LEGO Games and Unity team up to make game development more approachable
Posted by Huw,
Here's a press release about a new collaboration with games development platform Unity which sounds quite interesting, although I have to admit that it's outside my area of expertise:
If there’s one thing that LEGO Games and the world’s leading 3D content development platform, Unity, can agree on, it’s that creativity comes in all forms - whether it’s bringing your creation to life with LEGO bricks or adding lines of code to develop a video game.
Game development can be intimidating for some, but Unity helps lower this obstacle with its series of Microgames – guided experiences designed to get new users working in the Unity Editor quickly and easily.
Unity has released its first-ever Microgame created with LEGO Games. For some, the thought of taking your first steps into the world of video game creation can be overwhelming, but with the new LEGO Microgame, fans can use the familiar LEGO System in Play to help them construct their first game experience.
- The new LEGO Microgame, created with adult fans of LEGO in mind, is designed to make anybody’s initial experiment with game development a fun and welcoming experience
- LEGO and Unity also worked with BrickLink, an online marketplace to buy and sell LEGO parts, minifigures and sets. This enabled every fan’s MOC (My Own Creation) built in Studio to be brought to life in the game
- Requiring absolutely no coding, the LEGO Microgame, like all Unity Microgames, provides a friendly introduction to Unity, and is designed to help you move swiftly from opening your first project to sharing your first game in as little as 45 minutes on Unity’s platform
- The new Microgame, released in the 25th Anniversary year of LEGO Games, is fun, accessible, and helps creators of all abilities dive into the world of game development for the first time
- Get started in Unity with the LEGO Microgame today
There's more information on the Unity blog.
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21 comments on this article
Is this what we were supposed to be able to do in LEGO Universe until they lost control of the development?
The unity platform is a games developers dream but with a annual license only really for professionals whereas this appears to be a free sandbox (presumably sponsored by TLG) for amateurs and teenagers with an interest in games development to have some fun and see what they can create. If games development is not your thing then you could probably still use to make some great animated videos.
I’m gonna remake that 2013 Star Wars advent calendar game in the style of a traditional lego game. Yay!
@Joefish said:
"Is this what we were supposed to be able to do in LEGO Universe until they lost control of the development?"
They didn’t as much lose control as tried to be too controlling. In Brick by Brick, a book which I highly recommend, the game developers contend that LEGO was asking them to do things which could not be down, and greatly misunderstood the market. Nit sure where the idea of “losing control” comes from- they essentially doomed the project by being too hands-on
@ambr said:
"The unity platform is a games developers dream but with a annual license only really for professionals whereas this appears to be a free sandbox (presumably sponsored by TLG) for amateurs and teenagers with an interest in games development to have some fun and see what they can create. If games development is not your thing then you could probably still use to make some great animated videos.
"
There is a free license for Unity as far as I remember. It's for 'personal' use, which mainly means the revenue you are allowed to make from whatever you develop is limited. But other than that, I think you can do more or less whatever you can do with Unity. It's been a while I looked into this, though.
Pepper Roni (or his cousin) is back! So glad people still remember Lego Island.
This is very exciting and potentially amazing much more meaningful and valuable partnership than the Ikea deal. I wonder if they will use Lego shapes and building concepts as a metaphor for coding, much like Scratch does -- though Scratch is accessible to kids, so maybe that's more ambitious than the actual plan.
As @ambr points out, Unity is an expensive pro developer tool, so even having some version of it, free, is a Big Deal.
"This enabled every fan’s MOC (My Own Creation) built in Studio to be brought to life in the game"
This is what Lego Worlds should have been. Still angry how that never evolved beyond a game where you run around aimlessly.
I will never try any Lego games as they killed best game - Lego Worlds.
This game had a chance to dethronize minecraft! HOW YOU FAILED LEGO?
@lordofdragonss said:
"I will never try any Lego games as they killed best game - Lego Worlds.
This game had a chance to dethronize minecraft! HOW YOU FAILED LEGO?"
LEGO Worlds was mostly hampered by its controls and lack of compelling gameplay in my opinion. Building just wasn’t as simple as it was in Minecraft, which killed it for me.
Huw, what happened to HashtagMembersMonday?
@Mr__Thrawn said:
" @Joefish said:
"Is this what we were supposed to be able to do in LEGO Universe until they lost control of the development?"
They didn’t as much lose control as tried to be too controlling. In Brick by Brick, a book which I highly recommend, the game developers contend that LEGO was asking them to do things which could not be down, and greatly misunderstood the market. Nit sure where the idea of “losing control” comes from- they essentially doomed the project by being too hands-on
"
LEGO's marketing couldn't agree on whether it was supposed to be a free-to-play environment to be used to promote LEGO products, or a pay-to-play adventure game that should turn a profit in its own right. So they did mess the developer around, along with regular interventions from legal on how the LEGO logo should be used. But the leads in the development team just wanted to knock up a kiddy-friendly version of Warcraft and stick a toy license on it to boost sales. To complain LEGO didn't understand the market is a bit rich - NetDevil were only available for the project because all their previous MMORPGs had tanked!
Just look at the early promotional material put out by LEGO, with the big red friendly dragon who was supposed to run a hot-dog stand in a multiplayer group-play-area. And compare that to the final game where the dragon is a nightmare creature lit by lightning who just one-hit-kills half your party. They were given the licence to the most creative toy in existence and they made a game where you just run around smashing stuff.
They constantly complained LEGO was trying to be too controlling but the fact is the team leads at NetDevil lacked the experience and imagination to develop innovative solutions. If they couldn't do something 'by-the-book' then instead of trying to negotiate a technical or aesthetic compromise, both sides just stonewalled. Even when LEGO took them over, they kept on all the senior management who had been failing them all along, and the most creative team members who had a chance of delivering a viable product were all laid off.
There was a team of AFOLs that LEGO introduced from the start to assist with the style of development, and a few of the senior staff at NetDevil seemed to be doing everything they could to sideline us. Despite being a group of volunteers with, between us as it turned out, way more software development experience than the guys they were paying to work on the project!
Now in the game, within your own 'property' area, there were some fantastic tools for building models and making them all interactive via scripts. But (a) the whole thing was bug-ridden, and was never prioritised to be fixed and (b) a player had to keep grinding the same game levels over and over to pay a 'rent' to keep your area from being wiped out entirely! The whole project became the exact antithesis of LEGO's creative ideals.
I'm already a Unity developer, but I'll definitely look into it once I find some free time.
That's cool, but it seems the real challenge is for small devs to gain visibility, partly because the market is already full of "45 min" asset flips. At least, I guess you can't sell what you do with lego unity, and there will be a dedicated platform for it to avoid cluttering other platforms with thousands of lego games.
My Dilemma: take the time to learn this and make something good, or focus on MOCing and building those skills...
Or quit college and do BOTH!
IDK,that FB add was soooo annoying,I reported it as spam... Now that I see this,maybe I wouldn't have...but that is just lame marketing strategy...
Been wanting to mess with Unity. I have the free "personal" version of Unity, as I thought you could use it to decompile Unity web games to extract things like images from them. And then I was thinking about making games myself--and I got frustrated.
Lego Worlds and Universe were both a farce. Worlds was supposed to be like Minecraft, but LEGO, as development went on, just made the game worse and worse. Early versions were great, but having to go over the place just to unlock basic bricks was a huge goof-up.
The modern interpretation of the main protagonist of Lego Island is neat, and perhaps a hint. Wonder if there will be a remake? Oh well, if I figure this new "idiot-proof" Unity LEGO is working on out, I may be able to remake it myself.
And the use of Stud.io as a way to make objects is far easier than Blender.
So the LEGO board games aren’t coming back? :(
@PixelTheDragon said:
" @lordofdragonss said:
"I will never try any Lego games as they killed best game - Lego Worlds.
This game had a chance to dethronize minecraft! HOW YOU FAILED LEGO?"
LEGO Worlds was mostly hampered by its controls and lack of compelling gameplay in my opinion. Building just wasn’t as simple as it was in Minecraft, which killed it for me."
Almost all new PC lego games have stupid controlls made for pad
i remember the glatorian game that was made in unity, excited that i could potentially work with lego in that engine, it's everything ten-year-old me wanted
For a long time I've been asking for a TT Game that told the story of all the different LEGO Original IPs, mostly in the terms of DLC. Now who knows, maybe I could make my own!