Monopoly for Millennials

November 13, 2018 7:26 AM

There have been jokes made about a version of the board game Monopoly made specifically for Millenials: Millennial Monopoly: Modern Horror Stories Comedy Central UK; Monopoly: Millennial Edition The Feed; Monopoly for Millennials Chance cards Readers Digest; Twitter... but they were just jokes, until now...

Many editions of the famous board game have been made (both official and unofficial: previously), but now Hasbro has released "Monopoly for Millennials"

From the official game description:

Adulting is hard; take a break from the rat race with this edition of the Monopoly game.

Travel around the gameboard discovering and visiting cool places to eat, shop, and relax. Interact with other players via Chance and Community Chest cards, (which are super relatable). And players don't pay rent -- they visit one another, earning more Experience points. This board game is a great way to bring a fun and relaxed vibe to a party or casual get-together.

posted by Laura in Canada (27 comments total)

Is one of the game pieces a $17 avocado toast?
posted by slkinsey at 7:33 AM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]

No, but there is a hashtag: Reddit image
posted by Laura in Canada at 7:37 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

This board game is a great way to bring a fun and relaxed vibe to a party or casual get-together.

Really feel like the The Landlord's Game is much more on point for Millennials.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:38 AM on November 13, 2018 [15 favorites]

"You'll never own shit, but you are free to consume!"
posted by lmfsilva at 7:38 AM on November 13, 2018 [13 favorites]

Is one of the game pieces a $17 avocado toast?

FTA:
Before you think this is just another Monopoly game where the players spend money on avocado toast and electric cars, think again. In a move that’s either incredibly perceptive or incredibly patronizing, Hasbro has flipped the usual Monopoly formula on its head. Instead of players trying to buy property and seize total control of the real estate market, players try to accumulate more experiences than everyone else and post them to their social media channels.

I could find no mention of this version of the game on hasbro.com or target.com, either for sale or as a press release, so I was starting to think this was just another spoof with somewhat more reach. But nope, here it is on walmart.com (out of stock, but really listed).
posted by solotoro at 7:46 AM on November 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

Millenial RISK: Each territory is owned by its nationalists and players take turns trying to migrate to New Zealand before being deported from the game.

Millenial LIFE: You try to take a turn but the game says, 'no dice'.
posted by zaixfeep at 7:46 AM on November 13, 2018 [11 favorites]

Millennial Operation: lol no insurance
posted by uncleozzy at 7:48 AM on November 13, 2018 [21 favorites]

I was hoping for a short while it was a prank - like when Mattel convinced Germany for a week in September that they'd rebrand Scrabble as "Buchstaben YOLO" (Letter YOLO) to appeal to young people.

But no. This seems to be real.
posted by dominik at 7:56 AM on November 13, 2018

All these jokes about how nobody can afford a house reminds me of the old joke about how nobody in NYC drives because the traffic is too bad. I mean, somebody is buying all of these houses.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:58 AM on November 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

Why would 1000+ year old people want to play monopoly ?
posted by Pendragon at 8:10 AM on November 13, 2018 [9 favorites]

I mean, somebody is buying all of these houses.

Yes, people are buying houses, but the number of people with mortgages is falling (2008 - close to 100m, now about 80m) while mortgage rates are really low and the number of houses being constructed is really low. So the people who can afford houses can *really really* afford them - everyone else is screwed.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on November 13, 2018 [9 favorites]

Millenial LIFE: You try to take a turn but the game says, 'no dice'.

It has the old wheel of fortune, but you have to make monthly payments to spin it.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:15 AM on November 13, 2018

Yes, people are buying houses

More specifically, investment banks, private-equity firms and hedge funds are buying a great many houses, both onshore and offshore. Mitt Romney would argue that those are "people", but they're technically more machine than man.
posted by atomo at 8:24 AM on November 13, 2018 [16 favorites]

There is apparently a whole line of parody games from Hasbro, among them Game of Life: Quarter Life Crisis edition, where the goal is to pay off the $500K of debt with which you start the game.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:33 AM on November 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

Always with the fuss about millennials owning property.

A friend of mine owns property! All he did was suffer his dad getting murdered in a cafe on a first date by said date's ex. Problem solved.

Nah but seriously the fact that always gets me is income to house price ratios. Here, the average is 13 times income.

I don't have any handy sources, but I'm pretty sure it was 3-4 times income just a few decades ago.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:46 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

"Instead of players trying to buy property and seize total control of the real estate market, players try to accumulate more experiences than everyone else and post them to their social media channels."

"For some reason, you collect money from the player who lands on your previously discovered destination. You don’t “own” the destination, but you somehow manage to copyright the directions to get there, which is a horrific addition to current intellectual property laws."
posted by storybored at 8:48 AM on November 13, 2018

I mean, somebody is buying all of these houses.

Buying ≠ living in. I should think this is obvious.
posted by PMdixon at 8:53 AM on November 13, 2018 [5 favorites]

More specifically, investment banks, private-equity firms and hedge funds are buying a great many houses, both onshore and offshore. Mitt Romney would argue that those are "people", but they're technically more machine than man.

... and if it's the same shit as what's driving a lot of the housing crisis in urban centers in the UK, letting them unoccupied on purpose because they were bought as speculative assets, and having someone there would depreciate the value, but also deflate the bubble, this particularly with new constructions.
With older, less bubbly units, converting them to AirBnBs. A lot of buildings downtown here were evicting tenants so they can collect what was a months' worth of rent before the bubble in less than a week from tourists.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:04 AM on November 13, 2018 [7 favorites]

Eh, pass.

A "real" Monopoly for Millennials should at least remove the dice for movement as that's too random, be 1.5 hours of gameplay MAX, and implement a score-based system that allows players to pursue multiple paths to victory. Oh, and a Legacy-style campaign with a short-story intro lore and some great art/graphics would help as well.
posted by FJT at 9:05 AM on November 13, 2018

remove the dice for movement as that's too random, be 1.5 hours of gameplay MAX, and implement a score-based system that allows players to pursue multiple paths to victory. Oh, and a Legacy-style campaign with a short-story intro lore

But then it might actually be a good game, one worthy of our time and being considered alongside the design achievements of real board games.
Hell, it might not poison vast swathes of the population's view of board games in general.

Then how will they sell a dozen reskins a year and a thousand assembly-line roll & move cashgrabs of other beloved things. Best to keep as many people in the dark for as long as possible.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 9:17 AM on November 13, 2018

"She has Monotony and Cabbage, and she's still bored?"
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:21 AM on November 13, 2018

It’s funny cause none of us will ever own property, will likely die in debt, and work three to four gig jobs just to keep from starving.
posted by The Whelk at 9:38 AM on November 13, 2018 [7 favorites]

“Travel around the gameboard discovering and visiting cool places to eat, shop, and relax,” Hasbro writes in their marketing material. “Interact with other players via Chance and Community Chest cards, (which are super relatable). And players don't pay rent -- they visit one another, earning more Experience points. This board game is a great way to bring a fun and relaxed vibe to a party or casual get-together."

This thing Millenials are being made fun of for caring about, is the same thing that other generations like to mock us for not knowing how to do, the way THEY did it back in the 70s when everything was perfect. I thought we were too busy looking at our phones you pompous cowards.
posted by bleep at 9:40 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

In a move that’s either incredibly perceptive or incredibly patronizing...

This is just a hunch, but I'm going to go with "patronizing".
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:03 AM on November 13, 2018 [6 favorites]

Adulting is hard; take a break from the rat race with this edition of the Monopoly game.

Travel around the gameboard discovering and visiting cool places to eat, shop, and relax. Interact with other players via Chance and Community Chest cards, (which are super relatable). And players don't pay rent -- they visit one another, earning more Experience points. This board game is a great way to bring a fun and relaxed vibe to a party or casual get-together.

JFC, that copy. Just...whoever wrote that no longer has a soul (probably because it was removed so they could write that.)
posted by MikeKD at 12:11 PM on November 13, 2018

Unless they changed the core rules dramatically, it's still just a reskin of Monopoly and therefore the distilled essence of everything wrong with pre-board game revolution board games.

As a kid I always thought we were playing wrong because the game was so boring and long and pointless. But nope, that's apparently how it's supposed to be. I thought I hated board games until someone introduced me to Settlers of Catan and I learned that they weren't all awful.
posted by sotonohito at 12:47 PM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Hey, there isn't much fundamentally wrong with Monopoly, and I'm saying this as someone who's spent some time playing ranked Catan online before it was a thing in real life, to the point where when my friends group "discovered" this new game and we played it in the common room in college I managed to somehow win the first 8 games in a row until they banned me from playing it with them. Most of the skill in Catan is in being able to hide your true strength and make other people fight against each other while you gather enough resources for a decisive push to the victory condition.

I think Monopoly has all the ingredients you need to make a pretty exciting board game. The auction mechanic alone is intriguing and is worth building an entire game around, never mind the other mechanics! It's a great test of your ability to read what other players are willing to pay for each property. If you think other players will pay more, you buy it outright and sell it to them and make up the difference. If they are willing to pay less, then you let it go to auction. Lots of misdirection here. Also being able to predict trends in property prices over time: this will determine whether you sell now versus sell later. Being able to balance wanting to get a good deal at auction versus keeping liquidity - it's a a bit like making the decision to buy shares in a downward market when everyone is running scared.

Sure, the first pass round the Monopoly board is random and you could afford to buy every property you land on. This sets up the "initial conditions" of the game and solidifies the initial alliances against the strongest player, much like setting up the initial town locations in Catan, and yes, you have more control over your destiny in Catan at this stage. But once you've set up your locations the game turns to more isolated and local play, where your expansion options are naturally limited by your location and neighbours and the roll of the dice which determine your resources, while Monopoly instead expands your agency with the global reach of auctions, where every player has a chance to bid for properties around the map once players are unable to outright buy every property they land on due to lack of liquidity.
posted by xdvesper at 2:56 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]