Epic Games has already revealed its ambitious plans for the virtual world. On Thursday, the maker of the popular fried chicken game Fortnite announced plans to build part of a virtual world with Lego.
Epic and Lego have a longstanding partnership. “Shaping the future of virtual worlds” by building digital experiences that children can play safely. While the companies did not spell out specifics about this future in Thursday’s announcement, they laid out three basic principles that drive the development of virtual worlds: prioritizing children’s well-being; protecting children’s privacy; and equipping children and adults with the necessary tools to shape their digital experience.
Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, said: “The LEGO Group has captured the imaginations of children and adults alike through creative play for nearly a century, and we’re delighted to be working with LEGO to create a fun, new and exciting virtual world. And spaces designed for kids and families.”
Definitions of the metaverse vary widely from vendor to vendor, but it is generally considered the next transformation of the internet: a virtual cyberspace that opens up new ways for users to interact with brands, services and online. Previously, Sweeney said he imagined the Metaverse as a kind of online amusement park, a public space where people interact with brands and other users, switching seamlessly between multiplayer games, streaming entertainment platforms and other digital experiences.
It’s unclear exactly what the new project will be or how the LEGO brand might affect Epic’s plans for the metaverse, and Epic Games declined to give further details.
With Epic’s Unreal Engine and its extensive game development experience, this partnership will increase the potential for competition from popular creation platforms such as “Roblox” and “Minecraft” in the Lego sandbox mode. Previously, Epic had already achieved success with the younger crowd with Fortnite, a game that brought the company more than $9 billion in revenue in 2018-19.
It’s worth noting that this collaboration with Lego is not part of TT Games, the development studio behind Lego video games. The decision may be related to work environment concerns identified in a Polygon report in January. In the report, former employees of the studio described a harsh work environment, saying management had ambitious plans for its latest game, “The Skywalker Saga,” with employees working up to 80-100 hours a week. Advance the progress of the game at the expense of time. According to reports, one issue during development was whether to use Unreal Engine, which is owned by Epic. According to Polygon, employees have warned management that continuing to use the studio’s proprietary engine, NTT, for The Skywalker Saga could strain the already scarce development time. Despite employee support for the switch to Unreal Engine, management chose to continue using the NTT engine to avoid paying for the engine license.Leifeng.com(Public Number: Leifeng.com)
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