New Constraction Set in 2015?

[NickonAquaMagna]

Guys... you're not getting it. I was jokingly referring to Nova Orbis without shoving it in your faces. What I'm trying to do basically meets that criteria.

[Matoro Lives]

 

 

 

Also, will the returned bionicle storyline be geared at 10-18 year olds like it used to be, or will it be like HF and be geared for 5-10 year olds. If lego treats a returned bionicle theme like they treated HF, I can tell you right now I will not be getting any of the new sets. To be honest, I'm just sick of legos lack of good themes and storylines that are geared for the older fanbase. Most of the new sets and themes lately have been designed for 5-10 year olds.

 

 

Also, will the returned bionicle storyline be geared at 10-18 year olds like it used to be, or will it be like HF and be geared for 5-10 year olds. If lego treats a returned bionicle theme like they treated HF, I can tell you right now I will not be getting any of the new sets. To be honest, I'm just sick of legos lack of good themes and storylines that are geared for the older fanbase. Most of the new sets and themes lately have been designed for 5-10 year olds.

 

What you don't quite seem to get is that Lego aren't trying to please an older fanbase, because there are far fewer of them than there are children. So if Lego aim for a smaller group of older fans, they miss the greater profit that comes from the greater number of child buyers. One of the reasons (perhaps the main reason) Bionicle was so successful in its early years was that it was straightforward enough to appeal to children but had a certain level of darkness and complexity that also tapped into an older demographic. And one of the reasons it eventually ended was because it became too complex for children and new fans to get into, which damaged its profits.

 

I'd also like to see more Lego products for older fans, but we do have to accept that we aren't the priority audience.

But that's the key, isn't it? One would hope that in the unlikely event that LEGO brought back Bionicle (I emphasize unlikely, given the context of their brief, one-second apearance in The Lego Movie) that they would find a way to undo the continuity lockout and make it appealing to newcomers and old fans, kids and adults, somehow. Unfortunately, that's a difficult juggling act at the best of times, and Bionicle is a particularly monumental case.

Eh, it's not that hard.

I'd say that it is, considering Lego had enough difficulty both retaining old fans and generating new fans back when Bionicle was still around. And the older the original fandom gets, the harder it becomes to bridge that gap, whereas launching a new theme tailored to kids alone remains as easy as it's ever been.

Who cares about who the sets were geared for, I'm talking storyline and just the audience in general. What the sets say are lego's age estimation. From my experience the story was for an older audience, while the HF story (more like story attempt) was geared for a younger demographic. Anyone can build legos, no matter the age. When I was six, I built the entire Knights Kingdom castle by myself. Age is not always a factor in who can build the sets. It does affect the storyline that goes with the sets however. Just because the box gives an age range does not mean that, the particular theme mentioned was geared for that age. The box label is just an estimate of the difficulty the set would present to a builder. Even if older fans are not legos main target audience, does not mean they can't have a couple themes geared for an older demographic. The fact that lego has almost completely abandoned their older audience is what bothers me. The older audience may be smaller, but there is still money to be made by producing a few themes geared at their level. Edited March 5, 2014 by Matoro_Lives

[Azani]

 

 

 

Also, will the returned bionicle storyline be geared at 10-18 year olds like it used to be, or will it be like HF and be geared for 5-10 year olds. If lego treats a returned bionicle theme like they treated HF, I can tell you right now I will not be getting any of the new sets. To be honest, I'm just sick of legos lack of good themes and storylines that are geared for the older fanbase. Most of the new sets and themes lately have been designed for 5-10 year olds.

 

Also, will the returned bionicle storyline be geared at 10-18 year olds like it used to be, or will it be like HF and be geared for 5-10 year olds. If lego treats a returned bionicle theme like they treated HF, I can tell you right now I will not be getting any of the new sets. To be honest, I'm just sick of legos lack of good themes and storylines that are geared for the older fanbase. Most of the new sets and themes lately have been designed for 5-10 year olds.

What you don't quite seem to get is that Lego aren't trying to please an older fanbase, because there are far fewer of them than there are children. So if Lego aim for a smaller group of older fans, they miss the greater profit that comes from the greater number of child buyers. One of the reasons (perhaps the main reason) Bionicle was so successful in its early years was that it was straightforward enough to appeal to children but had a certain level of darkness and complexity that also tapped into an older demographic. And one of the reasons it eventually ended was because it became too complex for children and new fans to get into, which damaged its profits.

 

I'd also like to see more Lego products for older fans, but we do have to accept that we aren't the priority audience.

 

But that's the key, isn't it? One would hope that in the unlikely event that LEGO brought back Bionicle (I emphasize unlikely, given the context of their brief, one-second apearance in The Lego Movie) that they would find a way to undo the continuity lockout and make it appealing to newcomers and old fans, kids and adults, somehow. Unfortunately, that's a difficult juggling act at the best of times, and Bionicle is a particularly monumental case.

 

Eh, it's not that hard.

 

I'd say that it is, considering Lego had enough difficulty both retaining old fans and generating new fans back when Bionicle was still around. And the older the original fandom gets, the harder it becomes to bridge that gap, whereas launching a new theme tailored to kids alone remains as easy as it's ever been.

 

You may be forgetting that fans grow up and move away from Lego themes. If Lego ever decided to release new Bionicle sets and promote them with new or old storyline, then they would likely ignore the old fanbase, if it were still to exist, and promote it as though it was a new line. The Bionicle story does't expire on a certain date; it's a story that can be told anywhere and always. However, most, though definitely not all, of the old fans will move away from it after several year of a lack of support of the line from Lego. Now, several years after the end of the original Bionicle set line, Lego would probably decide to ignore the original fans and start from scratch as though it was an entirely new line. Edited March 5, 2014 by Artakha's Nephew

[NickonAquaMagna]

Again... you need only see the sig below to have an idea of how that could be done. It really isn't hard.

[Azani]

NickonAquaMagna, I love your Nova Orbis series. I really think that its written and illustrated in a way that conveys what Bionicle is about better than nearly anything else that I've ever read. But if I was a newcomer to Bionicle story, then there would still be many important elements of the plot that I would not learn from reading Nova Orbis. After reading the prologue to Nova Orbis, I would still need to understand how the "great spirit" was cast into his sleep, who the great spirit's "dark brother" is, why the dark brother cast the great spirit into his sleep, how the great spirit was woken from his sleep, why it was necessary for the great spirit to "undo the damage that had been done"(you don't ever mention that there were people living on Bara Magna), why the island on which the story is set is called "Miro Nui" and not just "Miro Island". Currently, there isn't any way that a newcomer can learn about the Bionicle mythos without having to do a great amount of personal research.

[NickonAquaMagna]

NickonAquaMagna, I love your Nova Orbis series. I really think that its written and illustrated in a way that conveys what Bionicle is about better than nearly anything else that I've ever read. But if I was a newcomer to Bionicle story, then there would still be many important elements of the plot that I would not learn from reading Nova Orbis. After reading the prologue to Nova Orbis, I would still need to understand how the "great spirit" was cast into his sleep, who the great spirit's "dark brother" is, why the dark brother cast the great spirit into his sleep, how the great spirit was woken from his sleep, why it was necessary for the great spirit to "undo the damage that had been done"(you don't ever mention that there were people living on Bara Magna), why the island on which the story is set is called "Miro Nui" and not just "Miro Island". Currently, there isn't any way that a newcomer can learn about the Bionicle mythos without having to do a great amount of personal research.

 

Well, I didn't explain those things because I wanted to keep things simple. I don't think it would be nice to completely disregard the previous canon altogether (which I wouldn't put past Lego), but I didn't want to delve into TOO much detail. Newcomers would look at something like this and think, "All right, I don't really understand it, but it does sound interesting from the gist I got." If they find it interesting enough to research the old material, then they can do that. If not, then they can focus on the NEW world that's being presented. Doing a significantly more detailed recap of the previous story would just make it harder for them to get into the new story, hence why I kept it simple and vague.

 

Plus, at least in the case of this story, you've gotta keep in mind that we're seeing the earlier story arcs from the perspective of the Matoran. They don't know about the old world, so neither do we. Lego doesn't need to take an approach like that, it's just the route I've taken. As for the Turaga, Toa and so on, information for those was provided separately beforehand to promote Nova Orbis and build up hype for it, not unlike how Lego would do so with but a few pages of their magazines.

 

As for "Miro Nui," well, it was never explained back in the day what words like Nui meant. We just liked them anyway 'cause they sounded cool and were fun to say. Maybe today's kids are different, but I wouldn't know.

 

In any case, various little things about the previous world will be referenced and explored as the story goes on, but only enough to get the basic gist of things. I do want to focus on the new story and not overcomplicate things, still having the spirit of the old Bionicle, but not relying on it much to tell a decent new story. Beast Wars and Beast Machines reference Transformers G1 many, many times, but you don't NEED to have watched those series beforehand to enjoy BW/BM. My point is that coming up with a new setting, new characters and things like that for a fresh story to revolve around is something ANYONE could do, least of all the people working at Lego whose job it is to come up with this stuff anyway. I'm not saying they should go about it the same way I have, merely that whipping up SOMETHING new isn't hard.

 

Anyway, thanks.

Edited March 5, 2014 by NickonAquaMagna