Mojang and Lego Talked About Making a Lego Minecraft Game, Lego Reveals

For folks who still can't quite wrap their heads around Minecraft, now a decade-old game, saying it's "like digital Lego" still tends to get some of the idea across. Of course, that statement has become a little bit funnier since Minecraft first exploded in popularity: Lego, which already had a long history in video games, went on to partner with Minecraft for physical sets and released its own procedurally generated builder, Lego Worlds. Apparently, the collaboration could've gone farther.

To announce and tease "Bits N' Bricks," a new limited podcast series exploring Lego's 25-year history in video games, the Lego Group has revealed the existence of a "previously undiscussed project with Mojang on a Lego Minecraft title[.]" For Lego Worlds, Lego tasked its longtime partner TT Games with building an open-ended procedurally generated world, so it is interesting to hear that Mojang itself had a crack at a similar idea.

Hosted by Brian Crecente and documentarian Ethan Vincent (who documented the creation of Lego's now-defunct MMO Lego Universe), "Bits N' Bricks" will release new episodes weekly for the length of its ten episode run. Each installment will go in-depth on one aspect of Lego's video game history: there'll be an episode dedicated to Minescape's legendary Lego Island, an episode on the many Lego titles from TT Games, and even one on "SPU-Darwin," the internal program that led to the creation of both Lego's video game business and the robotics brand Lego Mindstorms.

Together, Crecente and Vincent interviewed 120 people for the podcast and researched more than double that. I myself am quite excited to hear folks chat about Lego Island—I'm really hoping that they tracked down the people responsible for the music, because "Brick by Brick" has been stuck in my head since 1997.

Right now, the only episode up is an introductory "Episode 0." The episode on Lego's talks with Mojang will be released next Wednesday, with new episodes to follow each week after that. "Bits N' Bricks" will be available at Lego.com and on services like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and YouTube.