Lego History

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Lego History

Introduction: For the past year, I have been taking a nosedive into the history of Lego video games. Lego games usually come out at a deep discount like how Humble Bundle makes offers like 7 games for $10 or 9 games for $10. Sometimes they come out for free like Lord of the Rings, Lego Ninjago, or the Batman Trilogy. So the first thing I wanted to do is to check what games came out. That's when I noticed some unusual patterns. The first thing I noticed was the number of games Traveller's Tales developed in association with Lego. The second puzzle that came up is the number of Lego games in the list I have never heard of. Were they discontinued for being bad games or was marketing at fault? Curiously, I stumbled across a podcast called Bits N' Bricks that goes into detail about what happened to the company. So, what I'm going to do is to divide my findings into two categories: Abandonware and Fluid Play. For the games I actually played, check out the overview in my next post.

Abandonware

List of Fears: Some might call Lego a paranoid company. Others might describe them as being "overly-concerned" about their Intellectual Property. They had an $800 million deficit in 2003 to the point where they had to sell their theme parks in order not to go bankrupt. So why weren't the beloved video games in the early days more successful? I made a list of some of the issues that were brought up:

  1. They were unsure how to market their product. When conducting studies on children, they found that while boys continued playing with bricks, girls stopped playing them at the age of 8. So they tried various "experimental" products. Eventually, they learned how to sell for all ages and groups.
  2. Video games were not considered a good investment. Atari flooded the market back with less than stellar products back in 1983. The only reason why Nintendo was able to get their foot in the market was because they "tricked" investors by making their product appear as an "Entertainment" system. They even added a little interactive robot. This made Lego want to invest in what they called Fluid Play.
  3. They were worried people would stop buying their products if something was made to replace it. Originally, the company did not want to invest in a digital interface where an endless supply of bricks would overshadow the need to buy an actual product. They tweaked their philosophy when they were intrigued with the idea of owning the exact thing you create on a computer.
  4. The brand had to be preserved. Lego did not let others work with their product without complete control over what was going to be produced. This formed a long list of rules where moderation had to be taken every step of the way. These decisions took too much time away for both creators and developers. If you listened to the podcast, something as simple as the word Lego never being used as a noun is one example that needed to be taken into consideration.
  5. Their product had to be safe for children. Many things that were normally made available for the public had to include a laundry list of rules with no room for abuse. This ranged from how language, violence, and sexual content is presented in their product.
  6. Products needed to be successful from the start. The company didn't like to invest in something unless it brought immediate returns. This cut short a lot of services before they had room to grow.

Lego Island Series: So, it wasn't until the year of 1993 when Lego went digital. Their initial Lego Town was more of a concept at that point. They hired a team of over 50 people over at Minescape and spent two years developing their first official game. It had 5 playable characters and 35 in total. The game was only 500MB. The sad thing about this tale is the people were fired the day before Lego Island released so the company wouldn't have to pay them sale bonuses despite Minescape producing Final Fantasy 7 and Golden Eye that same year. The following games Lego Island 2 and Island Extreme Stunts were so vastly different because they were contracted out to Silicon Dreams and built from scratch. While these games are so outdated that I doubt you could get them running on modern systems, there is a revival in a Fan-Made Project: https://projectisland.org/

Rock Raiders: While there were other memorable games like Lego Chess, some might remember a game that came out on the Playstation in 1999. Despite it being a Real-Time Strategy game, it had to be both easy enough for kids and not too scary. The developers had to change the monsters several times, show that the monsters are never defeated, and make it clear that people are always teleported back. It also had a very upbeat soundtrack. While the original game might be difficult to obtain nowadays, there is a revival in a Fan-Made Project: https://manicminers.baraklava.com/

Soccer Mania: Also known as Football Mania, this game was released in 2002 for the Game Boy Advance and Playstation 2. The developers had the hardest time working with Lego because they insisted that the Lego pieces in the video game must match existing Lego pieces. They allowed a 20% defamation twist in the waist and body. The cover of the game might look a little odd with his foot in the air because the artists had to comply with their demands. Lego initially refused to have the game produced because the goal piece was made of flexible cloth when the actual set piece was made of plastic. There was finally a compromise from both sides by making sure the net didn't move as much as it did before.

Fluid Play

Lego Development: Things were getting so bad at Lego that they went and hired a new CEO. He worked so hard on the company that they were able to buy back those theme parks they lost in 2003. He stated it was like holding the advice book upside down when trying to work on 5 projects in a year instead of one project every 5 years. This is why projects like Lego: Ninjago in 2011 that spurred a television show spanning 15 seasons dwarfed the others like Chima & Nexo Knights. They had a 6-month window to be a success or abandoned. But what sort of other projects were Lego working on? As mentioned earlier, they were investing in several hybrid systems. They weren't always strictly video games and there were more than just Lego sets. Some included:

  1. Lego Creator. In support of the SuperScape Lego Creator created in 1998, several themes such as Knights Kingdom and Harry Potter helped extend its use. The current version can be downloaded: https://lego-digital-designer.en.softonic.com/
  2. Augmented Reality. This spurred on quite a few projects like the Life of George (similar to Light-Brite) in 2011, Lego Fusion in 2014, and the current LEGO VIDIYO. Others like their Galidor figure that responded to high-frequency codes that emitted from the television show was less receptive. Surprisingly, the conspiracy group Ong's Hat believed the promotional content for the show on the website was real and began harassing the guy at home to admit it. Super Mario Brothers sets were quite successful in this regard in 2020. Though, there was a bit of a problem when an update made Mario call out for Luigi before the product came out.
  3. Online Communities. This includes Lego buying out Bricklink and Lego Ideas. They allowed people to construct and vote on various projects for future endeavors in the company.
  4. Fantasy Setting. Lego might abhor anything "violent" but they later have accepted things that exist in a "fantasy" setting. This included all the Lego sets that came out lately for Overwatch.
  5. Digital Environment. The introduction of Project Spark in 2014 brought along the idea of Lego Worlds, Lego Cube that's built specifically for China in 2018, Lego Microgame, and Bricktales.
  6. Promotional Content. Lego Tower was something that made some headway as a cute little app that later spurred on the project for the Tallest Lego Tower. They adapted lego Rock Band in 2009. Despite it taking 6 months to develop, their addition to Forza Horizon 4 wasn't one of their best ideas.
  7. Minfigures. Collectors love getting their hands on these minifigures every year since 2010. The company expanded this idea digitally with a line of games from Lego Minifigures Online in 2014, Lego Brawl in 2019, and Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed in 2020.

Bionicle: The designer for this game originally developed it under the name Bone-heads as he came up with the idea of biological tiny microbes fighting against the evil of the brain tumor he had at the time. He then combined the words Biology and Chronicle. This was a huge undertaking as they crossed the story over from Lego sets to comics, video games, and movies. There was one hiccup: they were sued by a tribe for the use of their language. Although legally they did nothing wrong - he pulled the names out of a public dictionary - Lego's reputation was on the line. They met with the tribe, agreed to change the names like how Tohunga became Toa, and established an "international protocol" so folklore would be respected and this sort of mistake wouldn't ever happen again. So, why did the Bionicle video game fail? For one, the developers were forced to make the game in 3rd-person instead of a 1st-person shooter since Lego didn't want a Teen Rating. Perhaps it is how they ended the saga in 2010 and tried to reboot the toys in 2015. Thankfully, there is a revival of the Fan-Made Projects of not only the PC Game but also the Card Game.

Lego Universe: Then there was this game. In 2002, the company started noticing the success of Everquest and began research for their first online game. They poured $125 million with 450 stakeholders into developing this project. Sadly, they were still afraid of making their products obsolete. "We are not going to tie anything in the game to current products," they stated. After 8 months scouting 51 teams, they narrowed down their choices to Microsoft, Funcom, and Netdevil. Originally 5 members, 9 people for their game in "Jump Gate" in 2001 and 40 people after making "Auto Assault", Netdevil took the job. However, their boss kept insisting for a certain "Lego experience" that didn't quite match the ambition of the team. Unlike TT Games animations, mechanics had to be "dynamic" so people could create content in the world for both kids and adults. They had to make sure all the content could be built into an actual product. "A space station isn't feasible because Earth's gravity makes it less stable than what was acceptable." 30% of their budget went into making it child-safe (which was difficult with a certain problem that kept coming up). They made a white list for good words and black list for banned words. The moderator had access to all the names, even the ones you chose for your pet. Questions like "how do we deal with death?" had to be carefully examined. Unfortunately, Lego was used to "licensing" and not "publishing" a product like this one. They sent a letter for a Breach of Content when the project wasn't being produced fast enough. This strained the team as people took out mortgages on their house and eventually selling their company to Gazillion. It was a 5-year project and 20 of the 100 members were let go. A few members left and created Endgames Entertainment. The cost went from $40 to a $20 purchase and finally down to a $10 monthly subscription. Despite its eventual end, The LEGO Group released a remastered version of the game's soundtrack. This awesome project also has a new private server revival called Darkflame Universe.

 

2-19-2023