On its surface, Sixteen Tons looks like a large-scale boardgame, in which players move very heavy pieces around a four-by-four grid, trying to maneuver their pieces into a winning position.
This core gameplay is complicated by the fact that players can pay each other with real money. At the start of the game, each player takes out three one-dollar bills and this money is used to pay other players to move your pieces for you.

Playing the game becomes an experience that critically blurs work and play, as the real value of money is grafted onto the artificial meanings of the game, and player identitiy shifts fluidly back and forth from cooperation to competition. Winning the game requires both strategic thinking and social smarts and the rules are intentionally ambiguous about whether players keep each others’ money after a game.

team    Nathalie Pozzi | game designer Eric Zimmerman
walls   www.molodesign.com