This is literally a big question, but let’s debate it. In 10 or 20 years time, when we look back at this period of time, which product will have had a bigger impact on culture as a whole: LEGO or Minecraft?
I think the older folks amongst us, those that grew up with LEGO, learned with LEGO, we might be inclined to say that Minecraft couldn’t possible have had the same impact. To us, Minecraft is just another video game, another source of cool YouTube videos.
But what about the kids growing up with Minecraft today, or the children growing up with Minecraft tomorrow. Do these kids still care about LEGO?
In a decade or so, where will the dial lie? It’s an interesting question I think, and I’d like to hear your answers!
Comments
18 responses to “The Big Question: Minecraft Or LEGO”
Why not both? In Minecraft you can spend hours building your dream house, fill it with TNT and blow it up, move on, rinse and repeat. Minecraft has all the toys for you to play with or you could spend it exploring a vast world.
Lego, because it’s more hands on, there is no better feeling than going through a large box and finding the piece you need and the simple joy of saying every swear word under the sun when you step on a piece.
Can you see a straight yellow four?
Conversely, there is no worse feeling than going through a large box piece by piece, knowing the piece you need is there somewhere, and then reaching the end without having found it and having to start all over again. I remember it could sometimes take me half an hour or so to thoroughly search my drawstring mat/bag…
I’ve got about $1500 worth of Lego sitting in my cupboard that I bought when I was 28. No way I’d spend that kind of money on anything Minecraft related.
Oh and your poll pages on the mobile version of the site are still broken.
LEGO, because it’s a cross-generational, physical, and revered product.
My dad plays Minecraft with my nephew on the xbox. I’m pretty sure it’s cross-generational also.
LEGO all the way
would we have had minecraft if we didn’t have lego?
I know my first thought was this was a Lego game.
Well, Minecraft never made me swear loyalty to creatures of darkness to make the pain of walking on a brick go away
LEGO.
A LEGO brick from today will still work with one from the past, and that will most likely still be true 30 years from now. I think technology moves too fast for Minecraft to be supported that long.
Minecraft you can build cool stuff, but LEGO is a whole world limited only by your imagination. You want a pirate, a ninja and a dinosaur to go on an epic space quest to defeat evil robot Batman? Go for it.
10 / 10 – Would watch the movie version.
Awesome answer!
LEGO
I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive, because they tap into the same instinct of “build shit,” but LEGO has been a force for 50+ years
Minecraft. Once you remove nostalgia from the equation, lego has nothing going for it that minecraft doesn’t also have. It also have dynamic elements, world interaction(as in, weather, fluids, etc) and the whole neverending aspect going for it. At to this the internet generation and it’s no show.
Going to take a few years but it’ll end up having more interaction in the whole world, where lego was just sort of stuck in the dorky parts of unconnected anglobedrooms.
LEGO for sure. I think even if Minecraft is as fondly remembered by kids today as people my age remember LEGO, LEGO will endure long after people are sick of Minecraft and Mojang have been forgotten.
That said, LEGO derives a lot of it’s modern value from the video games and less from people actually building stuff with the little plastic bricks.
Maybe that blurs the lines of what LEGO really means to people, because in my day it was building the set once, losing the instructions, and adding the pieces to the big red bucket (or whatever huge plastic box you had lying around) when your mum insisted it was time to put all the shit away.
To this day I wish I was wealthy enough to buy all the LEGO and have a whole room of my house set aside for the preservation of it, whereas I will delete old unused Minecraft maps without a second thought.
I don’t think so.
– “In 2013 we increased our sales by 11%, outperforming the general toy market”
– “In 2013 evergreen product lines, such as LEGO® City, LEGO DUPLO®, LEGO Technic and LEGO Creator, all grew double digit. LEGO Friends, launched in 2012, showed its long term potential by also growing double digit in 2013”
People are buying more physical LEGO bricks, not less. Those are 2013 results, and I think 2014 results are going to be crazy with people buying LEGO Movie sets.
http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/news-room/2014/february/annual-result-2013
I meant in terms of it being a cultural phenomenon rather than sales numbers, but your point is well taken.
Well, given that Mincraft is like a digital LEGO, and then it got turned into real LEGO, it’s pretty obvious who the real winner is here. DUPLO!
DUPLO, by a far margin. My two-and-a-half year old and I have a race to build towers taller than her before her block placement creates sufficient instability for complete collapse.