Using technology to get kids to play together

Lego’s new Smart Play system, announced at CES earlier this week, is an embrace of digital technology the likes of which we haven’t seen from the company before. And while the demonstration it gave on Monday was a good start towards showing just what Lego’s Smart Brick is capable of, there’s no substitute for seeing it in person. Fortunately, an extended demo answered a lot of my questions on how the system will work once kids and adults get their hands on the first round of sets with Smart Play.

As I detailed yesterday, the Smart Play system contains three elements. The Smart Brick is packed with technology like proximity sensors, an accelerometer, color sensors and a speaker, all powered by a tiny chip. It’s crucial to know that each Smart Brick is identical at this point; to really bring a set to life, you need to combine it with Smart Tags or Smart Minifigures. Both the Tags and Minifigures contain specific instructions that help the Brick understand the context that it is placed in.

The demo started out simply, with three small Lego builds: a car, a helicopter and a duck. Each of those builds had a unique Smart Tag that the Smart Brick uses to understand how it should respond to real-world stimulus. The car started making the sound of a revving engine, and when playing with it to drive it faster and more aggressively, the engine made more noise. Tilting the car would cause it to make some screeching sounds as if it was taking corners hard, and flipping it over would make the sound of a car wreck.

The Smart Brick can similarly sense what specific Smart Minifigures is near it and respond accordingly. Since the first three Smart Play sets are all based on Star Wars, it’s a little easier to explain how they interact with the Smart Brick. Take the Throne Room Duel & A-Wing set — it includes Smart Minifigs for Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine, and there are also Smart Tags that correspond to various actions the characters can take. If you place a Smart Brick behind Palpatine’s throne, the classic “Imperial March” theme will ring out and Palpatine himself will chatter a bit. The Minifigures don’t actually say real words, but they can still embody their characters well enough. Vader, for example, offers his classic breathing sound and exclaim if he’s defeated in a light saber duel.

That duel is a clever part of this set. There are moveable mounts you can place Luke and Vader on, along with a Smart Brick. To complete the battle scene, a Smart Tag tells the brick to take on the characteristics necessary for a light saber battle. As such, when you place the Minifigures in the mount, you’ll hear the classic sound of a light saber humming to life. And if you move the characters around and crash them together, you’ll hear the sounds of battle. Finally, knocking a Minifigure off its spot will tell the brick associated with that character to make their trademark sound of defeat — in Vader’s case, that’s the iconic “noooooooo.”

The other two new Smart Play sets are Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter and Luke’s Red Five X-Wing — an ideal pair for some space-based dogfighting. The X-Wing shows off how good the Smart Brick is at handling multiple inputs. Adding it to the X-Wing will make sounds of the ship humming to life, thanks to the X-Wing-specific Smart Tile. Sit Luke in the cockpit and you’ll hear the Jedi theme music play, and seating R2-D2 in the back will make the Droid chatter at you in its familiar tones.

Pitting the two ships against each other shows off more of the Smart Brick’s capabilities. Grabbing the ships and whooshing them through the air will make the Smart Brick play sounds that aren’t just generic engine noises — you can definitely hear the difference between the X-Wing and the TIE fighter. Each ship also has lasers you can activate, and if two kids are in the same room flying ships around and firing off lasers, you’ll hear the ships taking “damage” as well. Firing enough shots while aiming at another ship will eventually cause it to play some exploding sounds to indicate that it has gone up in flames — the Minifigures associated with the ship will also make sounds of dismay, as well.

At first glance, the sets themselves don’t feel wildly different than other smaller-scale Star Wars sets, but the people from the Lego Group giving the demo pointed out a few notable characteristics. The TIE fighter and X-Wing are both specifically designed to withstand more abuse from active play scenarios than the average Lego set, and they’re also specifically designed to fit will in a kid’s hand so they can run around and propel them through the air. The Throne Room set, meanwhile, has a detachable area where Luke and Vader can battle — you can remove and re-attach it to the throne area easily enough, but it’s good to separate it out for more aggressive light saber battles.

All told, I’m quite excited to see where Lego goes with its Smart Play system from here. Starting out with some simpler sets from a massive franchise like Star Wars is a logical way to introduce the system. There are obvious play scenarios that make perfect sense as a way to show off the Smart Brick. But I’m looking forward to a time when Lego starts selling tiles and Minifigures that can expand the capabilities of existing sets, whether they’re licensed or not. And the idea of smushing together Star Wars with some of the many other properties that Lego has access to (Jurassic World? DC or Marvel? Despicable Me or Bluey?) feels like just the kind of chaotic fun kids will love having.

That’s perhaps the most important point about Smart Play. While Lego has made major overtures for capturing the hearts and wallets of adult Lego fans, Smart Play is very clearly aimed at kids right now. There are no screens, apps or setup needed for Smart Play — it seems exceedingly easy to just pick up and start playing. Furthermore, Lego is using this technology to make Lego sets more interactive, something the company hopes will encourage more social play amongst kids. That’s a solid use of the technology packed into a Smart Brick if you ask me.