“The idea of epic Star Wars battles came up quite quickly”: how Lego reinvented itself with a screen-free technology that plays back

Lego Smart Play is extremely clever. On the face of it, the prospect of a Lego model being able to make sound effects as you play could sound pretty run-of-the-mill, but it’s how it makes those sounds and what it could mean for the future that really excites me.

The project has been in development for the last eight years and has involved the work of Cambridge Consultants, the deep tech powerhouse that is an expert in miniaturisation. There are no pre-recorded sounds in the smart bricks; instead, they use a synthesiser to create live sounds based on information from the sensors and the digital ID from the smart tile or minifigure.

The digital ID provides the smart brick with a series of rules, giving it a series of notes to play based on the readings from the onboard sensors. For instance, the accelerometer detects fast movement – play a flying sound, the light sensor detects a red colour – play the sound of the laser canons, the brick is upside down – make a crashing sound.

Where the technology really blows my mind, though, is through the Bluetooth connectivity between multiple smart bricks. This allows the bricks to share positioning information and relay data from their sensors to other bricks. In practice, this allows two models to interact, to play, fight or work together.

I spoke to Lego’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer, Julia Goldin and Tom Donaldson, Senior Vice President and Head of Creative Play Lab, about what this means for the Lego ecosystem, as well as Mike Ilacqua, Global Head of Product for Lego Star Wars and Chris Gollaher, Senior Manager for Product Development at Lucasfilm, about bringing Lego Star Wars to life.

A new chapter

For Lego, Smart Play is an enhancement to its existing product, rather than a new chapter, and is often compared to the Minifigures that were first introduced in 1978. “It gives new possibilities to the LEGO system in play, says Julia Goldin, Lego’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer. “I think that it's a very important step because we're not deviating from our core, we're building into the core.”

While some of the sounds and actions of the smart brick may be obvious, others will take a little more exploring to discover. Certain sounds may only happen through an unusual interaction – like the purring sound you get through gentle stroking of a Dewback in the Lego Star Wars Mos Eisley set. There’s no instruction manual for this, it’s there as a surprise.

“I think it has tremendous possibilities,” says Goldin. “There are nurturing behaviours, there are animal behaviours, there's interactions between people, there are cops and robbers, there's racing. The possibilities are endless.”

Lego insists that with this new technology, we’re not going to see yearly updates for newer, better bricks. “We're not coming in with a two-year hardware refresh cycle,” says Tom Donaldson, Senior Vice President and Head of Creative Play Lab at Lego. “We're investing in something that we believe will last for an extended period of time, with software upgrades rather than hardware upgrades.” Updates can be achieved over Bluetooth using the companion phone app, which is the only time a screen comes into use for Smart Play.

Screen-free play

During the CES keynote, Lego was keen to point out that using Smart Play is a screen-free experience for the play portion at least. “It’s not a message that we're anti-screen,” says Donaldson. “Screens tend to draw focus, so we did feel that it was important that we didn't have a screen to properly explore the other opportunities.”

Of course, the addition of tech means batteries, but Lego has an elegant solution to charging the bricks. A wireless tray is included in each set which is powered by USB. Up to two bricks can simply be placed on this tray and can be fully charged in under two hours. In use, the bricks will last for about an hour, depending on how heavily they are being used. “We found in some of our in-home tests that exceeds the amount of time that kids play for,” says Donaldson. Lego purposely wont fully charge the battery either, to help extend the life of the product.

In a galaxy far, far away

Though the Smart Play technology will no doubt be brought to a full range of products, the first sets are from the Lego Star Wars universe. This was no accident, and perhaps where this technology made the most sense. “We developed the play experience alongside the technology because we didn't want to have a situation where we developed the technology and then we tried to cram it into play,” says Goldin. “We opened it up to our designers to think about different potential areas where this technology can fit and the idea of epic Star Wars battles came up quite quickly.”

When kids play with Star Wars Lego, they naturally add their own sound effects to the play, so having the addition of the Smart Play sounds made sense. “It lends itself to epic storytelling and epic battles,” says Goldin. “We also wanted a partner who's very happy to work with us on something not tried before. Disney are also super focused on innovation, and they really embraced it.”

Recreating the iconic Star Wars sound effects meant that Lego had to get them sounding just right, which added pressure to the process. Ultimately, though, it helped to make the Smart Bricks even better. “You need something to hold the quality bar high to make sure you create a great product, so it was never a problem, says Donaldson. “It was a challenge, but it was a good challenge.”

A rebel alliance

Working directly with Lucasfilm and the Walt Disney Company, Lego was able to tap into the epic storytelling and iconic characters and vehicles of the Star Wars Galaxy. According to Mike Ilacqua, Global Head of Product for Lego Star Wars, it wasn’t the sound effects that were the hard part. “We know when you listen to the lightsaber sounds when they're battling, it sounds like lightsabers. When you listen to the X-Wing, it sounds like an X-Wing,” says Ilacqua. “The part that needed a little bit more thought was, are the characters are going to talk, what are they going to do? The important thing was making it language agnostic, but also getting the personalities to still come through. I think that's been achieved.”

Having the Smart Play on board allows kids to create their own story, as you can mix up the characters and go very much off-script from the regular Star Wars timeline. “That's what the kids get the most fun from,” says Ilacqua. “It's putting a character in the X-Wing that you would never normally expect, and have it behave like that character would. Maybe that character, even in the minifig for,m will be more frightened than a Darth Vader would have been, so you get those interactions. I think kids doing those things, taking it off story, having fun, and having it react in a way that might not be expected, I think that's part of what makes this so magical.”

All three of the initial Smart Play sets are based on the original trilogy of Star Wars films. These include Luke’s Red Five X-Wing, Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, a Throne Room duel and A-Wing set. Three more sets, including a Millennium Falcon, Mos Eisley Cantina and Landspeeder, were also teased. “We pretty quickly settled on starting with the original trilogy,” says Chris Gollaher, Senior Manager for Product Development at Lucasfilm. “One thing with Star Wars is it's a cross-generational, and we know that these are some of the sets, the characters that just have the widest appeal, and so it was a great place to start.”

While this new Smart Play system is definitely aimed at kids playing with Lego Star Wars toys, there’s no reason why we couldn’t see it come to those Lego Star Wars kits aimed at adults sometime in the future. “We definitely have designed this product line, you know, first and foremost with kids in mind,” says Gollaher. “We'll continue on the standard range of our LEGO Star Wars portfolio to build some amazing sets that are very much catered to adults in the Ultimate Collector Series and so forth. But I think one thing that we've learned over the 25-plus years of working together is that once you put a creative, something creative in our fans' hands, they will find really creative ways to use it.”

I can’t wait to see these Smart Play kits again when they go on sale in March, as well as what comes next. While none of the Lego team would be drawn on what products could come next, I’d be surprised if we don’t see the Smart Bricks in its Lego Speed Champions F1 cars and some of its other franchised themes, such as Batman, Harry Potter and Pokémon.