The Phrase ‘Time to Penis’ was the MMO answer to ‘Time to Crate‘. It was coined by designer par excellence Jeff Freeman who sadly is no longer with us, and was used to describe the length of time, in a game with user created content, it would take for players to fell the game with phalluses.
Funny story – we were asked to make dong detection software for LEGO Universe too. We found it to be utterly impossible at any scale.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
And just how expensive was it to do regular penis sweeps?
It was all automated, but the human moderators were IIRC the single biggest cost center for LEGO Universe’s operational costs. Or close to.
— Megan Fox (@glassbottommeg) May 29, 2015
The whole thing’s a fast, good read.
Is the ‘Time to penis’ urge driven by a desire to confront and test the limits of authority?
I have a huge crate of real LEGO and in the several decades of ownership have never felt the need to build a plastic phallus. Sit me down in front of a creative design piece of software and one of my first urges is ‘I wonder what the Devs will let me get away with?’.
I guess the social dynamics of locker room bragging come into play as well.
‘Time to Penis’ is actually nothing more than a real breakdown of the numbers. Not everyone in these environments is building penises – it’s actually very low. However, human nature is to exclude the good content that people create and remember the most problematic thing they saw. Because penises are easy to build (try building a vulva out of legos in less than 10 minutes), what it means is that the majority of objectionable content you see will be penises.
I think there is something in human nature to focus on the phallus, for whatever anthropological reason be it fertility, protection or just overt masculinity the penis has long been represented in culture both buildings and worship. Of course there is also the somewhat immature objective to shock the older folk.
Oh, the pink LEGO brick comment below was meant to follow on from the vulva comment but I forgot to hit reply :/
Paging Dr. Freud.
And yet, Lego Universe was a flop, because there was already an online Lego game that was a huge hit — they just called it Minecraft. It didn’t have quest givers.
So, why were dongs never a problem for Minecraft? Because it’s less fun to make penises inside of a non-branded game? Because by the time parents noticed, the game was already a hit? Genuinely curious…
Because Minecraft mostly does not host public multiplayer server. And Minecraft is not a brand builded on children toys : if newspaper make a huge first line on In Minecraft you can see penis, most of the adults will say ” what is MineCraft?” or “videogames are bad”. Whereas the headline “Lego is perverting your children” is far more damaging.
Because Minecraft is only Lego in function, while Lego is a brand that’s been around a lot longer.
We do have some filtering software for UGC where I work. It catches flagrant violations, profanity, etc, but our UGC is fairly limited, nothing like what you can do with a handful of lego bricks. We also only allow sharing of content with friends. Any public UGC goes through our moderation system and a human runs through it. Humans really are the best dong detectors.
So, from reading previous comments about chat moderation in MMOs, is it safe to assume monitoring and acting on anti-social behaviour is one of the most expensive parts of running an age certified (less than 18+) MMO?
Does the cost add up to more than other aspects of content creation such as new maps/levels?
It’s a lot easier now they have pink LEGO bricks 😉
All this effort to filter out a penis.