Hacking's a snap in Legoland

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bag by bag rather than being listed by palette. Thus, he said, users can now see and work with the smaller bags in Lego Digital Designer and cut down on the cost of their models.

"You'd see a lot of fan creations" on Lego Factory, Malec said, "costing $400 or $500 because fans are not using the bags efficiently. If you could see it at the bag level (instead of the larger digital palettes offered by Lego), maybe you might make a different decision. Maybe (instead of buying) that one piece which takes a whole bag that you're not going to use, you might choose a different bag."

Despite the fact that the efforts of Malec and others in the Lego community were likely to result in smaller price tags for the custom models, Lego's reaction has been largely positive, even though the company was caught off guard.

A mixed bag of bricks
"The adult community found out within a few days (of the Lego Factory launch) how these bags were mixed together," said Ronny Scherer, a senior producer in Lego's interactive experiences group. "It was a puzzle to us. They took us completely by surprise. We think it's great."

Scherer explained that Lego has to walk a fine line when it comes to allowing access to its systems but that the company recognized the value of letting users adapt the tools to their needs.

"We really encourage and embrace" some modifications of our software, he said. "We have a huge adult community, so if we can make our software in a way that will allow our fans to adapt it to their needs," we'll support that.

Meanwhile, though Lego's policy has been to get behind the software modifications done by the adult community, the company oddly hasn't communicated that position explicitly to the users, Malec and others said. But they are fairly sure they haven't upset the powers that be at the company.

"I haven't seen anything from them," Malec said, "which I am perhaps incorrectly taking as turning a blind eye (since) I haven't seen anything negative from them."

But Lego said that though it wasn't expecting the user community to act so quickly, the software adaptation done by Malec and others fits into the company's larger plan.

"It's not surprising to us that they're doing the hacking, because that was the hope, that they would take the core of what we're doing and own the system" for themselves, said Jacob McKee, Lego's global community relations specialist. We want to "release more and more content and development tools to help that process along. The hope is that they really start to take this on and start to do things we haven't even thought of yet."

Yea, but can you buy just one!

As seen through an adult builder's eyes, a "bag" purchase is great compared to a "palette" purchase but for a 20-something this is crapola. We want to buy just the pieces we want and we don't want to hear the old harangue about "pricing issues". When I model something, I want to put together a piece list and send it off with my cash. Is that so hard?

And by the way, how do can we make Technic pieces available in LDD? Mindstorms are still alive and well!

Sooner

[brothe]

You can buy one...

At the Mall of America, the Lego store there sells individual pieces and seperate colors however they are the standard bricks and not the specialty ones... It's still cool that Lego is providing these tools...

[brothe]

You can buy one...

At the Mall of America, the Lego store there sells individual pieces and seperate colors however they are the standard bricks and not the specialty ones... It's still cool that Lego is providing these tools...

[Andymon711]

Not yet

Maybe some day. I can't wait until people can make online kits for the crazy mindstorms stuff they've been building. There should be no reason that you can't buy Legos one brick at a time. You can at the really killer Lego stores, why not online? Most of the process could be automated, Lego would have more net sales, and people would be more willing to use (and get addicted to) this product.
---------Andymon

There's some irony here

Since when has it been the policy of international corporations to condone security attacks on their systems? It is irrelevant what those concerned were out to do, this sort of attitude is exactly what spurs on the people who cause problems that companies and individual users are having to pay for. The less security exploits are glamourised, the less incentive there is for people to use their skills in that way in a bid to gain notoriety. I wonder how IBM would react if hackers got access to their software and made changes 'for the better'? If Lego want to "lean on the collective thinking of an Internet community" then they should go open source, not encourage the kind of activity that can be detrimental to the rest of us.

[zaznet]

This is not a security attack

You really need to wake up a little. This was a tweak to the data the program uses and nothing more than that. On the "hacking scene" it's very simple and doesn't proivde some kind of breeding ground for "hackers" to gain any serious recognition.

This company just realized they have something to gain by accepting the changes. Most companies will fight them and alienate themselves from their fans losing out on opportunities to make money out of it.

This is more like a fan modification for a game that have often been embraced by the gaming companies even if they don't directly support or distribute them.

As for the reasoning behind your complaint, it too has poor grounding in logic. Without attacks on secure systems, there would be no secure systems. In this case the system was not meant to be nor needed to be secure.

There's some irony here

Since when has it been the policy of international corporations to condone security attacks on their systems? It is irrelevant what those concerned were out to do, this sort of attitude is exactly what spurs on the people who cause problems that companies and individual users are having to pay for. The less security exploits are glamourised, the less incentive there is for people to use their skills in that way in a bid to gain notoriety. I wonder how IBM would react if hackers got access to their software and made changes 'for the better'? If Lego want to "lean on the collective thinking of an Internet community" then they should go open source, not encourage the kind of activity that can be detrimental to the rest of us.

Poorly written

It is unfortunate that one has to read to the 7th paragraph to even start learn what the hack is. This should be explained much earlier in the story. Imagine reading about a disaster that caused a lot of destruction and having to read 7 paragraphs before you knew it was a hurricane.

Poorly written

It is unfortunate that one has to read to the 7th paragraph to even start learn what the hack is. This should be explained much earlier in the story. Imagine reading about a disaster that caused a lot of destruction and having to read 7 paragraphs before you knew it was a hurricane.

[System Tyrant]

I didn't think so.

The story, I think, was more about how the company reacted to the hack and not to the hack itself. I believe that was in the first couple of paragraphs.

[Bill Dautrive]

Finally, a company gets it

Too many companies spend too much money stopping free fan support. Ironically, this has the opposite effect of what the company is trying to achieve: higher profits.

If you have a property with a huge fan base, and you alienate the fans, who are not trying to rip you off, but help you, you deserve the drop in support and sales.

It is a shame that so many businessmen can't see past their noses. It is not a surprise since business majors rarely attract anyone with an IQ over 90.

[Bill Dautrive]

Finally, a company gets it

Too many companies spend too much money stopping free fan support. Ironically, this has the opposite effect of what the company is trying to achieve: higher profits.

If you have a property with a huge fan base, and you alienate the fans, who are not trying to rip you off, but help you, you deserve the drop in support and sales.

It is a shame that so many businessmen can't see past their noses. It is not a surprise since business majors rarely attract anyone with an IQ over 90.