Building The Brick: The Marriage Of Lego And Star Wars
Arthur Parsons has been the head of design at TT games (Travellers Tales) for several years, and has been in the industry for nearly thirteen. This gives him a good insight into how TT games went from making kid-friendly movie ties on the Mega Drive to the multi-million selling, and multi award-winning Lego series.
Speaking at Manchester’s Urbis museum as part of the Videogame Nation exhibition currently being held there until 20th September, Mr Parsons spoke in depth about what it takes to successfully combine the world’s biggest toy range with the world’s biggest film franchise in a great game that can be enjoyed by adults and children alike.
Arthur Parsons
Since 1995, the company has gained a lot of experience creating family friendly titles, as they create many Disney movie tie-ins of that era, including Toy Story and Finding Nemo. It wasn’t until ten years later in 2005, that the company came up with the idea to combine Lego and Star Wars into the same package.
Before this there has been various Lego titles, but they weren’t very successful, and the Star Wars franchise had enjoyed a mixed reaction with its games, so TT games approached both Lego and Lucasarts with the idea to create a game that combines both properties. Lucasarts were very protective of their license, and no one seemed to take the project seriously, especially the development team.
Arthur said that by not taking it seriously themselves, the team were able to inject a real sense of fun into the game, and create a game that adults would enjoy as well as children. He said that TT games wants to bring people together, and so the co-op gameplay was a key driving force behind the first game.
Also key to this ideal was to keep the game simple, but not patronising, so that players didn’t have to remember 96 different button commands and become bogged down in tutorials. The company tries to view its titles from the mindset of a six year old (which Arthur says is easy), and makes titles that a child of that age can play easily without getting bored. The team regularly uses their own kids as play testers to see how the games are progressing.
This can make the levels difficult to design, a puzzle that maybe relatively simple to an adult can be very difficult for a six year old to get past, but by following a rough set of rules for the entire game, the team are able to work around this and build a successful game.
Lego Indiana Jones
Arthur then moved on to talk about the film and character licenses used by TT games, and their parody of them. He said that because the films were already finished and released and had been for many years, the team were able to parody them easily, as they can watch them over and over to pick up on a small and well known thing about one character and then take that to the extreme so that the parody was easy to create. This parody was created through both the animation and cutscene departments and the design department who helped to put it into the basic gameplay. The cutscenes were arguably the most important aspect of this however.
Citing Jar Jar Binks as an example of parody, because it was widely decided (rightly so) that he was a terrible character, he was made a terrible character in the game, nicely linking in with the prequel movies and allowing for more in-game comedy moments.
Arthur said that his favourite game to work on was Lego Batman, because it wasn’t based on specific movies so they could really monkey around and have some real fun with the game, though some of the things they created DC wouldn’t let them put into the final product.
Going forward, Mr Parsons said that in order to keep the Lego games fresh and appealing, with out each new one feeling ‘Like Lego Star Wars’, they have to come up with new ideas, and have gone back to the drawing board, especially for Lego Indiana Jones 2. Without trying to patronise players, the teams are trying to give the player a mechanic and they use it, then a puzzle where the new mechanic is integral and finally another puzzle that combines the new mechanic with several others. This allows for subconscious learning of the game without the need for pesky tutorials.
This all comes back to the over-riding rule of ‘can a six year old play the game?’ During the focus tests with the kids, they are never guided, and the adults just sit at the back and take notes, letting the kid’s just play and seeing what they enjoy and they will let them know what they don’t and anything they want to do. He citied an example where his daughter was playing a section where snow men popped up, but at the time you couldn’t do anything with them, so she said she wanted them to explode like a firework or something and the team put it in and it turned out to be really fun.
Lego Harry Potter
Talking about the future of TT games, they have three games in the works, with a possible fourth beginning work as the others finish. The three current games are Lego Rock Band, Lego Harry Potter years 1 – 4 and Lego Indiana Jones 2. The teams really wanted to make Lego more core to the experience this time around, so being able to build just about anything you want out of Lego bricks has been transferred into the game, especially Harry Potter which is heavily physics based due to the magic involved.
Lego Indiana Jones 2 will cover all four films with reworked levels from the first game, and a brand new level editor, allowing you to create just about anything with the bricks provided. Lego Rock Band will be more child centric than other entries in that series, and will feature customizable instruments as well as band members. It will also do things with ‘The Power of Rock’ such as wreck a building because the power to the diggers is out and is apparently a lot of fun.
Arthur then moved on to a small QA section and when asked about the licenses and how much input they have into development, said that while it does vary from each one, the success of Lego Star Wars has meant that both Lego and Lucasarts have given TT games much more freedom, as initially they were both very protective of their licenses. But now, while they do still have final say, TT has much more freedom, and do still occasionally try to cross the line a little bit.
Arthur also said in response to another question that Lego are actually turning some of the ideas that TT came up with into toys, and are actually re-launching the Harry Potter range to coincide with the game and what is in it. He also said having the Harry Potter license, and being bought by Warner Bros, has meant that a range of titles have come up for possible conversion, though sadly, the fan requested Lego A-Team isn’t being worked on.
After the QA, Arthur invited attendees to grab free Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones key rings, and ask any other questions they may think of.
Source: Danny Moore at the Videogame Nation Exhibiton, Manchester Urbis
I love Lego, can’t wait for Harry Potter
Honestly, it would have been rather more interesting to read the words of mr. Parsons himself, rather than this terse re-telling which reads like a school paper.