Sixteen Tons was one of three games commissioned by the Art History of Games conference, put on by Savannah College of Art & Design and Georgia Tech in January 2010. A game for four players designed for a gallery setting, Sixteen Tons was created by architect Nathalie Pozzi and game designer Eric Zimmerman. kraft paper softwall + softblock flexible furniture system was used to create a temporary, enclosed space for gameplay.
“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. 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 identity shifts fluidly back and forth from cooperation to competition.”
Sixteen Tons is named after the folk song made famous in 1955 by Tennessee Ernie Ford about coal mining and debt bondage.