Banning Legos And building a world where "all structures will be standard sizes."

Perhaps you’ve heard about the schools that have banned tag. Ordodgeball. Or stories about pigs.

If so, you won’t be surprised to hear that the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle has banned Legos.

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COVER STORY: Why We Banned Legos

By Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin

Our school-age childcare program — the "Big Kids" — involves 25 children and their families. The children, ages 5 through 9, come to Hilltop after their days in elementary school, arriving around 3:30 and staying until 5:30 or 6:00. Hilltop is located in an affluent Seattle neighborhood, and, with only a few exceptions, the staff and families are white; the families are upper-middle class and socially liberal. Kendra is the lead teacher for the Big Kid program; two additional teachers, Erik and Harmony, staff the program. Ann is the mentor teacher at Hilltop, working closely with teachers to study and plan curriculum from children's play and interactions.

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 — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.

Then, tragedy struck Legotown and we saw an opportunity to take strong action.

Hilltop is housed in a church, and over a long weekend, some children in the congregation who were playing in our space accidentally demolished Legotown.

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10 LEGO games we’d love to see

Forget Batman and Indy – here’s what someone needs to make NOW

Words: Mikel Reparaz

Nobody really expected Lego Star Wars to be as good as it was, or to sell as well as it did, when the game dropped in 2005 - but developer Traveller's Tales surprised us all by turning what should have been the ultimate crappy licensed game into a fun, well-designed runaway hit. Since then, the Lego-game dynasty has grown to include Indiana Jones and Batman, both based on existing Lego toy lines, and both fun despite being essentially the same game.

However, Lego's fast running out of marketable licenses. And with its increasingly same-y action-platformers in danger of eventually falling victim to diminishing returns, it's time for the Lego brand to defy convention, tap its true potential and branch out in bold new directions. (Unless, that is, you really want to see a Lego Speed Racer game. Based on the 2008 movie.Yeah, that's what we thought.)

We're talking, of course, about adapting other awesome licenses. Here's what we suggest:

Of all the film franchises that Lego doesn't currently hold a license for, this is probably the biggest no-brainer for Lego conversion. It's a trilogy (Traveller'sTales seems to like three-part stories), it's insanely popular among gamers and it's filled with memorable locations and cool action set-pieces that could easily translate into a great, hacky-slashy platformer.

Taking control of Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Frodo, Gandalf, Pippin, Boromir, Merry, Sam or whoever else the current level demanded, you could hop, shoot and slash your way through the entire trilogy, from the first journey out of the Shire to the siege of Mordor. As unlikely as it sounds. a Lego take on the story could be its most complete, in-depth game adaptation to date - or at least a hell of a lot better than the 2003 Return of the King game.

The Lego angle: Simple-looking characters and current-gen processing power mean that battles like Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields might finally approach the grand scale seen in the movies. And the series' diverse cast of heroes and distinct villains is big enough to fill out Free Play squads that could dwarf anything seen in Lego Star Wars.

Also, Legolas' name would take on added significance. We're just saying.

Whether it's a brick-by-brick adaptation of the games or just a straight up Grand Theft Auto: Legoland, this makes so much sense it's almost inevitable. Yeah, yeah - corrupting cute things with adult things is always funny, and vice versa. But that's far from the only reason this should happen. Over the years, the Lego brand has come to represent near-limitless creativity and freedom; so, in its way, has GTA. Combine the two, and you end up with a hyperviolent, unabashedly silly romp through an open world that could theoretically be unmade and remade in any way players saw fit.

2002's long-forgotten Island Xtreme Stunts went halfway there, by creating a Lego sandbox game filled with vehicles to drive. Now it's time to go all the way.

The Lego angle: OK, so a freely transformable Lego city is probably an unrealistic goal, but that doesn't mean the shift to Legos couldn't bring some unique twists to the gameplay. For example, why settle for just stealing cars when you could build your own out of conspicuous piles of bricks? Also, if the cars, buildings and even people you destroy can simply be picked up and snapped back together, you're not actually doing anything that horrible. An E10+ rating is virtually assured.

The Matrix isn t just a movie trilogy - it's a movie trilogy that's never gotten a quality videogame adaptation, despite clearly being perfect for one. A Lego take on the series could change that, and the Matrix movies have all the right elements: a big cast of heroes with complementary talents, just as many memorable baddies and a ton of stylish action sequences that focus on hand-to-hand combat.

Above: Not exactly hand-to-hand combat

Ideally, you'd play as Neo for much of the game, with his god-like Matrix powers being key to solving most of the game's puzzles. Tag-team partners like Morpheus, Trinity, Niobe and Ghost would fill out the rest of the roster, and the addition of bullet time and balletic, slow-motion gunplay would make this unlike any Lego game to come before. Also, all of the nagging guilt that comes whenever the good guys blow away cops would be dulled considerably, because said cops would just be plastic toys.

Above: YES MAKE THIS NOW ALREADY

The Lego angle: Seeing as the Matrix is an artificial world, it s not a huge leap to imagine it being made completely out of Legos, which - assuming Neo retained his special Matrix-altering abilities - could be freely manipulated in whatever way a situation demanded. Also, we're going to repeat what we said above about simpler characters and beefier processing power, because that could make the Agent Smith fights from the last two movies a whole hell of a lot more interesting than they were in Path of Neo.

This dark tale of runaway experimentation in an underwater city would be a perfect candidate for the first-ever Lego FPS. Not only is its retro-future city of Rapture driven by a spirit of unrestrained freedom (making it an excellent philosophical match for the Lego brand), but the experimentation and creative problem-solving that Bioshock encourages could get a whole hell of a lot more creative with Legos at your disposal. Imagine the traps you could devise with an inventory full of the right bricks and moving parts - LittleBigPlanet couldn't hope to step to this.

Also, we're really curious to see what the Splicers - Rapture residents who've disfigured themselves through rampant genetic tampering - would look like as little Lego people. Probably kinda freaky.

The Lego angle: Did you like upgrading your guns using pre-set kits? How about if you could just slap together a random assortment of Legos you found scattered throughout the world, each with different properties that could create completely different kinds of weaponry? What could the Plasmid superpowers be like if you could augment them by just slapping together some bricks and green studs? There's a potential for depth here that goes way beyond anything seen in the original Bioshock; someone just has to be willing to tap it.

Another trilogy long overdue for a quality game adaptation, Terminator's potent blend of a geek-friendly storyline and high-octane, ripe-for-parody action-stupidity make it a perfect candidate for Legofication. Like in Lego Indiana Jones, you'd play as the title character in almost every scene (except for the adaptation of the first movie, in which you'd flee from Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator while playing as a Kyle Reese/Sarah Connor tag team). Meanwhile, characters like John and Sarah Connor could tag along as puzzle-solving backup, making two-player co-op a balancing act between brains and brawn.

Of course, the game wouldn't have to be totally slavish in its adaptation; extended sequences in the skull-filled, Skynet-dominated future would add a lot to the action, and the game could win a few bonus points from fans by throwing in Cameron Phillips from The Sarah Connor Chronicles as an unlockable character. Also, at least one naked-Lego-Terminator fight scene against a bar full of bikers is a definite must.

The Lego angle: In the scorched-earth future segments, it d be awesome to be able to rebuild and reprogram your own Terminators or T-1 Hunter-Killers, which would then follow you around and wreak havoc on your behalf. Also, unlocking the T-1000 for Free Play would likely make things a breeze, as he could presumably turn into every other character and duplicate their abilities while totally stabbing everyone in the face.

Silent Hill lends itself almost perfectly to the standard Lego model so far, as it features three separate but connected stories (three that its fans care about, anyway), each with a diverse cast of semi-friendly psychopaths and weirdos that could make for interesting tag-team companions. By packaging the action as a slightly more restrained version of the Lego franchise's usual platform-hopping nonsense, a Lego Silent Hill could take players through simplified versions of the Harry, James and Heather stories, with a few weird pantomime cutscenes and lots of adorably horrifying monsters thrown in for good measure.

True, a lighthearted Lego take on the series might not be able to replicate the extreme moodiness or creepiness of the core Silent Hill games, but you'd be amazed at how eerie colorful plastic can become when you throw it into a dark hallway, slap a grain filter on it and surround it with mostly unseen, herky-jerky malevolence.

The Lego angle: Creatures generated on the fly from random Lego parts will keep that you saying "What the hell is that?" all the way up to the final, disturbing battle against a pulsating mass of smiling heads, red bricks and steering wheels.

Now that 2006's Scarface: The World is Yours has completely blunted and reshaped the grim message of the 1983 crime epic it was "based" on, the door is wide open for further exploitation of the property. There's just no better time to take Tony Montana's story of greed and corruption and turn it into a game about little plastic men who fight over the right to sell bags of white, suspiciously tiny Lego studs in 1980s Miami.

Seriously, all the kids love Scarface, and we're dying to see Lego people pushed to badass, rage-fueled extremes. If it involves chainsaw dismemberment and huge plastic guns, so much the better.

The Lego angle: Can Montana effectively communicate his ownership of balls to other drug dealers in Lego pantomime, without the use of f-bomb-laden spoken dialogue? Probably not, but it d be hilarious to see him try.

Gears may be grim and darkly ultraviolent, but push that aside and you've got a story and buddy dynamic that could be turned into a Lego game with minimal effort. Marcus and Dom are perfect candidates for the Lego franchise's signature two-player tag-team play, and they could be switched out as needed with other members of Delta squad, who would presumably all have unique and complementary abilities. And because the third-person action in Gears is so straightforward, it could be switched over to a platform-hopping model with little lost in the translation.

It wouldn't have to lose much of its moodiness, either. As you make your way through the ruined Lego world, your attention could occasionally be drawn to heartbreaking scenes of cruelly twisted plastic and ravaged beauty. Ask yourself: what could possibly be sadder than a broken toy? To a six-year-old, we mean.

The Lego angle: All those little red studs mean that a Lego Gears of War could be ridiculously bloody without technically featuring any blood.

Assuming Lego Bioshock beats down the Lego first-person shooter barrier, conditions would be right for the logical next step: a first-person epic adventure. A Lego Elder Scrolls game could simply be a Lego-fiedadaptation of TES IV: Oblivion, or it could retrace the series' steps and update Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind with plastic finery. Or it could simply introduce us to the previously unknown Imperial province of Legovia. Whatever.

Either way, we really like the idea of traipsing across miles of green-studded scenery, brushing past stiff, plastic plant life and fighting hulking Lego abominations for gold studs. We re also pretty sure that the game's silent Lego denizens would be a lot easier on the eyes and ears than the stunted, identically voiced townsfolk we learned to tolerate in Oblivion.

The Lego angle: Remember all the bowls, wooden spoons, paintbrushes and other bits of clutter that you kept knocking over throughout Oblivion? Wouldn't they have been a lot cooler if you could break them down into their component bricks and/or use them to build something new? Creating new things out of other things is always fun, even if you just end up with something useless and horrible, like a giant mass of interlocking skulls and tunics piled in the middle of an irritating guard captain's bed.

Done correctly, a Lego adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film masterpiece could expertly combine a standard action-platformer through plague-ravaged medieval Europe with an ongoing chess game against an unbeatable AI, represented as Death. And when not directly confronting Death over a chessboard, you'd be hounded by his mocking presence throughout the grim, black-and-white platforming sequences, as brave knight Antonius and his followers witness atrocities committed in the name of God, question their faith and all too quickly meet their inevitable end.

The heady combination of chess-driven gameplay, depressing Swedish existentialism and a movie license most gamers are only vaguely aware of could very well turn The Lego Seventh Seal into the next Okami. And by that, we mean that critics would probably like it and everyone else would ignore itso hard that the development team's next project would be to drink itself to death.

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