There have been a massive amount of Lego games over the years, all the way from 1997’s fan favourite Lego Island to modern tie-ins with Star Wars, Harry Potter and Marvel.
But these games, much like the bricks themselves, are almost always rated as suitable for young children.
Fortnite, on the other hand, is rated PEGI 12 in the UK and EU, meaning it is considered suitable for children aged 12 and over. It has a similar rating in the US.
To deal with this, Mr Sussman said Epic had worked on parental controls and online safety features to make sure the game was suitable.
“One of the things that we recently implemented was a rating system, so each piece of content is rated appropriately for the audience,” he said.
“And we allow – through our parental controls – the parents to decide what type of content their kids will be able to see.
“As an example, [the Fortnite Lego mode] is E10+ rated, whereas Fortnite is T rated. We believe with that rating, we can appeal to the younger audiences and attract a whole new set of audiences that will come and experience Fortnite now.”
However, Fortnite has faced some criticism in the past, in particular from Prince Harry, who said in 2019 the game was “created to addict”.
But Eurogamer editor-in-chief Tom Phillips said such comments were often levied at video games in general.
“A lot of that criticism is: how do people spend their time, how are they interacting with other people on the internet?” he said.
Ultimately, he said people can choose which game to play based on their interests, and if they don’t like shooting games they can simply avoid them.
“Battle royale, by its very nature, you’re going to be in combat, you’re going to be shooting people. And there are people who either just don’t want to engage with that, or there are people who, like with Lego, are probably a bit too young for that.”
For Lego, it may be unknown what will come from the link-up with Fortnite but its chief product and marketing officer Julia Goldin said that was the price of ambition.
“Every collaboration and everything that you do, especially things that are ambitious, carry a lot of unknowns with them,” she said.
“We don’t yet know exactly how the game is going to land, what kids want to do versus what others would like to do, which things are gonna resonate and which things will not.
“So there are some plans already on the kinds of updates and new ideas that are going to be coming… other types of games that will start also being available on the Fortnite platform over the course of 2024.”