LEGO Minecraft explained

I did not speak much of this in a recent blog post of mine, so I decided to do an entire post on the subject.

Earlier this year, two amazing people posted ideas on the website, LEGOcuusoo about the Popular indie game called "Minecraft" and both ideas got some very nice responses from the community. Then, on 12/05/2011, Mojang AB released the official idea for the product.

(Discription on the idea page)


"We’re excited about all of the LEGO Minecraft ideas on LEGO CUUSOO. Thanks to our community for your great inspiration!

Seeing LEGO Minecraft sets is also our dream, so we linked to one of the projects. It’s clear to us that there are many creative people with good ideas for this and we want to throw our own hat into the ring and start this project to bring the best LEGO Minecraft builders together.

Minecraft is about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine in the virtual world. You can build anything you imagine with LEGO bricks in the physical world. Minecraft and LEGO were meant to be together.

We’ve invited a couple of the LEGO fans behind the earlier LEGO Minecraft projects, suparMacho and koalaexpert, to collaborate with us to shape the idea. We’re also interested in your ideas, and will select the best LEGO Minecraft models to also join our efforts.

As the official Mojang LEGO Minecraft project, we will work with the LEGO Group to secure a licensing agreement and donate the 1% royalty from LEGO CUUSOO to charity. Let’s make LEGO Minecraft happen together!! =D"

In less than 48 hours, Mojang's idea got the 10,000 supporters needed to make it become reality.

(LEGOcuusoo had this to say.)

"Okay, we get it. You have a passionate community who wants to see Minecraft themed LEGO sets. It just took three server outages to prove it to us, but yeah, we're listening. ;-) We never expected a project to meet the threshold this quickly while still in beta. It took our first launch, the Shinkai 6500, 420 days to reach 1,000 votes in Japan. Hayabusa took 57 days to 1,000. With the start of Mojang’s Minecraft CUUSOO project it took just 48 hours to get 10,000 worldwide. We admire your passion as a community first and foremost of Minecraft fans, and second as LEGO fans.

We’re also pleased with how Mojang and the builders behind the original fan-created Minecraft project, “koalaexpert” and “suparMacho,” worked together in a collaborative and giving spirit. It’s a great story, and our hats are off to you for that.

So, without further adieu, we congratulate you on achieving 10,000 supporters and officially advance this project to the Review phase.

What happens now?
This project moves from the Idea stage to the Review stage. A “LEGO Jury” composed of designers, product managers, and other key team members will examine the idea. We'll build concept models and determine if the concept meets our high standards for what it takes to be a LEGO product, including playability, safety, and fit with the LEGO brand.

This sounds obvious to you as a Minecraft fan (Minecraft blocks and LEGO bricks look similar, so of course it's a fit), but every LEGO product goes through a process like this and must meet the same standards.

The review is a 1-2 week process. When finished, we make a "go/no go" decision to develop and sell Minecraft LEGO products. We will inform you of our decision, and if green-lighted, this project goes into the longest phase of the project; the Development phase. During this time, LEGO model designers refine the product and develop it for release, we create the product materials (box, instructions, marketing), and get everything ready for a production run. This takes several months."




I will bring you more detail in the next coming weeks or so, but in the mean time, you should go and play minecraft of just get a few lego sets and get building :D