Authors David Robertson and Bill Breen have unfortunately achieved a dubious honor: they’ve taken an exciting human story and turned it into a stuffy suit.
Brick By Brick details the critical years of The LEGO Group (herafter TLG) as it lost its way, almost went bankrupt, and managed to pull off a feat of business alchemy by becoming (now) the biggest toy company in the world. As a (kid) fan of Lego during that era, I remember watching this from the outside; the Ploughman years where TLG made famous mistakes like Galidor and soaring experiments like Mindstorms are part of the contours of my memory. The inside baseball view was fun, and I’d recommend reading the book if you’re really into that sort of thing, but it’s a lot of book for a few nuggets.
It’s not written as a history, it’s written as a guide for business “innovators,” and as such object lessons sometimes crowd out the finer points. I recognize that I’m not the target audience for the book, and that it’s not the book’s fault that it’s not everything I want it to be. But I can only react to it the way I reacted, so let’s check it out!
Character based themes were nothing new
In Breen & Robertson’s telling, you would be forgiven for thinking that Bionicle was the first time TLG had shipped a theme based on original characters.1 This is plainly incorrect though. We got lore for System themes going way back; it just wasn’t taken seriously early on, see this section from a 1996 Mania Magazine:
Does that support an action-packed space exploration theme? Would the target audience even get the joke that MST3k is a show featuring robots?
It got better though! Check this character bio page from a 1998 mag:
While clearly off-brand Indiana Jones, this takes the premise much more seriously and is trying to design characters. A few other themes from the Ploughman era went in a similar direction; some were even media tie-ins, like Rock Raiders which was launched with a strategy video game.
MindStorms also had a tie in web-game, Stormrunner, quite a high quality one as well; a full on RCX programming simulator in a world you could drive your robot around in to explore. They discussed MindStorms in detail in the book but don’t mention the connection-the online MindStorms game was created by none other than Templar Studios, the same folks that created the Mata Nui Online Game that would prove instrumental in selling Bionicle as a theme with a story.
Another thing I think the book missed about Bionicle is that the art was just far better than what preceded it. Compare this to the above marketing materials, and while you’re at it, compare it to Toy Story 2, the best CGI most of us kids would have been exposed to in 2000:
Kids weren’t used to high quality CGI like this being used to market toys to them. Galador was just a (live action) guy, but Toa were these intricate, alien robots. Unique and memorable. Bionicle does get credit, but the focus is mostly on how innovative it is. But I think not enough credit is given for points on execution; it was just a much better put together marketing package than any theme had ever been treated to. The story was more coherent, the story was consistent (ish) across media, and the story was taken seriously, rather than used as an excuse to write dad jokes. If you were a genuine fan of System Themes, the Magazine blurbs sometimes felt like they were laughing at your expense… Bionicle never felt that way; Faber and co. were clearly huge fans of the material, hell Faber is still talking about it twenty years later! I’d say it was a confluence of factors-trying some of the same things and some new things, plus bringing the quality of the worldbuilding up to the obsessive quality of the bricks.
Nonetheless, Bionicle shouldn’t be seen solely as a unique moment for Lego, but also a progression from earlier attempts, a pulling together of all of the different things TLG had tried, especially during the zany Ploughman era.
Misunderstanding Minecraft
The chapter on Lego Universe unfortunately lacks depth on Lego’s history with gaming, and maybe gaming in general. I wish they’d tapped a seasoned games journo for this one rather than their kid who plays Minecraft. I suppose to be fair, Gaming was taken quite a bit less seriously ten years ago when Brick By Brick was written.
What they don’t seem to see is that Lego was no stranger to publishing games that promote a building play style. Lego Loco (Intelligent Games, 1998) was also an open ended sandbox game, a much gentler, challenge-free take on a sort of Sim City type of game, featuring lego minifigs and trains:
In the same year, TLG also published Lego Creator, an immersive 3d Lego building simulation featuring the ability to build lego models at minifig scale. It wasn’t exactly Minecraft, but it can be easily described in terms of Minecraft, it’s like Minecraft except:
- You could build drivable vehicles
- Static flat ground, no mining
- Not voxel based; you could build with bricks of various shapes
- No enemy npcs, threats or challenges; you just kinda build whatever you want with unlimited resources
- Single player; no multiplayer
Apart from that, it was comparable to Minecraft, at least for its day. The sequels may have added some challenges, I never played them. But the prior art was clearly there. Had TLG chosen to develop along that path, it’s possible that they could have shipped something remarkably similar to Minecraft before Infiniminer, which inspired Minecraft, got off the ground. And I think it’s worth asking why and laying some blame on the inability for the culture of TLG to understand the industry, but I wish the book really engaged with that question instead of just lambasting the way they engaged with MMO producers in a fairly shallow way. I agree that perfectionism was the enemy, but I think that it was also a question of seeing kids MMOs like Toontown succeed massively and wanting to replicate that success, another subject not touched on.
The book I want someone to write
A book more focused on the Ploughman era specifically, with a deeper look at what TLG tried and when, when it worked and when it didn’t, and how the things that worked culminated in Bionicle and subsequent themes. I’d love to hear the inside story of TLG working essentially as a video game publisher, something Brick By Brick basically skated over! I want to know how we went from seemingly goofy after the fact ideas like Ann Droid to intentionally created stories like Johnny Thunder. This was clearly a gradual process, and one that’s as responsible for saving the company as a particular fire truck model was!
What I’m asking for, in other words, is a history of Lego Themes.
But how does it compare to The Lego Story
I gave both the same rating on Goodreads, but in retrospect, I enjoyed Anderson’s story a lot more. It also lacked a lot of theme-level coverage I crave, but it did attempt to tell a story and ground that story in research instead of fitting the narrative to instruct on some specific lesson (besides of course being a hagiography of Kjeld Kristiansen.) If you absolutely loved Anderson’s book you might find additional insight by comparing the two. If Anderson wasn’t for you, or if you were only mildly enthused, I’d give this one a pass.
Footnotes:
- Actually they do bring up Fabuland for some incomprehensible reason. I dunno.