Digital Games Research Association

The Contribution of Branded Games for the LEGO Ninjago Brand Narrative

The study examines how branded video games contribute to brand narratives, arguing that prior research has treated such games mainly as vehicles for placement or persuasion while overlooking how game design itself embodies brand values.

• The study argues that branded games have been studied mainly as placement or persuasion tools, overlooking how game design itself embodies brand values, and proposes a three-layer framework (mechanical, semiotic, referential) that extends Aarseth's mechanic-semiotic model with a referential layer.
• The central concept, "additive comprehension," describes how players accumulate meaning across these layers rather than from any single one.
• Applied to The LEGO Ninjago Movie – The Videogame, the analysis finds the game works as a standalone Ninjago title, yet its layers ultimately subsume it under LEGO's broader narrative of creative construction.