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A group of about eight children conceived and launched Legotown. Other children were eager to join the project, but as the city grew — and space and raw materials became more precious — the builders began excluding other children.

Occasionally, Legotown leaders explicitly rebuffed children, telling them that they couldn't play. Typically the exclusion was more subtle, growing from a climate in which Legotown was seen as the turf of particular kids. The other children didn't complain much about this; when asked about Legos, they'd often comment vaguely that they just weren't interested in playing with Legos anymore. As they closed doors to other children, the Legotown builders turned their attention to complex negotiations among themselves about what sorts of structures to build, whether these ought to be primarily privately owned or collectively used, and how "cool pieces" would be distributed and protected. These negotiations gave rise to heated conflict and to insightful conversation. Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society

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If you go about halfway down, you'll see a section called, "Exploring Power". The game the teachers set up was incredible.

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To build on Drew's breakthrough comment about the pleasure and unease that comes with wielding power, and to highlight the experience of those who are excluded from power, we designed a Lego trading game with built-in inequities. We developed a point system for Legos, then skewed the system so that it would be quite hard to get lots of points. And we established just one rule: Get as many points as possible. The person with the most points would create the rules for the rest of the game. Our intention was to create a situation in which a few children would receive unearned power from sheer good luck in choosing Lego bricks with high point values, and then would wield that power with their peers.

... We introduced the Lego trading game to the children by passing a bin of Legos around the circle, asking each child to choose 10 Legos; we didn't say anything about point values or how we'd use the bricks. Most children chose a mix of colored Lego bricks, though a few chose 10 of one color. Liam took all eight green Legos, explaining that green is his favorite color; this seemingly straightforward choice altered the outcome of the game.

When everyone had their Legos, the teachers announced that each color had a point value: The more common the brick color, the fewer the points it was worth, while the scarcest brick color, green, was worth a whopping five points.

Right away, there were big reactions.

...We didn't linger with the children's reactions, but carried on with the game, explaining that the object of the game was to trade Lego pieces in an effort to get the most points. Kids immediately began to calculate how they'd trade their pieces, and dove into trading. Several children shadowed Liam, pleading with him to give them a green — but he refused.

After a few minutes of trading, we rang a bell and children added up their scores. Liam and Kyla had scores that far out-totaled those of the other children. Kendra asked them each to create a rule, explaining that we'd play another round of the game, following the new rules and aiming for the same goal: to get the most points possible.

We expected that the winners would make rules to ensure that they would win the next round — for instance, "All greens are worth 50 points," or, "You can only win if your name starts with a K." We were surprised at what happened.

Liam instituted this rule: "You have to trade at least one piece. That's a good rule because if you have a high score at the beginning, you wouldn't have to trade, and that's not fair."

Kyla added this rule to the game: "If you have more than one green, you have to trade one of them."

With these new rules on the books, we held a second short round of trading, then rang the bell and added up points. Liam, Kyla, and Lukas won this round. The three winners grinned at each other as we gathered in a circle to debrief the game. Before we could launch a conversation as teachers, the children's raw emotion carried us into a passionate exchange.

...When the teaching staff met to reflect on the Lego trading game, we were struck by the ways the children had come face-to-face with the frustration, anger, and hopelessness that come with being on the outside of power and privilege. During the trading game, a couple of children simply gave up, while others waited passively for someone to give them valuable pieces. Drew said, "I stopped trading because the same people were winning. I just gave up." In the game, the children could experience what they'd not been able to acknowledge in Legotown: When people are shut out of participation in the power structure, they are disenfranchised — and angry, discouraged, and hurt.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
I sometimes wonder if the video games Civilization and SimCity contributed to my right of center streak.

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SimCity is based on the capitalist expansion model if I read the EA summary properly. I have a few questions.

Does global warming affect SimCity?.

Do the Sims have proportional voting?.

How does Sim Mayor deal with downloading and reduced transfers from Sim Capital ?.

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Drew said, "I stopped trading because the same people were winning. I just gave up."

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to me this is what has to happen before Capitalism can be defeted...

With Sim City all the industry was polluting so I spent more time on building nice cities for all instead of ugly rich ones.

Same with Civilisation where I used to have as many happy people (for points) and as few army units as possible. Not exactly the sort of thing someone playing the Celts as "MacDeath" should be doing. Although I do remember attacking the English and Americans repeatedly but never destroying them, so London and Washington never left the bronze age. So maybe on Civ you might have a point.

Fidel, in Civilisation pollution is a major factor and if you use nukes (either as weapons or for power) there can be serious consequences. You can also have communism as your economic system which penalises you economically (it's an American game after all) but is very good for guilt free attacks on the English - which is the whole point of playing as the Celts. They're also very good for spies, bribing other nations units to your side and causing riots in your opponents cities which makes for very painless conquest.

Although I haven't played in years it still was fun at the time. Now it seems kinda nerdish.

I think the point in all of this is it's how you play the game and what you consider to be important. This legfo experiment proves this as well and the teachers definitely tried to teach this important lesson.

[ 16 April 2007: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]