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LEGO Dimensions Meets Doctor Who | 8 LEGO Dimensions meets Doctor Who | 8 MONOGRÁFICO LEGO Dimensions meets Doctor Who: Transbranding and New Dimensions of Transmedia Storytelling? LEGO Dimensions conoce a Doctor Who: Transmarca y Nuevas Dimensiones de la Narrativa Transmedia? Matt Hills Professor of Film and TV Studies, Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies (Aberystwyth University) -Artículo invitado- Reception date: 28 de septiembre de 2015 To cite this article: Hills, M. (2016): LEGO Dimensions meets Doctor Who: Transbranding and New Dimensions of Transmedia Storytelling?, Icono 14, volumen (14), pp. 8-29. doi: 10.7195/ri14.v14i1.942 DOI: ri14.v14i1.942 | ISSN: 1697-8293 | Año 2016 Volumen 14 Nº 1 | ICONO14 9 | Matt Hills MONOGRÁFICO Abstract This article explores how the ‘toys-to-life’ videogame LEGO Dimensions (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment/Traveller’s Tales/The LEGO Group, 2015) mashes up many different franchise storyworlds and brands. Specifically, I focus on how Doctor Who (BBC, 1963—), the British TV science fiction series, is licensed and transmedially engaged with in Dimensions. I consider how the transbranding of LEGO Dimensions appears to co-opt children’s “transgressive play” (Nørgård and Toft-Nielsen, 2014) by combining intellectual properties, but actually continues to operate according to logics of shared corporate ownership where many of the combined storyworlds are ultimately owned by Time Warner (placing Dimensions in competition with Disney’s own ‘toys-to-life’ game). Considering what value might accrue to the brand of Doctor Who by participating in LEGO Dimensions, I identify this as a particular example of “What If?” transmedia (Mittell, 2015), arguing that LEGO Dimensions’ Doctor Who nevertheless fluctuates in terms of its brand (in)authenticity. The Starter Pack remains closer to LEGO Games’/Traveller’s Tales’ established format, subordinating Who, whilst the separate Level Pack engages more precisely with Doctor Who’s history, albeit still displaying some notable divergences from the TV series (Booth, 2015). Although LEGO Dimensions challenges influential theories of transmedia storytelling (Jenkins, 2006; Aldred, 2014), its transbranding and child/adult targeting accord with established ap- proaches to transmedia licensing (Santo 2015) and fan-consumer socialization (Kind- er 1991). Key Words LEGO games - Doctor Who - Transmedia - Transbranding - Storyworlds - Fandom Resumen Este artículo explora la forma en que el videojuego que anima los tradicionales juguetes LEGO, LEGO Dimensions (Warner Bross Interactive Entertainment/Traveller’s Tale/The LEGO Group, 2015) mezcla distintos mundos de ficción y marcas de franqui- cia. Me centro particularmente en cómo Doctor Who (BBC, 1936—), la serie británica de ciencia ficción, consigue intervenir transmedialmente en el propio Dimensions. Presto atención al modo en que mediante la combinación de distintas propiedades intelectuales, el carácter transmarca de LEGO Dimensions parece apropiarse de cierta ICONO14 | Año 2016 Volumen 14 Nº 1 | ISSN: 1697-8293 | DOI: ri14.v14i1.942 LEGO Dimensions meets Doctor Who | 10 MONOGRÁFICO “dimensión transgresora del juego” infantil (Nørgård y Toft-Nielsen, 2014), aunque en realidad continúa funcionando desde una lógica de propiedad corporativa compar- tida en la que muchos de los mundos de ficción combinados son en esencia propie- dad de Time Warner (colocando el Dimensions en relación de competitividad con los videojuegos de juguetes animados propiedad de Disney). En cuanto al valor que la marca Doctor Who puede adquirir con su intervención en LEGO Dimesions, lo identifico como un ejemplo particular de un “¿Qué pasaría si...?” transmedial (Mittell, 2015), arguyendo que en todo caso el Doctor Who de LEGO Dimensions fluctúa en términos de la (no)autenticidad de su marca. Mientras el tratamiento de Who en el Pack de Inicio es bastante fiel al formato establecido en los juegos de LEGO/Traveller’s Tales, en el Pack de Nivel, vendido a parte, se integra de forma más precisa la historia de Doctor Who, si bien aquí manifiesta destacables diferencias con la serie de televisión (Booth, 2015). Aunque LEGO Dimensions desafía teorías dominantes sobre narrativa trans- media (Jenkins, 2006; Aldred, 2014), su carácter transmarca y su público potencial infantil/adulto coinciden con los propuestos por las aproximaciones establecidas sobre la concesión transmedia (Santo, 2015) y sobre la socialización del consumidor-fan (Kinder, 1991). Palabras Clave LEGO games - Doctor Who - Transmedia - Transmarca - Mundo de ficción - Fandom 1. Introduction Transmedia storytelling has often been seen as creating a coherent and consist- ent storyworld across different media platforms. Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca (2014, p.297) suggest that transmedial worlds should display “three dimensions” of authenticity: extending the “mythos” (establishing story), “topos” (setting in space and time) and “ethos” (characters’ moral codes) of a narrative universe, or what I’ve termed a “hyperdiegesis” (Hills, 2002, p.137). And when developing the concept of transmedia storytelling, Henry Jenkins stressed how More and more, storytelling has become the art of world building, as artists create compelling environments that cannot be fully explored or exhausted within a single work or even a single medium. The world is bigger than the film DOI: ri14.v14i1.942 | ISSN: 1697-8293 | Año 2016 Volumen 14 Nº 1 | ICONO14 11 | Matt Hills MONOGRÁFICO [or TV series], bigger even than the franchise – since fan speculations and elab- orations also expand the world in a variety of directions... World-making follows its own market logic… in the business of creating licensed goods (Jenkins, 2006, pp.114—5). But what happens to this account of world-building when storyworlds from multiple franchises are brought together? I will focus on the ‘toys-to-life’ game LEGO Dimensions (Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment/Traveller’s Tales/The LEGO Group,2015), where physical LEGO minifigures such as the Doctor, along with the TARDIS – the Doctor’s time-travelling vehicle that outwardly resembles a 1960s UK Police Box – can be built materially and then spawned in digital gameplay. LEGO Dimensions – much like Disney’s Infinity 3.0 – thus combines haptic and digital gaming as well as mashing-up assorted media brands. Of course, LEGO has a longer history of “co-branding” with different media licens- es; Star Wars LEGO has attracted its own fanbase (Geraghty, 2014, p.164). But LEGO Dimensions is less about the blending of LEGO with one property, and more about the “multifannishness” (Stein, 2015, p.171) of transbranding, as multiple intellectual properties (IPs) are drawn together, all of them mediated through LEGO as a unifying dimension. There is not a singular storyworld being expand- ed through toys and games here; instead multiple worlds (The Simpsons, Scooby Doo, The Wizard of Oz, Batman, The LEGO Movie, Back to the Future, The Lord of the Rings etc) playfully intersect, raising questions over whether, and how, the “authenticity” of storyworlds can be conserved (Harvey, 2015, pp.3—4). As Jessica Aldred has argued: “rather than expanding the franchise storyworld es- tablished in the films they are based on, according to the logic of Henry Jenkins’ influential theory…, LEGO games tend to revel in the repetition and even paro- dy of their source material’s most famous scenes” (2014, p.107). If LEGO games already have a distinctive relationship to transmedia storytelling – premised on the transformative retelling of key moments – then I will consider how this is enacted in a transbranding environment. Given that LEGO Dimensions mashes up so many franchises, extensive study could be undertaken of the ramifications for each one. Partly due to limitations of space, but also due to my own established research interests (Hills, 2015) as well ICONO14 | Año 2016 Volumen 14 Nº 1 | ISSN: 1697-8293 | DOI: ri14.v14i1.942 LEGO Dimensions meets Doctor Who | 12 MONOGRÁFICO as an emergent body of work on Doctor Who games (both physical and digital: see Evans, 2013; Perryman, 2014; Booth, 2015), my focus will be on how Doctor Who is remediated in LEGO Dimensions. Originally a BBC TV programme which began in 1963 and was reinvented by BBC Wales in 2005, Doctor Who features a time-trav- elling ‘Time Lord’ who can ‘regenerate’ his body, and who can therefore be played by different actors. Thirteen actors have portrayed this main role on television to date, with Peter Capaldi being the current incumbent. Featured in this LEGO game via specially recorded voice acting, Capaldi plays the twelfth Doctor (John Hurt having played the ‘War Doctor’ in the 50th anniversary special, ‘The Day of the Doctor’). I will begin by considering how the ‘Whoniverse’ is combined with other sto- ryworlds in the LEGO Dimensions Starter Pack, before moving on to address how the add-on Level Pack reworks Doctor Who in a series of ways, some of which can be read as ‘authentic’ to the expansive transmedial world of the show (Wolf, 2012, p.135), and some of which seem distinctly inauthentic, even within the remit of LEGO’s transformative playfulness. First, though, how is Doctor Who integrated into the multiple franchises and “world-sharing” (Derek Johnson, 2013, p.109) of LEGO Dimensions? 2. Transbranding: Storyworlds as Building Blocks With its hashtag #breaktherules, Dimensions promises to go beyond the cor- porate norms of co-branding, bringing many franchises into creative dialogue. Established storyworlds are not a mythos to be elaborated upon so much as the raw material that can be bolted together; storyworlds seemingly become objects to be manipulated rather than hyperdiegetic spaces to be expanded, each assigned a level in the Starter Pack. In an excellent study of how “LEGO at its very core is characterized by play- ful seriality and movements across materials, media, and modalities—oscillat- ing, centrally, between tangible bricks, digital bits, and blockbuster worlds” (2014, p.173), Rikke Toft Nørgård and Claus Toft-Nielsen identify three differ- ent modalities of play practices with LEGO: transmitted, transformational and DOI: ri14.v14i1.942 | ISSN: 1697-8293 | Año 2016 Volumen 14 Nº 1 | ICONO14 13 | Matt Hills MONOGRÁFICO transgressive play.
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