i want more coins

i want more coins to buy more selves.

lego coins are worth ten, 100, 1,000, and 10,000. silver, gold, blue, purple.

they are scattered around the world. often in neat lines. often inside objects that when broken open burst out in a local shower, that then disappear quickly, blinking to show you their transience.

it costs various amounts for me to unlock different characters to play as in the world. 5,000 – 80,000 – 650,000.

the story of the game is over but I’ve only unlocked 30 out of 147 characters. to view what they’re worth and be able to buy them, this additional roster, i must conduct different tasks throughout the game. if i destroy the flags in time i get to see the price of, and buy, ‘X’.

but to buy them i need more coins. that’s like me irl, i need more coins to buy more of me, more clothes, more things to be in the world etc. never enough coins.

“it’s 1977 and we’ve seen too many ads!“

this game is based on the characters in comics published by DC, their associated dispersed portrayals across Warner Bros. media and anyone who was willing to be associated with them from within those corporate relationships (Conan O’Brien for instance) circa 2014.

the original comics themselves acted of course within a money system, i pay a dime or shilling or whatever and get a comic where i get to see more Batman, more Superman, more Martian Manhunter in the 50s. these characters are tokens of businesses selling you their envisioned narrative experiences, and, in the standard read of superhero/villain archetypes, stand-ins for power in the world.

so i get fake money, both virtual and in terms of being represented by a toy, to buy these figurines, all in the style of the animated LEGO toy, once i have enacted enough tasks in a world of locations also familiar from comics, films and more, to earn the right to see how much they cost.

this is the formula across all of the licenced games that LEGO, via studio Traveller’s Tales, and associates, have been making since my childhood.

throughout the past 30 years LEGO have obviously expanded in a varied collection of videogame experiences… recently being included in Fortnite which follows a similar formula, getting their own prestige racer game, other crap… and so the mill of video game LEGO, just like in its plastic block form, shall not be ceased or become tied to a specific mode.

however the licensed character collectors, these gacha adjactent classics, are surely the most recognised and beloved LEGO videogames, because of their association with massive American and British corporate character and narrative libraries.

they represent in my experience and enjoyment of them a deft use of the familiarity of capitalism to create a natural association of LEGO characters with purchasing power, the accumulation of wealth towards the pursuit of capitalist fulfilment of the broadness of identity. You cannot buy land, you will not be given land, but you can buy yourself, and representations of yourself, and you will be given the opportunity to, over and over.

a defence of corporate storytelling is that it is storytelling, and so contains within it the natural power to be able to overcome its capture, by acknowledgement and symbolic destruction of fascism and capitalism. this is bullshit. we know it is and LEGO knows it is better than anyone. the story of the destruction of a fascist empire in Star Wars makes a great playground in which you purchase your favourite characters virtually, whether they be fascist or no, just as Star Wars has always been a merchandising gimmick and money making machine.

the power of the story obviously didn’t go far enough to show the evil of darth vader and his stormtroopers if the intent was to condemn their names and spit on their graves. so how many planets do they need to gleefully blow up then to prove their capacity for inhumanity? or is it the fact that it is a ploy to sell you on the idea of darth vader as a character that you can buy access to the interiority of, hitler by way of the shopping mall, and that it always was that?

what LEGO do in these games is make the world inside the world. Batman buys access to the body of the Joker’s various henchmen via coins collected while destroying different incarnations of evil. Joker buys the body of Bruce Wayne, a seperate character, and becomes him with smooth transition.

Both are me, enacting the world of neoliberal identity ownership, self malleability within pre-written constraints, via virtual capitalism and these fictional, imagined constructs i have a fondness for. i have 177,010 coins. i want more. to buy more characters. because it’s fun. why is it fun? is it fun? or am i just going through the motions of fun?

it’d be naive and annoying to say that this is some new revelation about games, or that the most worrying piece of fascism deep inside me is this.

it’s more like, when i think of the experience of playing Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, i don’t think of the game, i can’t recommend it as art, i just know it as more of the same. and that’s maybe the important thing. these are microcosms of accumulation that lay out LEGO’s model of controlled, compelled and costed imagination for anyone ages 4-99.