i thought lego offered to have him work on a project based on bl for them while bl was still in alpha. (likely halting bl's release)but they turned him down cuz he wouldnt be leading it and he wanted to.
nothey asked to talk to him about buying the game (with him still working on it)he talked to themhe sent them some emailsthey never repliedend of
They offered, Eric accepted, they forgot, and Blockland became as we know it today.
Heres a history of what has happened over the last 8 months or so:Blockland got Lego's attention. They contacted me and wanted to meet with me.I went to brickfest (a Lego convention here in Virginia) and talked with 2 lego executives, demo'd the game for them. They were adamant that I could not make money of of Lego intellectual property. However, they were extremely impressed with the progress I had made since the beta and wondered if I would like to work with them on a project. I said that I would.Later In a phone conversation, they say that they would like to buy the game from me and hire me in some capacity to develop the game further for at least a year. They make an offer.I email some garage games folks and ask for advice. They say the offer sounds low. They offer to compy my entry fee to IGC.I fly to oregon and attend the Indie Games Con (IGC) - a conference hosted by Garage Games. I speak to several people there, the general consensus is that I should be getting much more than what Lego has offered and suggest I make a counter offer.I talk again with the lego executive on the phone, and he makes this wonderful flabberghasted noise when I tell him the counter offer. We agree that it would be good for me to come to Denmark and see the place where I would theoretically be working and who I would be working with.Lego flies me to Denmark. I demo the game for some developers, art guys and business types. They are impressed. I have a bit of trouble converting them to my gaming philosophy but I make some progress. We discuss the problems of online gaming. The lead software guy doesnt seem to like me. The offer to buy the game stands as well as the employment offer for 1 year. They tell me to think about it.I email the garage games guys and tell them that the offer combined with employment sounds like pretty decent deal. They agree.I attempt to contact the Lego guy. I leave a phone message and email. No reply, I figure they must be on holiday break. In january I leave a few more phone messages and send some emails. No reply. Previously they had been quite prompt in replying to my messages. And that brings us to today. Was it all a ploy by lego to delay blockland and get some sweet design tips for the price of a plane ticket? Did they simply change their minds? Who knows.Current plans: - in chronological orderComplete Blockland with non-lego IP. Possibly through employment at Garage Games (they made some vague job offers to me)At this point It doesnt really matter to me which way I go (with Lego or Garage Games). With Lego, I'd make more money but I'd have to live in Denmark and deal with other people's bad ideas. With Garage Games, I'd make less money but at least I would own the game and have complete control. If lego calls me tomorrow, I don't know what I'll do.
Wasn't this a rumor? Has Badspot ever actually said Lego offered him money for the game?
We'd still have interiors and terrain.
um no. i remember tons of stuff about hiring him for a new project. either a bl remake or something other. bl wasnt a product yet, wasnt anything to buy. HE was for sale.
We would all be banned for various reasons, and a younger, childish community would replace us.
They start young these days.Eric Hartman is only 23 years old but he already has a decade's worth of experience programming computers. He's still in school, studying Web development in Virginia, but his latest creation is garnering attention around the world. Blockland, a free, on-line game, is a 3-D virtual universe where players can team up to build structures using Lego-like characters and, well, blocks.Once you download the game (http://www.ageoftime.com/blockland), you enter a world populated by smiling little men with yellow heads and jet packs. You can pick up a spray can to paint your structures, a hammer to tear down unwanted additions, and variably sized pieces, from windows to roof tiles. The interface is simple, but the buildings and interactions can be startlingly complex.When contacted early this week, Hartman said 20,000 people had downloaded Blockland in the 10 days since it "became big."And those thousands of players, besides building towers reaching into the clouds and dream homes, have already changed the dynamics of the game. The little yellow-headed guys are now hitting each other with the hammers, either to attack other people's structures or to defend a favourite creation."Destroying the bricks is a necessary part of building. You have to be able to make changes," Hartman says. "Of course, people being what they are, they often decide to 'make changes' to structures that don't belong to them. By default, the weapons in the game do not hurt other players, but people have made modifications to the game that allow you to kill each other."Thus, Blockland has seen the whole of human history -- from early tool-users to warring nations -- in less than two weeks.In these security-challenged times, Hartman has also noticed a regular fixation on incarceration. "There have been cases of people building prisons," he says. "Either they build completely around the spawn area so that any new players who join the game are trapped, or they just build a box and see how many people they can lure into it before sealing them inside."Besides being a free and accessible introduction to the on-line world, Blockland is also a throwback to the days when commercially viable games were made by one or two programmers coding away in their spare time. Hartman's advice for getting in on this world-creating fun is to modify an existing game, since PC developers make the codes, or engines, for titles such as Unreal and Half-Life publicly available. Programmers who know their way around these engines then add or change the variables in the games, introducing Barney the purple dinosaur to Doom, for example.As for Blockland, Hartman says his ultimate goal is to create a game where players define the rules -- "I give them little interactive bits and they decide how to win or lose," he says -- but he has not yet started thinking about financial possibilities. He does acknowledge, probably wisely, that "any kind of commercial endeavour would have to be endorsed by Lego."The toy makers have not yet contacted him, nor have game developers looking for employees, but as Blockland continues to spread, Hartman may want to stay by the phone.
