Ideas requesting creative original submissions
Well that doesn’t seem new does it? But the new animated gif advert that’s been running on Facebook and the Ideas site this past week raised my eyebrow for a different reason.
In the blurb attached to the post, they say ‘We’re looking for creative and original ideas … ones that start from scratch like Exo-Suit, Birds, and Maze’. I thought this was interesting as conspicuous in their absence from the examples are all of the Ideas releases based on third party intellectual properties. With Exo-Suit, Birds and Maze all being ones where LEGO haven’t had to negotiate some kind of licensing agreement, it makes me wonder what the advert is really trying to say.
The rules for submissions to LEGO Ideas haven’t changed; you can still submit your ‘Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors project’ if you really want to and while the statement that LEGO want original submissions has always been true, I find myself asking why focus on it in such a specific way.
My first thoughts turn to the kind of projects I see reaching 10K which seem to be predominantly IP projects. There are reasons for this though; I think that an initiative like Ideas was always going to be full of projects trying to get LEGO sets of people’s favourite TV and movie stuff made. In some ways that’s a shame but Ideas is about what the public want, not what I or anyone else thinks they should want.
I don’t know how it all goes on the inside but frankly, I can imagine that having to negotiate licences with companies over and over again just to find out if the set can be made at all could be a frustrating task and easily feel like it’s a part of too many reviews. Then you’ve got the ‘Firehouse paradox’: LEGO admitted that they didn’t handle that too well and while LEGO did nothing untoward in their development of the Firehouse set, I’d probably face-palm every time I saw a project pop up that I knew was already being worked on internally because even though it’s inevitable, it’s just a melting pot for awkward conversations and who needs that?
If someone at LEGO told me that they’d hoped Ideas would be people submitting projects that looked more like ‘LEGO sets’ and less like merchandise, I’d believe them and I’ll be honest, I’d probably say I hoped that too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have LEGO incarnations of some of our culture’s iconic fictional entities… But! I also think that some great designs just get lost in there and can’t compete. I know, I know: How many people want some spaceship they’ve never seen before? I’d agree but Evilyushin’s Dragonfly looks better to me than most of Galaxy Squad did. Of course, it’s unlikely to hit 10k so instead, LEGO will just have to refuse some licensed eight-thousand piece submission that got all the votes even though everyone should know by now it was far too big to go as far as the shelves.
I’m being a bit grumpy (it’s late) but there you go. If LEGO are trying to encourage more non-licenced ideas, I hope they succeed, it’s certainly more of what I want to see on Ideas…
…Or maybe I just paid far too much attention to that gif!
Author Profile
-
Hello, I'm Luc and I've been a Lego builder as long as I can remember. My Lego motto is 'From Imagination to creation' and I'm a hardcore MOCer through and through. That doesn't mean I don't like getting sets though, not only do they look great and give you exciting new bricks to build with but they teach you great techniques that you can use in your own creations.
When I'm not working on some overly-complex AFOL model, I'm playing and creating with my daughter, which makes sure that I never lose the fun, and it's this multi-faceted system of creativity and play that makes Lego the toy of all toys for me
Latest entries
You don’t come across as grumpy! 🙂 I think it’s a reasoned argument and while I admit I’ve probably bought more licensed Ideas sets than unlicensed ones, I’d rather see more original non-IP ideas make it to the 10000 mark. But that’s also rather down to us fans as well.
Saying that though, it was disappointing not to see Science Adventures or Medieval Street make it through the last review (too samey? too big?) since they would easily sit alongside existing Lego themes of the past or present (City, Castle). Fans voted, but were essentially vetoed.
It would be nice to see some Ideas sets that could be dropped into existing themes (after all Castle fans have been crying out for new stuff for ages (and Pirates fans have been crying out for different reasons 🙂 )) and Lego can’t have thought of every City idea for people to drop into their own little towns.
The Dragonfly ship above is ace, by the way. While licenses must be difficult to negotiate, is it possible to ‘umbrella’ some Ideas projects from different sources so that say a couple of spaceships and a planet ship and a base could be brought together into a mini-theme with a couple of changes to the colour schemes?
i agree that most of Ideas is IP’s, and the ones that are not IP’s and are creative original submissions, never get to the 10,000 support.
so the only way round this is for there to be 2 levels, one for IP’s and one for “creative original Ideas”
the IP level stay as 10,000 but an “creative original Idea” get dropped to 5,000 by lego ( it would be easy to do just add a “original Ideas top 3 picks of the day” part to the site.) a bit like pick of the day lego have now but only non IP’s get picked and, by getting picked by lego the needed support for that original Idea get dropped to 5,000 needed.
this way lego get more set that are creative original ideas.