ships! Lots and lots of ships! And exotic locales. Heck their base of operations is the decaying severed head of a giant space god floating near the end of the universe. How cool would that be as a Lego set?

Businesses do not operate or invest money in producing product based on fan emotions. How deeply the fans care is irrelevant. Only how many. Even if a CuuSoo project were to see a 100% sell through. Every person who voted for a project buys one at the final offered price, it would just barely hit the absolute minimal production run possible for the most niche Lego product. And no sane company will ever be chasing a 100% conversion of a fan base. It's just not going to happen on a large enough scale. (Here's a hint. If you think your fan base is enthusiastic enough that 109% of the fans would buy a related product, than you have way to small of a fan base for anyone to actually consider making that product.) the voting mechanism and comment and feedback systems are a rough way to gauge fan interest in a project. But the project still must have a strong underlying base and business case in order to be made. That means that above and beyond all of those fans that are vocal or that vote, there must be a much much deeper pool of fans that may or may not buy the thing. A larger pool of fans, of which only a small portion plan on purchasing is actually better than a smaller tighter and supportive total pool of fans. I know it doesn't seem right at first glance, but trust me on this. The overall numbers are more important than the supportive or enthusiastic fans. Especially where anything involving a license comes into play. When you are playing with somebody else's IP, the decision is mostly based on how widespread that IP is, not how intense it is. It takes less expense, less effort and affords less risk to sell into 2% of a broad fan base than it does to sell into 30% of a smaller one. Even if in the end the total sales numbers are the same.

It depends a lot on whether you plan on getting the larger Castle set? The Gatehouse Raid is a decent little set by itself, and is worth it if just for the "evil" red dragon knight on horseback, with the red dragon horse armor. But it's best yet unheralded feature is the three main pieces of the gatehouse can be used as modular expansions to the Castle.

It's not a matter of cynicism. It is a simple matter of business math. Yes sometimes you can leverage a smaller tighter niche fan base and strike gold. But it is a far riskier investment in doing so. And Lego, being the big dog in the park, does not need to lightly or often play with such high degree of risk. Or when they do it tends to be carefully calculated. Minecraft was approved in part because it hit the marks for the business case. Remember that topic of "conversion" I posted above? It didn't hurt that the product in question was naturally very synergistic with Lego, but the key thing is the numbers were good enough that they did not serve as an impediment to the remainder of the review and decision process. Very very few video games will hit these sorts of numbers. The video game industry is only just starting to hit the degree of penetration needed to support such business case review or to drive down the risk to where the larger players will get involved. Minecraft was an experiment into a new untried market. It's been very very succesful. But do not assume that it heralds an easy barrier for entry for other video game based or niche properties yet. TLG is a fairly conservative company. Expect them to be looking carefully at what worked with Minecraft and why.

FTL faces the fairly standard "video game hurdles" which have a tendency to greatly diminish its chances in the business case review. - as popular as video games are within a certain core market, the sad fact is that they do not yet have the widespread consumer appeal that we often think they do. And this does effect Lego's business case analysis. I've mentioned this before. This concept of "conversion". What percentage of a properties existing customer or fan base do you need to convert to your related product in order to have a successful release? The lower the percentage number, the greater your chances of success. Think of it this way, Star Wars has an installed fan base of roughly 2 billion people worldwide. You only need to convert a small fraction of 1% to be successful there. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter each have installed fan bases of 150 million readers from the books alone. A 1% conversion there gives you 1.5 million products purchased. Whereas the best video games. The ones with long running franchises and easy character identification hover somewhere around 10-12 million installed users. That's the really really good ones. The well known decades old properties. Zelda, Mario, Call of Duty, World if Warcraft, Maybe a bit more for Halo and similar, but nowhere near the installed customer base of other mass media. etc. that means that to have a succesful related project you need a much higher % of that installed fan base to buy your product. This is by definition a harder sell. This is also where "Purdue Pete" will fail review. It has a tight well organized fan base. But to be succesful Legos conversion of fans to customers will need to be somewhere well in excess of 40% of the current school population. Not gonna happen. A general guideline for this sort of thing is you should be selling out your planned initial minimum production run at around 2% conversion. The best video games will often cut this very very close. This is why you don't see a lot of video game toys on shelves, and what you do see tends to be short run, more collectables than toys, or stuffed in clearance bins. There are few video game toy lines that have found a profitable niche. mB's Halo line comes to mind. But most others have done marginally at best. It's some rough math that FTL will have to face. (And this is why the Eve Grifter failed review.) - timing is everything. And video games have a greater problem here. Outside of MMO's and a few certain well established long running multi game IP's, most video games have a short shelf life. So short that they are tough to exploit with physical manufactured tie in products. By the time the plastic gobbledygook has made it to market the game has lost its position as the next big thing to the next next big thing. This makes video games a risky venture for those doing IP licenses. The big dogs don't tend to play in this park because they don't have to. They can go after the lower risk greater reward mass media IP. Who knows? FTL may be the next Minecraft? And the success of Minecraft as a CuuSoo product certainly bolsters FTL's case. But it's still going to be very deeply and heavily reviewed on the business case and accounting side. Not just on the Lego design side. And that will be where it will live or die.

The Interceptor may be problematic. Unlike most of the other ships in the PotC films, the HMS Interceptor is pretty much a real un modified (or very very lightly modified, new paint scheme and name plate) privately owned sailing ship. The Lady Washington owned by the State of Washington. It is a revenue stream for the state, and as such carries its own license. (It also shows up in a lot of other places. Most often on the History or Military channel). It's likely that TLG would need some agreement with the State of Washington to make that one. I believe the Dauntless was pretty much pure sets, models and digital effects. So it would be a good candidate instead. I would so love a Pirate Chinese Junk however.

Oh dear lord no. Nolan told some great stories, and gave us a really interesting real world'ish take on Batman. But his sensibilities, and particularly those from his trilogy of Batman films are completely in opposition to what will be needed to bring the full Justice League to the screen. Batman works with Dark gritty realism. It's a road that has been trod by many authors before Nolan. However the rest of the "Gods among us" that make up the bulk of the core Justice League really really don't.

They count on the gullible and the uninformed for the week or so until a more general release. Movie or genre fans and not necessarily Lego fans who know it is coming.

The Lake Town set is growing on me. Especially after watching the MTV video. The buildings seem a little more substantial than I originally thought, and the figs are incredible. I'm thinking that it will probably be 5 boxed retail sets, plus maybe a few Polybags (retail ones and special giveaways). I know I am just dreaming, but how cool would it be if Smaug was to be a set like Orthanc or the Ewok Village? But where Smaug himself is the huge central build. A UCS type huge jointed and articulated organic creature. Now that would be awesome.

It's the 4th CuuSoo set produced. The Japanese Sub #1 The Hayabusa Space Probe #2 Minecraft #3 BttF #4 And Mars Curiosity Rover will be #5

Ok now that is wonderfully creepy

Probably the best set to watch for comments or concerns about construction and technique will be PeterReid's Exo Suit. I figure that one has the most potential for running into build issues that differentiate a MOC (it needs to look really really good) from a SET ( it needs to be structurally sound in a way that supports play, and can be easily and clearly assembled by a given age group.) hopefully even if the set fails review, we will still get a glimpse of the sketch models the designers make, so we can see the differences.

Hopefully any Joker we see will not be the New 52 one... I just can't see the whole "face stapled on ala Hannibal Lechter" working well as a minifig? I mean the Heath Ledger Joker was a bit much for Lego to do. And the new comic version is way worse than that.

Seems a strange one to attract a comment closing discussion thread? It's a really cute set project and by all accounts a fun game, but really what would they have to talk or argue about on a CuuSoo thread?

As others have said, it's a new mold. They will reuse it in a set. More than once if they can. They will not limit a new mold to 5k ComicCon figures. Now the whole package might be viewed as exclusive. ( never before figure sealed in special comic con packaging.) or there may be a print or color difference with whatever they put in retail sets (different armor or garb?). But there is no way we are not seeing those molds used.

I kinda like the Qui Gon piece as Bard's medieval mullet. It seems to match the character pretty well and looks better from the front than the Thorin one, for Bard. I still suspect that the Thorin / Fili / Kili hair isn't just designed for a quiver. I'm hoping it is meant to fit over armor.

Doesn't Beorn also show up for the Battle? I thought he fights one of the Orc leaders in the book? ( it can't be spoilers? The books better than 50 years old!)

Snipped for brevity, but please read ShaydeGrai's full analysis. I think you have some brilliant observations there. And it is one of the huge underlying issues with some areas of CuuSoo. I do think the actual problem may be a little narrower than you are fearing. A better term for "Inevitable Discovery" is probably "Inevitable Design Subject". And then it probably only comes into play with existing and most likely active licenses. As you say anything appearing in the Star Wars movies or TV shows is an Inevitable Design Subject. TLG already has a contract agreement in place to make them. The same with LotR's. Where I don't think there is any problem is in the public domain non licensed subjects. Things like Modular Buildings, Technic sets, etc. in those cases any claims of inevitability would be too broad and generalized. (Honestly Architecture might be a gray'er area. I have no idea if or how licensing works for that line.) The main conflict with the existing licenses is that the third party proposals are for things that TLG already has a specific in place license to make. By definition there is already prior work in place. I think that anything that would loosely fall under the "Creator" domain is probably more than safe from this as a CuuSoo project just so long as it doesn't directly leverage something specific that has already been done. If your design is a "house" or a "fire truck" they would not turn it down on reasons that they would inevitably make one just like it. The subjects in question need to be a bit narrower and more specific to run afoul of the company lawyers (which is not the same as the business case saying "we already make a ton of fire trucks, why would we want another?" ) . Technic so long as you are steering clear of specific prior done subjects should be more than fine. The concept of inevitable discovery does not really allow you to say anything with 4 wheels is inevitable. Plus to try and take a broad non licensed view of "inevitable subjects" would run counter to or outright invalidate what they are seeking to do with the CuuSoo experiment. So I suspect that they will view any such inevitable subject questions through as narrow a lens as possible. Which would pretty much limit it to the existing licenses. Those contracts force them to act. In the case of the Sandcrawler it is likely that the license gave them no real choice on it. Whereas in the case of Space Troopers coming up against Galaxy Squad, that allows for much wider discretion and may not have any issues.

It's not on a whim. If Lego were to permit US companies to subsidize sales directly into Australia what would that do to actual Australian based businesses? That starts getting into what are generally viewed as unfair business practices if not illegal trade practices. Think of it this way. The separate regional business groups within Lego are all getting the sets from the factory at the same basic cost to their budgets. A German Set costs the same as a US set as an Australian set, while it is sitting on the factory loading dock. Those regional business groups then have to add the costs of getting it to their market to come to the final retail price, and reflect back a certain % growth or profit to the headquarters in order to justify their operations and allow for future growth. As it is US and German sales do subsidize Lego prices worldwide by effectively subsidizing the factory costs and global costs. They drive down those costs on the factory loading dock, and allow for the broader range of products globally. They do this simply because of volume of sales and depth of customer base. But they cannot subsidize the regional costs. That's called dumping and nations tend to frown on it.

- Fuel and energy costs in the US are less than half what they are in Europe. This has a huge trickle down effect throughout every aspect of product pricing. - functional taxes are higher and broader in Europe. - European labor laws and protectionist policies make labor at least twice as expensive as the US. - real estat. The actual cost to a business for each square meter of retail, warehouse or production space is much higher in Europe. Once again this trickles through every aspect of the equation. These forces are not unique to or limited to Lego. Europeans pay more for everything. In large part because when they pay for anything they are also subsidizing the very broad European Social Welfare traditions. Not just through the obvious VAT taxes, but by a host of hidden increases at every level of the system.

I think some of it is the thin plastic holds a rigid shape better over time. So for the sail barge it keeps that arched, bowed shape, and for the teepee it maintains the cone shape. Whereas cloth will eventually soften and sag. Which looks great in places where cloth is appropriate. Sails, awnings etc. but less so when you want a very specific shape over time. The plastic probably also has some cost savings over the thin canvas cloth. So they will use it where they can.

There really aren't a lot of PT UCS sets at all, are there? There's Obi Wan's Jedi Fighter Darth Maul bust and Grievous. That's about it isn't it? Maybe we can hope for a Venator one of these days?