Why the LEGO Group makes games for Pre-K children

October 6, 2021 0 By Brian Crecente

The LEGO Group believes deeply that the power of play can empower children to become creative, engaged, lifelong learners. And that philosophy is integral to how its video games – especially those aimed at such a young audience – are created.

“Over time, we have seen that children of all ages are more and more present on digital platforms,” said Thomas Grüner, who is the senior product lead at LEGO Games for the seven and under category. “And for us as a brand, it makes sense for us to be present where the kids are. And then, of course, what is important for us is that we are there with something that is close to our brand values.”

The LEGO Group’s foundational mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow and while that has long molded its approach to toys and physical play, it’s also a guiding principle for digital play and video games.

While the LEGO Group has been making or publishing video games for more than 25 years, games designed for preschoolers have a much shorter history. One of the company’s first attempts was DUPLO Circus, but that 1999 game was mothballed. It wasn’t until about a decade later that the LEGO Group started releasing some early preschool games.

Grüner said it started with LEGO.com and flash games.

“Back in those days, it was very much experimental,” he said. “Then probably 10 years or so ago, all the different platforms, apps, and learning games came into focus.”

Among the first standalone games created by the LEGO Group for preschool children was LEGO Juniors Create & Cruise. It launched as LEGO App4+ 2012 and went on to be downloaded 200 million times and host more than 5 billion sessions.

Developer Funday Factory was brought in early to help update the game and extend its life, said Funday Factory CEO Kristian Nørgaard. The company decided to focus its energies on converting the game into a 3D experience and building out a robust minifig. They also weighed the importance of not just providing a fun and educational experience for preschoolers but also winning over their parents.

“When working with both preschool and also kids as a target group, we think of context,” he said. “And when you think of context, parents are always a huge part of that.”

Grüner said the LEGO Group hosted frequent playtesting sessions to weigh the game experience against the reaction of the preschoolers and the parents concerned about its impact.

LEGO Juniors Create & Cruise got regular updates for nearly seven years as brought in a massive audience of children.

But the LEGO Juniors product range, which were construction toys created to bridge the gap between the larger DUPLO bricks and the traditional LEGO System, was shuttered in 2018. The game followed soon after.

As LEGO Juniors Create & Cruise wound down, a new preschool game was in development, preparing to become the next big game for young children.

LEGO DUPLO World launched in October 2019, and it continues to thrive.

It’s the product of StoryToys, a studio that made a name for itself as a developer of popular children’s games, including one based on the award-winning picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

Emmet O’Neill, CEO of StoryToys, said the LEGO Group emailed his studio when it was looking to reinvigorate the games line in the preschool space.

StoryToys put together a polished prototype as well as a deep dive into the studio’s approach to video games, child education, and development.

“Fundamentally, children are learning all of the time,” said O’Neill. “So how do you control and influence that kid so that what they are learning is positive, rather than negative? How do you make that child’s experience be a positive and fun experience that allows the child to build and grow? That’s at the heart of it. That’s the starting point.”

The LEGO Group was impressed with the prototype and the company’s take on preschool video games, so they reached back out to StoryToys about putting a contract together.

The StoryToys team designed DUPLO World to evolve after it was launched, with support for a wide variety of environments and different play patterns.

Ultimately, the game provided a free experience that included a number of core levels, but with the ability to purchase future levels at a set price. Those levels were priced separately, but the team recently added a DUPLO World subscription as well, which gives players all the levels for one annual price.

Nearly two years after its release, O’Neill said DUPLO World is the best thing the team has ever made. But the reaction? Well, at first it was very quiet.

“We’ve made a lot of really good apps,” O’Neill said. “But I was really, really proud of this. We kind of poured our hearts and souls into it. And it came out, and nothing happened. Nobody downloaded it. And none of the kind of big review sites picked up on it. And it received very muted featuring from the app stores.

“I have to say, I think I probably came as close to leaving the app space as I have in a 10-year period. I was really, really disillusioned and upset.”

But then it started to slowly build up steam and soon it was topping 10 million downloads. Now it’s at about 20 million and going strong.

Over the past decade, the LEGO Group and the developers who work with them have learned a lot about how to create engaging, educational, screen-based experiences for children.

“I hope that we help to positively influence the kids of tomorrow,” O’Neill said. “I hope the kids, whether they remember playing with our apps or not, are maybe a little bit smarter and a little bit kinder than they may have been, had they been exposed to different content.”

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.