LEGO and the funsmith

As you know, over the last few years I've been doing some work with LEGO on the development of a new LEGO project called: LEGO Games. One of the annoying things about consulting on new game projects is that I can't share my excitement or, more importantly, my discoveries with you.

The site is now live enough (though still under development, and not, conceptually, available to people in the US), and a couple of my articles about the LEGO Games System are finally available for global sharing.

See:

• It's Never Too Late - Confessions of a LEGO Game Consultant - an interview in which I get to be retrospective about what I've been doing with and learning from LEGO.
  

• and Designing for Fun (Part One), followed immediately by Designing for Fun (Part Two) - I find myself impartially proud of the part I had in this small part of the LEGO Games website. I get to remind grown-ups about the fun and depth of learning we find when we get to re-invent the game we are playing.
  

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Share your LEGO genius

There's a photo-sharing site devoted entirely to LEGO creations. Given my late-life interest in all things LEGO, I was particularly struck by this instantiation of the extension of plastic play into the e-state. You make your LEGO thing. You take a digital picture of it. Upload it. And it becomes virtually permanent, a thing you made, for fun, out of LEGO - the very same LEGOs you are now using to make something else.

This connection between private and shared spaces redefines any form of art/play. Sandbox cityscapes, bubblebath buildings all can be collected, disseminated, documented, celebrated. It's a fundamental change in the nature and experience of fun.




from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Ramses Pyramid, Reiner Knizia, Microfigs, all part of the LEGO Games System

See the LEGO Games System dice (actually, it's a die, but they don't like using that word - sounds, I guess, too fatalistic)? See Reiner Knizia's name on the game (you know, probably the world's most ubiquitous game designer - the guy who must've invented at least 500 games by now)? See that teeny tiny playing piece - a.k.a. "microfig?" See some of the excitement this is already generating amongst the LEGO-loving masses? Even before they have experienced the game itself? Even though they haven't had a chance to design their own unique, personalized variations? Or seen even some of the many more games that make up the LEGO Games System?

Does this explain my excitement about having even a small part in the development of this concept? Does this in any way account for my delight in being able to share this all with you at last?

I'm thinking: "yes."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

My Introduction to the CEO of LEGO

Allow me to introduce the business card of the CEO of LEGO Corp.

So there I was, the evening after the LEGO Idea Conference and my two Junkyard Sports Tabletop Olympics workshops, at a private dinner for LEGO management, where I meet the actual CEO of the vast entity of LEGO itself. And I am at least beside myself with delight. Me, standing beside myself, neither of me having ever met a CEO of such a large company who was as visionary, as dedicated, as genuine, as unassuming, as deep thinking - who, by the way, has led the company to its most successful year, in the very same year that most toy companies and homeowners have had their least.

Sure, sure, I'm biased. I'm doing some consulting for LEGO, and, yes, I got to be part of a truly inspiring event where presenter after presenter, including the CEO, delivered genuinely visionary insights into children and play and art and music and innovation and creativity and, well, fun. Like, for example, the concept of Systematic Creativity - a philosophy that embraces LEGO products, purpose and management (see the sidebar on this page for a more detailed explanation), and artist Olafur Eliasson's exploration of the connections between art and science - both of which are characteristics of LEGO toys.

So, yes, you could say I was dazzled. And stayed dazzled all the way through dinner, and then, afer dinner, in the few minutes I had to thank him for letting me be part of all this, he gives me his business card - a LEGO "minifig" (that link, by the way, will take you to a site that allows you to construct your own virtual minifig). And, I have to tell you, if there had been a hole in the floor, I would have joyfully fallen through it.

Sure, sure, I want to have business cards just like his. But, see, the crucial piece here is what it means for there to be a toy company where playfulness comes from the very top. Let me tell you. I've worked with some of the biggest, and this dedication to playfulness is rare, very, very rare. And it's not just the CEO's business card that expresses the core value of playfulness. It's everywhere at LEGO. Not just LEGO corporate, but embedded in the product, the purpose, and all the people who work together to make it all work, together.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Denmark, day one

The day after I arrived in Billund, Denmark, for some workshops and consulting with Lego, I was greeted by my friend and Chief Happiness Officer, Alexander Kjerulf, and a few of his many associates (from left to right: Mareike Bulow, Roosevelt Finlayson, your local funsmith, our Lego associate, Alexander, Michael Bech Bendix, and Bjarne Tveskov).

So we introduced each other to ourselves, and we shmoozed fascinatingly, and then, right in the middle of the Hotel Legoland lounge, we got up and played actual games.

Mr. Finlayson, it so happens, is from the Bahams, where he conducts programs he calls "Festival in the Workplace." His theory is that there is much for businesses to learn about the nature of work, just by recognizing the amazing amount of dedication and devotion that goes in to producing a Carnivale, all without salary or job title, all for fun. So, after we played my current most favorite of pointless games, Sound and Fury, he taught us one of his - a children's circle dance called Brown Girl.

And then we sat down, exhausted in glee, feeling as if we had known each other at least half a lifetime, and shmoozed some more,, until someone noticed that I was fighting myself to stay awake, and we hugged, and we took this picture, and we left each other amidst echoes of probably unforgettable delight.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Restoring Fun

Winding my way along a tree-lined, dirt-and-gravel "art walk" that winds its artful way past the Hotel Legoland, across a creek, through trees and, here and there, a remarkable sculpture, I paused by an overflowing trash basket, and caught the following train of thought:

It was the second or third time that I took this particular walk and passed this particular trash. And this time, just as I got near the trash, I was thinking about fun, and the patent absurdity of my stated purpose - namely to "make the world more fun." And this time, I guess because I was thinking about fun and the world, I was reminded of signs I saw in an Jerusalem park that I also walked through - signs that said something like "if you didn't clean it up, you made it dirty."

It was funny, and so was I. Every time I passed that unsightly spill of cigarette boxes and knotted bags of dog poop, it made my walk just a little less fun. And this time, thinking about fun, remembering that sign, I actually stopped myself, picked up the trash, and restored a little bit of the fun of that small part of the world and my walk. It wasn't that I had made it unpleasant. But I certainly had left it unpleasant.

And then I continued my walk. And because I was present enough to take on the responsibility, I was more present all the way back to the hotel. A certain, very definite sense of fun was restored to me, and to the people who wouldn't notice, but would appreciate the art path a little more.

Restoring fun. Being a guy who likes the play of everything, I just gotta love the play of meaning that those words create. The fun is itself restoring. The fun is itself restored, as was my fun, as was my self, as was my world.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

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