The Injustices that Arise from the Accumulation of Wealth by One Person

December 13, 2020 4:27 AM

How a real-life monopoly made Monopoly the world’s biggest board game by Mark Dent [The Hustle]
posted by chavenet (20 comments total)

A good article, but one thing it doesn't mention is that Asmodee isn't just a publisher, it's also a distributor of games published by other companies--from Hasbro (yes), down to startups and successful Kickstarters.

The numbers for Catan are out of date: it's sold around 30m copies now. Another Asmodee title, Dobble (US: Spot It), is selling 10m copies a year, partly thanks to the kind of cross-licensing that the article says is stifling Hasbro's creativity.

(Disclaimer: I work for Asmodee. I do not speak for the company here. Numbers quoted are already in the public domain.)
posted by Hogshead at 5:18 AM on December 13, 2020 [15 favorites]

I am still bummed that Hasbro never put out BATTLESHIP: The My Little Pony edition. (Yes, Hasbro owns MLP.) I have a copy of the MLP version of Monopoly (strangely, not called Monopony), but MLP fans know that canonically Battleship is Rainbow Dash's favorite game (Read It and Weep). Hasbro, how could you leave those bits on the table?
posted by SPrintF at 8:15 AM on December 13, 2020 [10 favorites]

It’s worth clicking through to the Amazon page for Monopoly Socialism. It’s an adult, parody game supposedly, though from the five star reviews, parents use this version of Monopoly to teach their children the evils of socialism - diversity, vegan food, and more are penalized and mocked. Hasbro as right wing perpetrator of propaganda. By the way, this posting should have a five star irony rating. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
posted by njohnson23 at 9:15 AM on December 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

I had no idea that Hasbro was so goddamn huge. The bit at the end about owning Dreamworks and Death Row Records, and possibly purchasing Lionsgate, built largely on the success of the worst goddamn board game ever... Yikes.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:34 AM on December 13, 2020 [4 favorites]

Every Monopoly thread I feel the need to chime in that it's really not that great a game. It isn't. But there are definitely some solid ideas in there. Claiming spaces on the board that then penalize other players for landing on them creates a game where the odds are different every time. It's a shame that it takes HOURS to get to that point, that it forces people out of the game, that it's over long before it ends, that after the start there's really not a lot of non-obvious decisions to make, and that the primary method of completing monopolies, trade, is super vulnerable to kingmaking. But maybe all of these things could be fixed?
posted by JHarris at 12:05 PM on December 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

And--all of those flaws compound each other. A game with heavy kingmaking is not necessarily bad if it's really fast, but it isn't, it locks you on a course of hours of tedium where you know the outcome, and it's nearly impossible to come back from there.
posted by JHarris at 12:07 PM on December 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

So I can relate one interesting detail, having worked on a Hasbro-licensed product based on MONOPOLY. And I've read the licensing manual which is a trip in itself.

Take a closer look at the game boards for those different "affinity" versions (Elf, Goonies, Bob Ross, Metallica, or the 230 others) and look at the corners. They're exactly the same art, unchanged since 1935.

Previous lawsuits determined that those corners (Go, Jail, Free Parking, Go To Jail) and the artwork for them was the copyrightable part of MONOPOLY. Everything else is fair game so you're totally free to make Chicago-opoly, for example, as long as you do something different with the corners.

But those corners? Sacred. You mess with those and the ghosts of the Hassenfeld Brothers will haunt you in your sleep.

(but it's still a boring game. IMO people just like moving the little metal tokens around the board)
posted by mookoz at 12:10 PM on December 13, 2020 [11 favorites]

I think if you play strictly according to the rules, with auctions of properties people land on but choose not to buy, the way the game progresses speeds up a LOT in the beginning phases. The problem is once things are locked in, there's no choice except to hope for blind luck through dice or cards to change the outcome.

So players hope for luck and keep playing even when it's obvious what the outcome is going to be.

Informal rules like the Free Parking money bonus and other such things can change the outcome, but mostly serve to just extend the agony.
posted by hippybear at 1:05 PM on December 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

JHarris, the other game that has players claiming territory (and also takes forever) is Risk. The difference being of course that other players then can't move through that territory. But the possibility of taking territory by force helps make the game feel fairer- in monopoly the player with the property just refuses to sell it.

The other mechanism that I like with both Risk and Ticket to Ride is the secret objectives.

I hate monopoly with a passion (probably because I'm very competitive/hate the long drawn out loss) - I won't play it with my husband because I value our relationship. But I'd be intrigued with a version that had revolution type mechanic.
posted by freethefeet at 2:27 PM on December 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Informal rules like the Free Parking money bonus and other such things can change the outcome, but mostly serve to just extend the agony.

I have never understood why the people who complain most about the length of the game are the ones who cling most tenaciously to the house rules that make the game longer. Honest to God, Monopoly takes about 45 minutes to play.

I have created a chess variant where every time you capture an opponent’s piece, you just give it back to your opponent, who can place it back on the board in lieu of a standard move. I admit I haven’t really playtested it, as I invented it about 35 seconds ago. I imagine this will make a game take four to six weeks.

Or you could just play by the standard rules. I am pretty sure those are in the box.

Just like with Monopoly.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:03 PM on December 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

The thing is, the actual rules for Monopoly are WAY more capitalist-cutthroat than most people are willing to deal with for a family-around-the-table entertainment evening. It's really brutal. It's designed that way, for reasons, but man, if you really go by exactly the rules, the entire situation sorts out WAY more quickly than you imagine.

(usually determined by a lucky dice roll, too. just like in real life)
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM on December 13, 2020 [4 favorites]

I've had occasion to play the Mega Edition of Monopoly a few times this year. While it doesn't remove the futility factor and player elimination that ruins the fun in many games, the way the dice work and the auction space makes the game shorter and the bus ticket mechanism adds an element of strategy that can be satisfying. (Especially if you're like me and you beat the local person who always wins every game through a combination of the house lockout and using the bus tickets to stay in jail as much as possible.)

As for the consolidation in the board game industry as a whole, I think it spells nothing but trouble for the hobby. Just this year Asmodee changed their replacement part policy because they "have more games than they can keep up with" and the next month raised prices causing much consternation.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:47 PM on December 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

Honest to God, Monopoly takes about 45 minutes to play.

Even playing by the letter of the rules, this has never been my experience, it has always taken at least a couple of hours, probably because it's always hard to do trades with people still hanging on to the hope of getting a natural color group.
posted by JHarris at 4:00 PM on December 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yes, Asmodee's taking over the "hobby boardgame publishing/distribution" chain is troubling. Anyone who isn't owned by Asmodee already either will be, or is totally surviving on KS. And with no editors/publishers, a lot of KS games are garbage, but with sweet minis, and awesome exclusive! !!Stretch Goals!!!11!

So not great.

Back when I was a budding gamer, I got hold of what I think was this, which had all kinds of crazy things like "insurance", (pay now, I won't charge you rent if you land on the Oranges this pass), "Immunity", (I will never charge you rent on the Yellows), and "Options", (pay me now, and if I ever land on it, I will buy it and give it to you for $0). Pretty cool stuff. Of course, all that has been ruled illegal by Hasbro...
posted by Windopaene at 4:40 PM on December 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

(usually determined by a lucky dice roll, too. just like in real life)

Yeah, the random dice rolls are what gives Monopoly its setup, that determines the mix of property owners that makes the trades, that are ostensibly the real game, possible. But there is very little choice in where you go on the board. There are no branches, there's no options. Off the top of my head the only thing that lets you decide where you go on the board is a couple of choices offered by cards. There is no strategy in that part of the game at all.
posted by JHarris at 5:29 PM on December 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Honest to God, Monopoly takes about 45 minutes to play.

Even playing by the letter of the rules, this has never been my experience, it has always taken at least a couple of hours,

Maybe I have played Monopoly with more cutthroat players than you. Come to think of it, my Monopoly opponents have also by and large been my Diplomacy opponents. Perhaps their tactics carry over.

In any event, in my adult life (since I actually read the rules), I have played Monopoly maybe a dozen or fifteen times. A couple of games may have broken the hour mark, but not many.

I feel weird defending it because it is not like I love the game or anything, but I am baffled by everyone playing it the way they did when they were six and basing their views on their six-year-old understanding of it. Witness this in the article in the FPP:

Monopoly violated the cardinal tenets of board game design: The rules were confusing and a single game took an eternity to finish.

This is like reading a review of a new car — admittedly, a Ford Focus, maybe — from someone who doesn’t know how to drive.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:06 PM on December 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

The thing about board games is, they're vulnerable to the customs of a lot of varied groups. In Monopoly, there is no reason anyone HAS to trade, and if no one does, and no one completes a color group, a game can go on basically forever. The plain rent from landing on properties will never bankrupt anyone, and people can comfortably subsist on passing GO over and over. That is an entirely valid way to play, but it destroys the game. Non-eternal Monopoly has a cultural component, but they don't ship that in the box.
posted by JHarris at 7:24 PM on December 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

One small trick to cut at least 25% of the time from a monotony game: throw away the $1 bills. Just round off to the nearest 5.

Canadians have had about 20 years of practice doing this in real life. I don't know one person who misses the penny.
posted by morspin at 7:48 PM on December 13, 2020 [3 favorites]

JHarris: I have occasionally played with people who had no interest in making trades. I suppose you are right that this is merely a tactic, not a house rule. If one person sticks to it and no other players do, the holdout will get tromped in short order. If everyone sticks to it, though? This seems like a plausible scenario of an afterlife of eternal punishment.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:08 PM on December 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

But maybe all of these things could be fixed?

There is no fixing capitalism. It needs to be stuffed in a burlap bag and tossed in the river.
posted by Beholder at 9:15 PM on December 14, 2020 [1 favorite]