Gazillion Entertainment have announced that their expansion into the MMO market continues with hiring Stuart Moulder as their new Vice President of Studios, with responsibility for game development across all of their studios. Gazillion recently announced that they had purchased Netdevil, who are developing Jumpgate Evolution and LEGO Universe. They also announced that they are developing two games based on the Marvel superhero licence.

Moulder has most recently worked as Senior Vice President at Screenlife where he was responsible for bringing the Scene It? license to games as helping with the sale of the company to Paramount Digital. He also spent eight years at Microsoft where he was responsible for acquiring and managing companies such as Halo developer Bungie, Age of Empires and Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios and veteran developers FASA of Mechwarrior and Shadowrun fame, although since he has left Microsoft we have seen Ensemble Studios and FASA shut down and Bungie has become independent.

If there's one thing that LEGO Universe has going for it over any other MMO on the market or coming anytime soon, it's creativity. When your game is based on a franchise that's seen countless boys, girls and men and women alike sitting on the floor snapping together little plastic bricks to make well, anything, you've got a powerful place to design a game on.

And as you would expect, Wired's latest preview of the game shows of plenty of soul and creativity. Our favorite quote from the whole preview is easily this, "Mini-figs are endowed with a creative spark, a "soul" that will never die. They're also fairly exuberant: They'll start mashing the 'randomize' button on their own if you take too long to begin the customization process." We certainly hope that feature stays with the game until release, and that many more like it are scattered throughout the game.

All that being said, LEGO Universe is still going to have all the MMO trappings such as story, conflict and combat. And that's just fine with us considering it'll let millions of people across the globe live our their LEGO ninjas versus pirates versus robots fantasies.

If you've been reading Massively over the past few weeks, it's likely you've heard us mention Gazillion Entertainment. They're a company that seemingly came out of nowhere and revealed that they've acquired NetDevil (thus Jumpgate Evolution and LEGO Universe) and have two MMOs based on Marvel Comics IPs in development; Super Hero Squad is geared towards kids while Marvel Universe is aimed squarely at older comic fans.

Our parent site Joystiq managed to get some face time at GDC 2009 with Gazillion's VP of Marketing Paul Baldwin who explained a bit about the company and their plans for the MMO industry.

We've got good news that also happens to be a bit strange. Remember that new publisher that's now bringing us the Marvel MMO? Well, it turns out that NetDevil was actually acquired in July 2008 by the newly revealed Gazillion Entertainment. NetDevil's Scott "Scorch" Brown says in his post on the official Jumpgate Evolution forums that the choice was made due to Gazillion's shared view on game development. Specifically, the two companies value lots of focus testing, vertical slice development, iterating until things are great and only releasing games when they are ready.

The strange part is of course the announcement of an acquisition that occured over half a year ago. We're assuming the delay was due to Gazillion wanting to make a big announcement splash, but it's dark business magic like this that make us scratch our heads sometimes.

Is this news and that of Codemaster's chief operating officer unexpectedly departing from the company connected? It's hard to say, but at this point it's anybody's guess as to what's really going on.

Just yesterday, MTV Multiplayer's Tracey John spoke with LEGO Universe's project lead Mark Hansen about several topics. His most curious response was to the inquiring of a possible console version of the up-and-coming click 'em together MMO, wherein he basically said yes -- albeit with a caveat. That little "but" is that a console version would exist sometime in the game's future and probably not at the launch date. And considering that launch day just got a little further away, we could be waiting a while.

And while putting something like LEGO Universe on a console sounds like the perfect idea, it seems like we'll just have to build our giant space pirate ships complete with castle tower and damsel in distress on our PCs first, and our Xbox's and PlayStation's second.

We've got bad news for all the LEGO maniacs out there, who've been looking forward to LEGO Universe in 2009. They're going to have to wait a bit longer for NetDevil's take on massively multiplayer LEGO play, according to Kotaku's Brian Crecente, who reports that LEGO Universe may not even see a 2010 release date.

Despite the economic troubles many MMO developers are coping with these days, this news about LEGO Universe is not necessarily a bad thing. Kotaku spoke with the director of business development for the LEGO group, Mark Hansen, who said, "Within the company we have made a strategic decision within LEGO to make a delay of LEGO Universe. It will not be coming out in 2009. The reason is, we have a luxury right now, the business is going good. We have products that are not digital, the physical products, with them going so well we don't want to take focus away from them."

Over at The Vault, they've put up an exhaustive list of all the MMO titles you should have your eye on throughout the new year. While they sort of term it as thought it's a big list of games coming out this year, we think they know it's unlikely all of those games are going to be released in the next twelve months. With that in mind, if you aren't sure what games you should have on your radar (and you haven't clicked our handy "upcoming MMOs" widget above), this massive list will bring you up to date.

Here at Massively, of course, we've been doing our own level best to keep you updated on a lot of these titles, be they AAA superhero games like Champions Online or DC Universe Online. We've talked fervently about Star Wars: The Old Republic, and given you the skinny on under-the-radar titles like Aion, FreeRealms, and Jumpgate Evolution. We've even walked away from our precious fantasy to talk about games like APB or The Agency. The Vault's list is a great one to run down - check it out to see what game you should be obsessing over today!

Now that Tabula Rasa will be closing in two months, many of us are remembering a similar situation in 2007 with NCsoft's Auto Assault. The game's development team at NetDevil was fairly outspoken at the time about what they felt was a savable game, yet NCsoft saw it as a business decision. One of the most vocal NetDevil employees who tried to save the game was Scott Brown. Ten Ton Hammer caught up with Brown in a recent interview where he gave his current views on Auto Assault's closing, what the company is working on now and a hint at what's in their future.

"I would never turn off a game." Brown says in the interview. "I would do what I would need to do to make the game support itself, but why turn it off? Especially when there are people that love your game?" With knowing what they know now, Brown discusses how the studio has changed their development process. Their current projects, including the LEGO Universe MMO, Jumpgate and an unannounced web-based game coming soon, are enough to keep this company from focusing too much on their past mistakes and just blasting forward into the future.

This interview is part one of two, so look for more from Scott Brown in the second half coming next week.

We recently had the chance to speak with Ryan Seabury, Producer for Netdevil's in-development Lego Universe. Along with Project Lead Mark Hansen, Seabury gave us an insider's look at the exciting create/play/explore world of Legos online. The two men were extremely confident in their vision for the project, and we couldn't help but be impressed by their passion for bringing this millions-of-kids strong product to the world of MMO gaming.

Join us as we talk to Seabury and Hansen about the background behind the project, and what kind of worlds we'll be seeing. From Castle to Racers and everything in between, it sounds like whatever kind of kid you are at heart there'll be something there to enjoy. And, of course, the exciting news is that it's definitely possible we'll one day see Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the other licensed Lego products inside of Lego Universe.

Read on, and be sure to come back for our next interview clip about gameplay!

Mark: How many play themes there have been? There's been over a couple of thousand. But they're all very different, right, because there are some that are underwater, there are some that are in space. We have a couple of 'evergreen' sets that have been with us forever. Lego City was one of those themes, Racers, the car set, that's been with us forever, Castle has always been very popular. You're going to see them and those different universes come alive. That's why we work so closely with NetDevil.

We want to get that Lego passion and Lego understanding of our products across. If it was as easy as saying, "Here's Lego Castle, let's make it into an MMO", we wouldn't need to do that. It's not that easy. It's how we tie every set together. It's for every kid out there that loves Lego. It's a community of 3 million people, that we have. Each have different interests, you can see if you go online. There are Trains, there have City, they have Space, everything. They're trying to fit a little bit of each in to start with. What we're trying to do with the game is put enough content out there, to see that this is a creative game. You can create what you want, so how far are you going to take it?

Gamasutra has an interesting article up concerning the reasons and implementations of early focus testing; two and a half years early in the case of NetDevil's LEGO MMO. They speak at length with LEGO Universe lead producer Ryan Seabury about why NetDevil has been taking the early approach to testing and how they do it in a way that actually helps the game. The biggest piece of the puzzle seems to be that LEGO itself has been treating the upcoming game like any of its other projects by offering its own consumer testing group to support LEGO Universe's development. Although there's a lot more to getting helpful results out of the process.

It sounds like NetDevil has learned a hard lesson from their time spent on creating Auto Assault, which didn't receive any focus testing until the end of its development cycle. This isn't an entirely new tune from the MMO developer out in Denver. They've been taking a similar approach with the sci-fi space shooter MMO, Jumpgate Evolution. Things are looking pretty positive for both games if our impressions from time spent playing and seeing Jumpgate Evolution at PAX 08 is any indication. Hopefully we'll soon begin to hear some information on the actual game part of LEGO Universe and not just the development of the game.

Here's something interesting. It's a LEGO Universe behind the scenes look video (mouthful!) in which we get to see some sneak peek stuff concerning the upcoming title that lets players build their own world, which is likely full of genitals. Oh, we also get to gawk at a really cool building full of more LEGO than half of America sees in a few years. We really aren't sure how anyone at NetDevil or LEGO gets anything done with all those blocks just begging to be put together. We'd be halfway done creating our LEGO-dition of Han Solo frozen in Carbonite after our first day or two.

It didn't help our jaw-to-floor ratio when the video also informed that within LEGO Universe, we can expect to experience pirates, ninjas and robots in LEGO form. It's a nerd trifecta +1! We're not sure whether we want this MMO to succeed or fail. Success means the loss of our entire lives for an undisclosed amount of time and failure -- something we never really wish upon a developer -- means keeping our families, friends and jobs. You can check out the video for yourself below below the cut.

Unlike most seasoned adult gamers, whose first introductions to online play were usually in the cut-throat world of the first-person shooter or real-time strategy genres, kids today are largely insulated from the bullying behavior that once typified the online experience. Creating a safe, collaborative environment that still manages to challenge gamers is one of the chief design goals of MMOs aimed at children, as Richard Aihoshi explores in a recent article for The Escapist.

Gathering opinions from developers working on titles like LEGO Universe, FusionFall, and Magi-Nation, Aihoshi explores how these titles seek to eliminate anti-social behavior like ganking and trash-talking through calculated design decisions. While Aihoshi establishes something of a consensus among the developers, he doesn't reflect on the potential ills of setting up these "mini-fascist utopias," as they are referred to by LEGO Universe's Ryan Seabury. One wonders whether this digital extension of helicopter parenting is actually desirable at all. Instead of teaching kids that fighting and cursing is wrong, we take away their freedom to do those things altogether. Lesson learned? This blogger doubts it.