In Defense of New Lego

Legos are a battleground. Not just figuratively in the world of our imagination, but literally. Conservatives hate their populist message. Liberals are disgruntled that the girlification takes away from the engineering. Some of the argument is understandable, since Lego did drift away from a gender neutral start, and is now very heavily invested into quite segregated product lines.

Now that the children have attained the ages of 5 and 7, we have moved into the thick of Lego building. As they are girls, we have focused on two sets: Lego Friends and Lego Elves. Oh, and a third set, Disney’s Frozen, but that feels like an extension or combination of the other two. The girls have a smattering of other sets, including Batman, Spiderman, and Lego Movie vehicles. There are also a couple of our large older sets that have hung around, including the USS Constellation and the Space Shuttle/Hubble set.

But the Elves and the Friends are here in force. To be honest, I was apprehensive. These sets were not the ones I grew up with. But I shouldn’t have feared for a couple of reasons. New Legos are awesome, and here’s why:

Idle games and the scale of money.

To explain an idle game is to have already lost the war.

Idle games are just that, your car is running. All the time. And you get points. But it’s not your car. It’s your computer. What you hook to that computer as it idles, the sequence you attach those things, and how much patience you have to wait, all determine your success at the game. Hit on the right combination, and the numbers go exponential. Initial clicks that counted by ones, then tens, then hundreds suddenly go into the sextillions and septillions.

Really, it was 10 million years of waiting on the next upgrade.

In short, the only thing worse than explaining an idle game is actually playing one.