Lego, Games, and me, too

I've been wanting to tell you about this project ever since I became involved with it, more than a year ago. As you can see from this article, it's finally been made public enough for me to write about.

I've only had a small role, actually, as an outside consultant. I got to help them create a format for their rules - one that would be clear enough, well-enough illustrated, as Lego-like as we could make it. I also got to help them think about the entire concept: the educational and social implications, the game system, online and off.

A hint - take a look at the image of the die. It's a Lego die. Note the different faces. Contemplate what it would be like if you could change the faces, like you can change anything Lego - build and rebuild them, even, perhaps, while you're playing a game with them. Think about the impact that might have on the game.

Another hint - think about playing on a board made of Lego pieces. You could redesign the board, if you wanted, couldn't you. You could move the start and finish, shrink or enlarge the board, add or remove obstacles. In other words, you could have exactly the kind of game I've been teaching about, designing, implementing - exactly the kind of board game, computer game, social game that I've been writing about ever since the Well-Played Game.

Which, by the way, is what led the Lego people to inviting me to this whole project. Because of a book by Salen and Zimmerman called Rules of Play, a book for computer game designers which brings the concept of the Well-Played Game to the design of online, multiplayer, role-playing games, which, further because, the leader of the new Lego initiative was astute enough to read.

What this particular Lego genius and profoundly insightful person had to show me was a group of board games, made out of Lego pieces. The real genius was not in his discovery that you could in fact make new and viable board games using Legos, but that you could make board games that could be changed, boards that could be redesigned, that you could let kids design their own variations, that you could make it possible for kids to learn how to design games that would be even more inclusive, and always "new," just as we did more than 30 years ago with the games we taught and created for the New Games Foundation. Only even more flexible, more responsive to the player/designers, and with board games.

I can't really tell you much more about this project or my future role in it, because it is still in the future. But I can, at last, share something promising with you, something positive, something new, something I am proud to have had even a small part in bringing to you, something empowering, something fun.




from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith