We've got two games left for the first half of the year's Battle for Power campaign, and they'll be launched simultaneously next Monday. Once you see them, you'll understand why they're being released at the same time.
Development on the Fall games are going well; I just saw a screenshot yesterday.
Sometimes this job has little perks that just crack me up. For instance, I get to be the one to define the B.I.O. codes on the packages. Yesterday, I whipped up the first batch for 2009 sets. At first, I was just gonna do like I'd done before, boring 3 numbers and 3 letters. But I got a wild hair and did it differently. Everybody in the office was wondering why I was giggling like a schoolgirl. I showed them, and they still didn't get it.
But you guys will. In 8 months or so.
Oh, and I'm i
Top 10 ways you can tell it's spring in Denmark:
The smell of cow manure becomes more prominent... eye-wateringly so Screams from Legoland carry through the air much better Wind, wind, wind! There's more sunlight than darkness, dingy though it may be The office seems emptier these days, for some reason A shortage of bandages in the stores, due to football injuries Just when you start getting used to blue sky... it rains All those "hardy vikings" have colds Scarves become optional ... and your
Today I started getting a lot of emails about an old MOC of mine, LEGO Stargate. Turns out it's on the front of MocPages.com as the Featured Moc of the Day.
In other news, I'm back from my trip to the UK... it was a very busy couple of days. The first day, I took the train down to Bournemouth and visited a video game developer - the same one who created the Mahri and Phantoka games. We discussed the upcoming game for later this year, and I think we're all pretty happy with what we came u
Next week, I'll be spending a couple of days in London. Well, London and Bournemouth. The online game developer we've been using (who are very good by the way - yes, that means you, Mike) is going to start on the game(s) for later this year, and we'll be going over what we need to do. Then on Tuesday, I'm meeting some people about another project I'm working on, which is kind of work-related but not entirely. Hopefully I'll be able to talk more about that later.
Enough about me. You don't car
While some people thought this year's April Fools prank on BZP was weak, I would disagree. And not just because I thought of it. But I think it worked for several reasons.
It wasn't expected. Everybody's grown used to huge, forum-wide pranks. This was just a simple little story. It was plausible at first, then increasingly unbelievable toward the end. You've got to set the hook before you reel them in. It was a gentle type of humor - it wasn't mean, it didn't promise anything and then yank it
Cleaning up the ol' hard drive, I found an image of the initial whiteboard discussion for the 2008 Phantoka games. This was the very first discussion of how to present games - I think this was drawn last August.
The main idea that was refined was to play as either good guys or bad guys. The original idea was to have a broader set of things to do, but it turned out to dilute the games, so we narrowed it down to just the games.
Kinda fun to compare the original drawing with the final pro
Gotta love that Danish benefits package... so I'm off this week, taking 9 days of vacation. Of course, that means more work piled on when I get back into the office, but what the heck. For now I get to sleep late, ride bikes with the kids, and generally hang out. My worthy assistant, Anne Mette, is handling things for me while I'm away - like pushing Game 6 live earlier today.
Taking two and a half weeks off in July to drag the family through Europe - Rome, London, Ireland. Should be fun.
Yesterday, Legoland in Billund opened for 2008, and since it's only 2 minutes by bike from where I am right now - and I have a "sæson pas" - I thought I'd drop in.
It was cold but not raining, and the sun even peeked through the clouds a few times. It was pretty crowded, but not as bad as Disney World in May. The donut stands didn't open until noon, which was a bummer, but the rides were going. There's nothing quite as amusing as watching shivering, bundled-up kids stand in front of the new f
And here we have Game 6, which should hit your browser next week.
Update: Due to circumstances I can't control, the game will probably be delayed by about a week.
It's been kind of a rough week, and it's going to get longer...
On Tuesday, my hard drive went out - fortunately, I only lost a few days worth of stuff, nothing I can't recreate. Since I'm paranoid, I back up pretty regularly, so I didn't lose much. Except for two days where I couldn't really do my work.
Right now, I'm in Raleigh, NC doing some communications research with the marketing team. The flight from Billund was brutal - we missed our connection in Washington, DC because the Custom
Last Friday I attended Toy Fair in Nuremburg, Germany, with my assistant, Anne Mette. She took this picture of me with a special attendee at the show.
And that's the only Toy Fair picture I have for you.
A few bits of stuff here and there, in no particular order. Several local languages of BIONICLE.com have been updated (French, German, Czech, Russian, Hungarian, Polish), with more coming soon (including Spanish and Portuguese) I read the movie script and provided feedback. I'm pleased that my comments are being passed on... I may have some small affect on how the movie comes out! Getting ready for upcoming projects. As soon as I finish the local site updates, I get to move into creating specif
As you may have heard, today's the 50th Birthday of the LEGO Brick. There are some fun things going on today, thought I'd share and point some out. A brass band singing "Is that my baby" just walked through the office. The tuba player had to duck to avoid the low-hanging ceiling in some places. Google has a header made from LEGO bricks today, even including a minifig. Traffic to LEGO.com is expected to spike. Various fun things are planned for different locations, or so I've read in different ne
Since I'm in the habit of providing sneek peaks at new video games, I thought I'd give a couple more screenshots. As you can tell from the pictures, it's a dive-bombing game. This one will be out in early February.
OK, now that many of you have seen the video and heard the song on www.bioniclebattle.com, I can talk a little more about it.
This is my favorite BIONICLE song. They're playing it here at LEGO in the local canteen as you come in. This is the first project I've worked on that became part of song lyrics. Pretty nifty feeling.
The video did turn out a bit dark on bioniclebattle.com, the master is lighter; when it's posted on BIONICLE.com in a couple of weeks, it'll be a bit lighter, I think.
Gravity Hurts
Tension is rising
Gravity hurts
Everything's falling apart
Choosing the right side
Choosing our faith
Choosing is what we must do
Everyone's counting on you
For freedom we rise
Learn to fly
Reach the sky
Legend will carry you
...thousands of miles
Take a stand
Hold the land
Make sure that everyone's
...ready to win
Find the speed
All you need
Team up for battle
We fly, fly...
We fly
Gravity hurts
Creatures keep coming
Reaching within
Stealth
OK, it's finally up!
This one was a huge project, as you can tell by looking at the number of character bios on the site. It was done in a rush, so it's not perfect, but we'll definitely be adding to it. I have some fairly big plans to beef up the site over the next half year, which I think you guys will really appreciate.
Some new content from Greg will be put on the site, probably starting this week.
This was a pet project of mine. BIONICLEstory was born of necessity, and the Mahri Fl
Even though I'm officially still on vacation, I spent most of the morning catching up - now that I finally have access again.
Here are some answers to a few questions I've gotten... A few text changes have been made to Bios to correct some inaccuracies. The Flash header on BIONICLE.com doesn't seem to work for Flash 9 - I'm looking into that. BIONICLEstory.com was supposed to be updated by today, but for some reason won't go live until Monday. Some movies seem to take a long time to download
At long last, BIONICLE.com has been updated.
I'm currently on Christmas vacation, and 5,000 miles away from the action, so I haven't been involved in pushing it live. After some fits and starts, though, it looks like it's getting done. There are the occasional server errors and a few things to clean up, but overall it's looking good.
The process to update the site wasn't as bad as I'd feared; the biggest challenge was making sure the game would be ready. Battle For Power is a game that wil
It's only another week or so before the new web site is released, and the games that we're running will be available. Thought you'd like to see screenshots from the first couple of games - a good guy and bad guy game.
OK, so I just took delivery of the first of the 2008 games that will go live in early January. They're better than I had expected. The graphics and game play are very fun, and there's even better to come. I think you'll like it. It also included 45 seconds of CGI, which was just finished today.
It's fun being the one to set the deadline.
It's also awesome to see this all come together... the project really started the second week I was at LEGO, back in August, and here we are in December