LEGO says it will never create an entirely digital product

08/08/202408/08/2024 Chris Wharfe 372 Views 1 Comment

The LEGO Group’s CEO says the company will never create a digital product that’s ‘detached from the physical side’, instead focusing on the concept of ‘bridging’.

From NEXO KNIGHTS and Hidden Side to VIDIYO and even Super Mario, the LEGO Group has spent the best part of the last decade trying to find ways to put LEGO bricks in front of kids increasingly preoccupied with screens. But while the results of these hybrid experiments between physical and digital play have been patchy at best, the company is apparently still hoping to find success in that arena.

“It is about bridging,” the LEGO Group’s CEO Niels B. Christiansen told the BBC. ”We know kids really like to play physically and parents would really like their kids to do that. And we know that playing in the physical world allows you to acquire competencies or capabilities that will really serve you for life; around creativity, social well-being, social connections and problem solving.

“Of course, we also want to be where kids are, and be relevant to them. We know that kids are on screen, and we are uniquely positioned to bridge that gap. We call it hybrid play. We can be in video games, but we can relate that to the real world. We can even have physical versions of the play you do digitally, and the other way around.”

It’s true that pretty much every major LEGO video game has been hooked to physical products, whether it’s TT Games’ laundry list of franchise adaptations – Star Wars, Harry Potter and so on – or 2K Games’ LEGO 2K Drive, which gives players the ability to drive cars that they can then build in real life through sets like 60395 Combo Race Pack and 60396 Modified Race Cars.

Even a digital experience that has stood alone for almost a year is finally getting physical products with the upcoming range of LEGO Fortnite sets, bridging that gap between LEGO Store shelves and the LEGO Fortnite game mode. And according to Christiansen, it’s all part of the company’s ethos never to release a fully digital product – largely thanks to the way kids think about their play time.

“It’s a competition for children’s time and attention,” he said. “And that can be both on the physical and digital side. Kids do not really think about, ‘Oh now I’m playing digitally,’ ‘Oh now I’m playing physically.’ They can seamlessly jump between the two, and I think it’s important that we think the same way.

“We won’t do something on the digital side that is totally detached from the physical side. We’ll actually try to make that seamless with, of course, a lot of emphasis on the physical element. We’ve had the same family owners for 90 years. The values and the intentions of getting LEGO play to kids is just the same.”

The first wave of LEGO Fortnite sets lands on shelves on October 1. Head here to take a closer look at all four products.

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Chris Wharfe

I like to think of myself as a journalist first, LEGO fan second, but we all know that’s not really the case. Journalism does run through my veins, though, like some kind of weird literary blood – the sort that will no doubt one day lead to a stress-induced heart malfunction. It’s like smoking, only worse. Thankfully, I get to write about LEGO until then.