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"Think World of Warcraft, Second Life and Club Penguin all wrapped into one," said lead producer Chris Sherland of NetDevil, the Colorado-based game development company behind Lego Universe.
Lego Universe, which is to be released in the second half of the year, was unveiled at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas which closes on Sunday.
MMO's, or Massively Multiplayer Online (games) are games that millions of people can play simultaneously online, usually whilst paying a monthly or weekly subscription fee. MMO's in general have suffered of late, while World of Warcraft remains immensely popular, others like The Matrix Online and The Lord of the Rings Online have struggled.
"Lego Universe is the first MMO based in the Lego play theme," NetDevil's Sherland told AFP. "So there's a really safe social layer for kids, good parental controls. There's not a lot of predatory stuff going on."
Sherland said Lego Universe takes place in a "wide open 3-D exploratory world."
"The back story is basically that there's this evil force that has corrupted the purest source of imagination in the universe," he said.
"Everybody in Lego Universe gets their own planet, their own shard of the universe, and they're sort of banding together to try to defeat that force.
"You do that through this adventure game that's basically quest-based."
Apparently, Lego Universe will also allow players to "make your own game play on your own planet, and then your peer group or your friends can come to your planet and you guys can play together."
Lego has of course previously released Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman videogames, but they were just for up to two players while with Lego Universe "thousands of players can play at once," he added.
Sherland also said that anything created in Lego Universe can also be ordered online from Lego.com and "they'll have it sent to your house with building instructions." Neat. No word if this functionality will be available in Australia, or how much it will cost.
Lego Universe is expected some time in 2010, with players paying by the month.
The trailer can be viewed, courtesy of Joystiq, here.
