Really, nothing is sacred anymore — not even Monopoly. Because kids’ days are filled with obligations and organized activities, young children today are apparently busier than any of their predecessors in history, toy manufacturers like Hasbro are tailoring board games to make them faster to play.
“Hasbro’s new Monopoly Empire, in which players compete to amass the most big-name brands, such as Coca-Cola Xbox and McDonald’s, can be completed in as little as 30 minutes, compared with the hours that traditional Monopoly could take,” reports The Wall Street Journal’s Ann Zimmerman. Hasbro accomplished this depressing feat in part by removing the jail, which speeds up the pace and also removes a crucial safe zone in the latter stages of the game.
I’d care if I didn’t think that Monopoly was already a terrible game. It says something about as Americans that we’re usually not exposed to anything more complex than Monopoly until we’re adults. At least I’ve introduced my nieces to some decent Euros.
So I was going to crack a joke about how Monopoly is a game that teaches some good fundamentals, like how going to jail can sometimes save you hundreds of dollars at a time, and then realized that’s exactly what it teaches kids. At a certain point in the game, you want to go to jail. Not just because you can stop paying attention for the next however many turns, but because you don’t have to pay people money because you aren’t moving. Going to jail literally saves you money.
It’s almost like there’s some social commentary going on here…
In theory this isn’t a bad idea. All of the iterations on Risk in the last few years (God Storm, 2210, Black Ops) have been built around reducing the tedious end-game. And that’s really where Monopoly falls apart as well, in most people’s minds. I say “in most people’s minds” because the “real” game doesn’t start until all the property is gone and the auctions begin, which is about the time most people lose ineterest. But even for fans of the “real” game, the interminable battle of attrition between 2 superpowers until the dice happen to tilt decisively in one direction isn’t really fun for anybody.
I agree on all counts. The primary draw of Monopoly begins when the wheeling and dealing starts. The problem is that the game tilts dramatically when someone makes one bad roll. I’m fine with chance in games, I just don’t like games which hinge on a few critical rolls. That, and it’s a relatively long game with player elimination. It really sucks if you’re eliminated early, or even if you’re sitting on the sidelines with no real chance of winning.
I know it’s been said a million times, but I am going to say it again. Monopoly is a bad game, but it’s probably not as bad as you remember because you played it wrong. You are NOT supposed to put money on Free Parking. That just makes the game longer! Also, if you land on a property and you don’t buy it, it goes up for auction. Seriously! Look it up!
Also, I have a friend who says the game is tolerable if you play it until two players go bankrupt, then you just count up and whoever has the most money wins. It’s still not worth playing with all the alternatives out there, but if you have to play it (kids insist or in-laws break it out), at least play it correctly, it will be much less painful.
This is something that a lot of players ignore. The auctioning mechanic really changes the tenor of the early game, though it doesn’t do a lot to help out with the late game. I’ve played Monopoly like this, but the auctioning mechanic is so much fun that the rest of the game pales in comparison. I’ve taken to just playing No Thanks! with my family: it’s like an abstract version of Monopoly that can be finished up in 15 minutes per round, and as many rounds as you want to play.
What a stupid article. Making Monopoly a shorter game is a good thing and says nothing at all about the state of our children. Maybe if it’s a 30 minute game they’ll play it 3 or 4 times in the same period of time they’d have originally played it once. That’s how players actually learn the systems and get better at the game. What ridiculous benefit does the writer think bored children derive from playing an interminable game? Jail is a stupid mechanic and deserved to go.
Plenty games that fit that definition come out every year. If your goal in playing a game is to focus on silly social quibbles rather than winning, then maybe pick up the plethora of family focused board games about exactly that. Anyway, that whole notion of board games is stupid. I think the whole notion is bonding over a shared experience of a social context you won’t have (or have rarely) under normal circumstances. Like being encouraged to lie to your friends in The Resistance, or pretending to be a giant monster and beating up your dad in King of Tokyo, or shrewdly out maneuvering your coworkers in a simplified economic market in Steam or Power Grid.
Sorry if I’m focusing on the wrong part here. Sometimes it’s really informative to read the perspective of a non-gamer speaking about games. Other times it’s so frustrating when it’s clear how little thought they think the subject deserves.
The game’s better if you play it correctly rather than with house rules that break the game, but it still isn’t really a good game, especially not when we’re spoiled for choice with great board games these days.
I think we just get deeper into gaming and thinking about it a lot more than less invested players. For example, it’s fun to snark about ludonarrative dissonance in games like GTA4 and Bioshock, but really, outside of nerds like us, who cares that Nico is a murderous psychopath while lamenting the violence in his life? By the same token, I expect that for many families, Monopoly is acually about gathering around a table and arguing about the rules while grinding each other into submission. You or I may know why you shouldn’t prolong the misery with money on Free Parking, but everyone else just thinks we’re nuts for not having fun.
Buy all the orange properties. Put hotels on them. Make sure nobody gets both Park Place and Boardwalk. Wait until you most likely win. The orange properties are the most profitable ones on the whole board on average, with the red ones a close second. If you get both, it’s over, especially if nobody can set up hotels on the blues and randomly start nuking players on unfortunate die rolls.
It’s funny, because my parents are both economists by training, my Dad was a Forex trader, and my Mom a real estate agent.
Suffice to say, we played Monopoly correctly.
I don’t know that I even recall the specifics of the end of an games, but I assume that it always came down to my Mom vs. my Dad, at which point us kids just sort of wandered off.
I wasn’t trying to bag on family board games. I still play Dixit with family and friends fairly regularly, and won’t protest too much when Apples to Apples or Cranium hit the table (though they’re not my favorite). And if Ticket to Ride counts, it’s one of my all-time favorite games. I’m annoyed at the author for acting like board games are trending towards being exclusively about winning when very little research would show that’s obviously not true. They make games for all types nowadays.
