From Minecraft to LEGO Worlds

December 15, 2021 0 By Brian Crecente

In many ways, Minecraft is the LEGO Group’s ideal of the LEGO brick reimagined as a digital plaything.

So when the LEGO Group’s efforts to create a digital LEGO brick experience with Minecraft creator Mojang broke down, it didn’t spell the end of that idea.

Ultimately, the chase for that experience led to TT Games’ sandbox creation LEGO Worlds.

There were a lot of threads that lead up to the development of LEGO Worlds. Chief among them was the one started back in 2006 by Cephas Howard, who for a time was the director of innovation in digital at the LEGO Group.

“For me, it started way back,” Howard said. “I had some ideas about what a digital world LEGO game could be.”

But the LEGO Group was focusing its attention on LEGO Universe, which included an element of open, sandbox building with digital bricks. LEGO Universe also kicked off a lot of experimentation in this space.

The LEGO Group and Minecraft developer Mojang worked on a prototype sandbox game for about a year in 2011, before that relationship fell apart.

Life of George, which hit in 2011, led to some experimentation by developer Funcom. One concept, LEGO Elements, was meant to be a LEGO brick take on Minecraft, designed for tablets and with the ability to scan real-world LEGO brick structures into the game.

Around 2013, in the wake of those Minecraft and LEGO Universe missteps, Howard said that ideas for creating something with Microsoft and the notion of TT Games creating a sequel to LEGO City Undercover were bouncing around inside the LEGO Group.

Howard surprised the LEGO Group by coming to a pitch meeting with his own idea for a sandbox game. The company loved it and settled on having TT Games create it.

John Hodskinson, who worked at TT Games since there was a TT Games, was the director on LEGO Worlds. He said that early work with the LEGO Group on projects like LEGO Fusion were part of an organic conversation that eventually led to LEGO Worlds.

Initially, he said, LEGO Worlds was just a series of concepts built around so broad a notion – being able to build and play with digital LEGO bricks – that nothing was left off the table.

Among the many issues, the TT Games team faced while boiling down this broad idea into a playable game was the issue of resolution. Mark Engley, lead game mechanics programmer on the title, explained that a Minecraft block could hold a hundred of the smallest LEGO Worlds bricks. On top of that massive resolution difference, the bricks in LEGO Worlds have multiple ways to attach to one another. It’s not just simple stacking.

So, initially, the LEGO Worlds team looked at using just two-by-two bricks, but eventually, they realized they needed to offer players the full scope of the LEGO brick library.

Once the team got the resolution nailed down, they tackled the next big challenge: LEGO Worlds presented players with a massive play space, but making it completely editable would require some programming tricks.

The decision to release the game in early access was a key component in the development of LEGO Worlds was. Specifically, TT Games and the LEGO Group wanted to release the core concept of the game and then build it out after people started playing with it and reacting to it.

The first release of LEGO Worlds hit on June 1, 2015. Hodskinson said it was a very stripped-down version of the title that included procedurally generated worlds, terraforming, and building worlds, rideable creatures and vehicles, and a day and night cycle.

A month later, the team released the first major update, which included everything from technical tweaks like being able to run the game in a window on your desktop or delete a world, to game-changing additions like cave systems, new biomes, items, creatures, vehicles, characters, and props.

One could argue that the initial early access release wasn’t even really a game. It was simply a virtual place in which to build. What it would become beyond that, John said, was a big point of discussion within the team and the community playing the early access version.

It wasn’t until March 2017 – almost two years after its early access debut – that LEGO Worlds officially launched. In that time, the game saw three major content updates – including a final one that overhauled the game’s quest system.

The team continued its work, releasing regular updates, including paid and free content packs that added things like items from the classic Space playsets, showcase models, and monsters.

The game was nominated for Family Game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards and received middle-of-the-road reviews from critics.

On Steam, where the game is still available, more than 11,000 people have given LEGO Worlds a mostly positive rating. LEGO Worlds also made its way to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

While LEGO Worlds remains available for purchase and has seen some level of success, it certainly doesn’t approach the impact Minecraft had not just on gaming but pop culture.

Hodskinson said the idea of LEGO Worlds rivaling Minecraft was more a hope than an expectation.

“We would have liked to have impacted a bit of culture, and maybe we did, but it was relatively short-lived compared to Minecraft,” he said. “The games industry is littered with Minecraft-alikes that have done quite well but then disappeared. And, you know, I don’t feel bad that Worlds is one of those.

“I do think it sits alone in TT’s library because, when you see that box on the shelf, you know that it’s a creative experience, that it’s pure LEGO bricks. It’s kind of a love letter to the LEGO brick.”

This article originally ran on LEGO.com as a summary of episode one of the weekly Bits N’ Bricks podcast, which you can listen to here.