LEGO LIFE OF GEORGE

LEGO SYSTEM A/SDenmark

Expressing

Production

Team

New Business Group

Overview

LEGO Life of George combines creative LEGO building with app games for your smart phone. This unique combination of physical building and digital games is part of an emerging new toy category called App Toys.

Life of George is a visionary example of LEGO’s mission to inspire the builders of tomorrow through inventing the future of play. The bricks included in the set are the good old LEGO bricks, which have not changed for the past 50 years but continue to remain relevant to kids in this new combination with the latest smartphone technology

Context

LEGO Life of George combines creative LEGO building with app games for your smart phone. This unique combination of physical building and digital games is part of an emerging new toy category called App Toys.

Life of George is a visionary example of LEGO’s mission to inspire the builders of tomorrow through inventing the future of play. The bricks included in the set are the good old LEGO bricks, which have not changed for the past 50 years but continue to remain relevant to kids in this new combination with the latest smartphone technology

Impact

The launch of LEGO Life of George have had impact at three levels: Internally at LEGO, in the toy industry and most importantly to the kids.

FastCompany called Life of George: A Brilliant Mix Of Physical And Digital Play . This cleverly designed iPhone app will trickle LEGO Fans from Eight to 80.

For LEGO this Life of George has now paved the way into the App Toy category. The significance of this emerging category is still to be defined but regardless if App Toys are just a hype or actually a new toy category Life of George has shown that the 50 year old plastic bricks can continue to inspire kids when combining it with new technology.

The smart phone integration has proven to be a strong attractor for the older kids that typically would have left LEGO play already. However, we have seen that the play promise appeals broadly across age and gender.

Craft

Central in the development process of Life of George has been the creative building process. With just 144 basic LEGO bricks available to build from it was necessary to develop a completely new building style. With inspiration in pixel art and 80’s video game graphics the design team created a new style and expression that is able to hold a seemingly endless amount of a models. In addition to the 250+ models supplied by the LEGO designers the fan community continues to build on a much larger pool of user created models that everyone can play with. This platform for users to create and share their own models continues to push the development of the game in new directions.

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