LEGO 2K Drive was both initially leaked and then properly announced recently, to the praise of basically anyone who is in the 4-99 age bracket.
It is a slam dunk on all counts – a beloved property with an aesthetic that lends well to customisation and just general fun? In the fun genre of racing? Even a professional cynic would struggle to resist cracking a smile.
However, in my digging around for more information about how the games imagination-leveraging customisation system might work, I kept finding a few thorns on this rose. Key terms and descriptors that have been causing a lot of eye-rolling recently – and for good reason.
Simply put, the game is chock full of those ugly systems that most gamers have long grown tired of. In a piece on Wccftech, an interview with LEGO 2K Drive’s creative director Brian Silva confirms that the game is considered a “Live Service” title, with a “Drive Pass” and “Premium currency in-game store”.
It reads like a bingo sheet of terms that sap the enthusiasm from an excited audience. Honestly, if you set out and dot point the stuff confirmed to be within/adjacent to LEGO 2K Drive, it isn’t a pretty list:
- Live Service model
- Battle Pass
- In-game, premium currency store
- Pre-order exclusives
- Collectors edition exclusives, with 2 tiers of special edition
The only term missing from this list to make it the ideal villain line up is lootboxes, but they have been routinely boo’d from all sides.
A quick jaunt around the discussion hubs for the game absolutely reveals the cracks showing in peoples’ enthusiasm. Most new games definitely incorporate some of these systems, but here we are seeing all of them, in a game that will definitely have a big child audience. Brian actually addresses this, explaining that the title will have a system available to parents to try and block spending:
Safety and responsibility was a top priority for us when creating Lego 2K Drive. To ensure parents can make the right decisions for their kids, to make purchases a player must create a 2K Account. If the player is underage, their account must be verified by an adult, who then has the ability to block in-game money purchases.
Which is neat, I guess. Just means that Timmy will need to get Mum and/or Dad to supervise the use of the credit card.
I personally already had a red flag go up when I saw the spread of purchase options for the game, and saw a gulf of content between each edition of the game – beyond simply providing immediate access to it’s version of a Battle Pass:
@DegenerateJay I was really looking forward to Lego 2K Drive, til I went on their website and read this. I get it's not Traveller's Tale Games developing it, but this is literally meant to be a kids game, and they got predatory microtransactions (locking content behind a paywall) pic.twitter.com/2gg0vbHaQe
— MalachyTheDemon_official ☘️ (@MALACHY_Officia) March 24, 2023
Personally my reaction to any one of these systems within a game is one of ambivalence. While it’s a murky subject, ongoing revenue (when done properly) can be a huge benefit to a game’s long term strategy. But it always comes down to a delicate balance, and hopefully a a healthy level of respect to the player base. What alarms me is the presence of all these items within a game that wears the studded, blocky mask of LEGO.
Will anything change between now and release? Probably not. But we are at least seeing a great deal of fatigue within the gaming community when it comes to aggressive monetisation, so there is always hope that this sentiment will manifest in some kind of outcome, eventually.
LEGO 2K Drive releases on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch and PC on May 19.
How are you feeling about LEGO 2K Drive? Are these systems going to impact your enjoyment? Let us know in the comments or on our social media.
Shoutout to Wccftech.
