As much as I love the action-puzzle Lego games from Traveller’s Tales, they’ve always had one huge thing missing. You can run around as a Lego minifig, destroy things, and press a button to build Lego structures that have been pre-made by the game’s designers, but you can never freely build with Lego sets – and isn’t free building what Lego is supposed to be about in the first place?
That big oversight has led to the popularity of Minecraft , a game that captures that creative building spirit far better than any Lego game ever made. Even the Lego MMO , which had a free building area, locked its pieces behind a ton of grinding (not to mention behind the overpriced monthly fee that led the game to crash and burn). You’d think that Lego would want to get in on some of Minecraft ‘s massive success, but so far all we’ve seen is licensed title after licensed title that let us explore and fight, but never truly build.
Now we’re getting Lego Dimensions , but instead of competing with Minecraft , Lego’s going after Skylanders and Disney Infinity . Sure, you’ll get some actual physical Legos to build with outside of the game, but will we actually be able to play with Legos inside the Lego Dimensions ?
If you read between the lines of the official announcement, I think you’ll come to the same conclusion an I have: although it allows you to mix and match characters and genres, Lego Dimensions will not let you truly build Lego creations. It will essentially work just like previous Lego games, except with the addition of small sets of minimally customizable physical Legos, for which you’ll pay through the nose.
In the end, the Lego company is primarily focused on its physical building sets. I believe it will never let us truly build within a Lego-branded video game because the company is afraid that the freedom and economic value of digital value will erase profits from its physical product. That’s why instead of giving us a game that lets us truly build without limitations, it’s tying all actual customization to the physical toys that it’s selling alongside the game.
The problem is that if I’m right about the Lego company’s reasoning, that ship has already sailed. What are all today’s kids (not to mention a ton of adults) playing for hours on end? Minecraft . They’re playing with digital “legos” without any of their money actually going to Lego. You’d think Lego would try to reclaim some of that attention, and it really could with splashy graphics, its huge number of licensing partners, and the ever-popular minifigs as protagonists.
But no, Lego is entering an already crowded figure-game market instead of focusing on what makes their product unique: creative building. I’m going to go right ahead and predict that even Disney Infinity ‘s creation mode will allow for more building than Lego Dimensions does. When it comes down to it, Lego just doesn’t want you to build with any bricks that aren’t made of plastic, leading to a digital strategy that’s truly blockheaded.