The LEGO Group is teaming up with Epic Games to release LEGO Fortnite, a new video game combining the survival mechanics of Fortnite and the creativity and crafting style of LEGO games.
Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley details the appeal to younger gamers and LEGO Fortnite's expected competition with survival-crafting game Minecraft.
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Well, LEGO Group and Epic Games have joined forces just in time before the holidays for an ultimate gaming experience.
Now LEGO Fortnite is the new survival crafting game that allows players to play and build in an imaginary world.
Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley is all over this for us.
So Dan, you were able to test out the game prior to its launch.
Tell us about this experience and your main takeaways from this game.
DAN HOWLEY: That's right, Rachelle.
My job is incredibly difficult.
Some people go to war zones.
I go to areas in New York where I play video games for a few hours.
This is a lot of fun, actually.
It's LEGO teaming up with Fortnite, Epic Games.
Basically, there's two versions of this.
It's inside Fortnite, right?
So you have Fortnite, and then there's this kind of like new metaverse thing that they're starting where they have a LEGO game on its own.
They have a racing game on its own.
And then they have a rhythm game on its own.
Fun fact, the rhythm game is made by Harmonix, the people that were behind Guitar Hero years and years ago.
But the LEGO side of things, it's basically, as you said, a crafting survival game where the idea is you have to collect resources around the world, food.
You have to eat.
You have to build shelter, keep yourself warm.
It's basically kind of camping but in a video game.
And you do this using LEGO blocks.
So you go around chopping down trees, and you pick up pieces of what would be LEGO wood.
LEGO says that they've taken a huge number of the actual LEGO pieces that they design in their own facilities and then transferred them into this Fortnite game for LEGO Fortnite.
So you're really building with actual LEGO pieces.
It really is quite inventive.
So I have a few takeaways after playing it for a few minutes.
The big thing is it's expansive.
You can literally see snowcapped mountains in the background.
I was standing near a lake, saw these snowcapped mountains.
I could just walk there.
It's several kilometers large, this world that you can just build up.
You can invite friends to join your world online.
You can give them basically keys to your little kingdom, and they can jump on if you're not online at the time.
And you can kind of defend yourselves from various nefarious characters in the game as well.
There's also the fact that this is marrying two absolutely massive franchises.
I mean, Fortnite is just outrageously large.
Everybody knows about it.
I happen to not be a Fortnite player.
I play other games.
But I know about it.
I've played it before.
And then LEGO.
I mean, come on.
Who doesn't know what LEGOs are?
I was reminiscing about playing with my old LEGO pirate set as a kid and had the little LEGO alligator there.
And then the third thing is that it's going to pull gamers into LEGO and the LEGO users into games.
So it's marrying these two, but it's also going to make sure that there's crossover, which I think is very important.
I think this kind of game lends itself very well to the world of Fortnite.
Importantly, as LEGO points out, there's a lot of protections for kids.
So there's not going to be the kind of mad dash online activity that you might have with something like Fortnite.
This is more geared towards younger users, as well as older users.
There's also, I want to point out, a sandbox mode where you can just get LEGO pieces in the game and build whatever you want and then walk around that.
So I don't know.
If you want to build a version of the Taj Mahal, you can do that and then walk around the inside of it based on how you want to build it.
- And it does seem like a perfect partnership because my daughter, she loves building in Roblox.
She loves Minecraft and loves LEGOs.
So it seems perfect.
So then as we speak about this, then how does this compare to rivals like Minecraft?
DAN HOWLEY: Yeah.
It's interesting because as I was playing it, I was like, well, this is going right up against one of the largest games ever in Minecraft, right?
That is on virtually every platform you can think of.
And there's a whole generation of kids who came up with that as their go-to game.
So it definitely has its work cut out for it as far as competition goes.
I think though, the aesthetic is very different from Minecraft.
It's supposed to be blocks in Minecraft.
LEGO, you're building with LEGOs, but it just looks a little bit cleaner.
I do think that it's going to have that advantage obviously from Fortnite players who want something different but don't necessarily want to have to jump into a different game.
It's also important to point out this is free still.
Just as Fortnite is free, this is free to play.
And so you'll be able to jump on from the Fortnite main screen.
Just dive in.
So it's not as though this is going to be something that's difficult to get.
It's also going to be available on whatever you can get Fortnite on.
So on your PlayStation, your PC, your Xbox, your Switch, what have you.
You'll be able to play there.
And so that's going to be really important.
I think this is going to be something that would build on the LEGO branding for sure when it comes to gaming.
They've already done a great job with gaming so far, but this is just going to push it even further with an audience as large as Fortnite's.
