Dear Reader:
TT Games discusses the start of the LEGO franchise
A portion of an ONM interview with Traveller’s Tales’ head of production, Jonathon Smith…
ONM: How did the original idea for LEGO Star Wars come about?
Jonathon Smith: LEGO Star Wars really came to life in an early demo produced by a small team at Traveller’s Tales. It was just a very short cutscene - a room and a corridor, with only a few characters and limited animation - but it showed instantly how fun and fresh the game would turn out to be.
The lovely people at Lucasfilm were kind enough to listen to our proposal, and trusted us to build on that demo. From the first meeting, they were incredibly supportive and helpful, and the team just had a lot of fun!
ONM: How does your partnership with LEGO and the owners of the franchises work exactly?
JS: We’re privileged to work with some of the best-loved characters in the world and we’ve been fantastically lucky to have had amazing support from all the people who look after those fictional universes. Everything we do gets checked over but because everyone on the team here has always been genuine fans of the worlds we’ve explored in LEGO form, we very rarely get anything wrong!