Why Hasn’t There Been a ‘Minecraft’-Style LEGO Game? Giant LEGO Dongs.

With the Lego Worlds speculation that leaked out over the past week, I remarked as to why there wasn’t a Minecraft ($6.99) type LEGO game. Well, it turns out there might just be a good reason for that: giant LEGO dongs. Megan Fox, developer of Jones on Fire ($2.99), used to work on the MMO LEGO Universe. Well, LEGO is big on being kid-friendly, and not letting people build giant LEGO penises all willy-nilly, because kids might see them. And as it turns out, digital dong detection is difficult. This compilation of tweets from Fox on the dong issue are great and should be read through, but here are a couple of key ones:

I get it, you can’t just have folks going around erecting giant brick dongs everywhere. LEGO has a brand to protect, and the rules have got to be rigid, and firm in enforcement. Some of these policies have clearly given the shaft to some great potential LEGO games, though I understand why it’s a sticky situation. LEGO could just strut around like the cock of the walk and make whatever games with their brand that they want. But parents don’t want little Timmy to be seeing a million brick dongs. Flaccid moderation won’t make a difference to the parents, even if LEGO is making a big moderation thrust to get rid of them. And if the threat of LEGO Dongs was so persistent, parents would think long and hard before they buy more LEGO stuff for their kids.

Apparently the solution that LEGO Worlds decided upon was to just scrap the multiplayer entirely, as the game’s out now on Steam Early Access, and it’s singleplayer only, at least at launch. So if your kid sees LEGO dongs in LEGO Worlds, they made those themselves. Or you’ve got a Freudian obsession with anything remotely phallic. And if you do want to go build giant phallic structures and show them off to random strangers, go play Minecraft!