Is Monopoly Actually Good?
Transcript
it's probably the most famous board game of all time a family staple that has been featured in films songs tv shows video games pretty much everything in between it's a family staple that has caused as many breakups as it has breakdowns it's a game about property about landlords about house prices topics which are somehow more relevant now than they were when it was invented but is monopoly actually good here's a fun fact for you did you know that monopoly was actually designed to be a cutting social commentary on how landlords are bad a withering expose of how the landlord gets his money and keeps it of course you do it's the super mario brothers 2 was originally doki doki panic of tabletop trivia but what's interesting is that the blueprint of monopoly was there in elizabeth meiji's 1904 landlord game you get money for completing a circuit of the board you went to jail and won by bleeding your opponents dry up all their money by charging their rent the key difference is that landlord's game explicitly frames this as a bad thing and board game manufacturers parker brothers also thought the same thing declining the option to publish meiji's landlord's game citing it as too complex and too political which also sound like youtube comments in 2020. maggie did sell copies of the game locally though and it became popular enough that people start to create their own versions of it making changes over the next 30 years like adding chance cards for a bit of spice changing the name of the game to monopoly but crucially
changing the message that capitalism equals bad to yay capitalism landlord's game was always doggy dog and being mean to your fellow player was the order of the day but in monopoly you're not chastised for doing this you're rewarded and speaking of not being challenged for your behavior one man who made some major changes to the landlord's game was charles darrow he didn't just add some bits of color to a neighbor's homemade version of the game he also crucially added a copyright logo and his name it was as ruthless and opportunistic as well monopoly it was this version of the game that caught the attention of parker brothers who optioned the rights to publish it in 1935 three decades after rejecting landlords game they went on to sell 2 million units in the us alone the following year 85 years later a monopoly isn't just a board game it's an icon it's the board game phrases like get out of jail free card are part of our everyday lexicon this version here is set in london but there are loads of cities countries even universities that have their own copy of the game sports team the olympics dogs disney marvel motorbikes comic books bands virtually every franchise on the planet has their own version of the game i mean for [ __ ] sake sonic boom has its own version it's a yearly mcdonald's tie-in that was once corrupted by the mafia no seriously go look it up seemingly off the success of battleship there's a
movie version of monopoly in the works with kevin hart they even released a socialism version of monopoly that was meant to be a parody but ended up being a bit of a cell phone the point of the game is you can't win and vegans are dumb because yay capitalism there's deluxe things millennial things cashless things stranger things it's an unstoppable force now it would be easy to paint parker brothers as the bad guys in this scenario but they did eventually find out about landlords game while they were trying to pay to monopoly and they paid major 500 for the rights to landlords game with the promise that they would release it in stores which they did in 1939 making around 10 000 copies barely selling any and destroying the rest of the stock still 500 for inventing the most popular board game in the world and creating a multi-billion dollar empire is better than a kick in the knackers eh part of the genius of monopoly is that it's very simple to explain to new players you win by making the most money by acquiring property around the board and charging players to use it you roll your dice and you move your cute little marker and you land on a space and if it's not been purchased you can then purchase it you then add that to your ever-growing portfolio and when you've got a full street you can then build a property upon it because then you can charge people more money for using it and get a bit more extra cash out of auntie mauritia fun fact though there's a rule to monopoly that most players either don't know or just forget you see if i land on a
property that no one has previously bought and i don't buy it it then goes up to auction for the rest of the players it's amazing that so many people play monopoly wrong and accidentally make the game longer than it really needs to it's one of the few games that players have hacked and have actually made worse that's not the only rule that people get wrong though you don't have to complete a full circuit before you start buying property and free parking that doesn't get you the cash in the middle that cash is supposed to go to the bank free parking is meant to be a place where you just have a look at what you've got oh and you can collect rent while you're in jail for the record and because of these rules the most common complaint about monopoly is that the game lasts forever there are countless stand-up routines and scenes in movies and films that make jokes about the fact that monopoly tears relationships apart because it never ends but if you actually play the rules properly is monopoly actually goods i took this question to the great equalizer of online discourse twitter and out of the nearly 5 000 votes 67.7 of the replies said yes monopoly is actually good and the replies to this poll tell a very interesting story it's one of the games i can play with my family and everyone gets it i have multiple versions of the same game just with different skins be it big bang theory pokemon disney pixar xbox or switch it's a way of causing family divisions with incredible fun it's a good game that's bad for relationships i really enjoy a good game of monopoly but it takes way too long to
finish usually leading to boredom and or arguments it is a game that ruins friendships and families that's what's fun about it if you don't want to continue relationships with your friends yes there's this running theme of playing with family and friends probably because it's the one board game that everyone and their auntie marisha has played people have got nostalgic memories of it and it's interesting that there are some people who will argue that it's a good game but only if you play with the correct rules while there are those who will argue that it's only good if you play it with the house rules some people think that the correct rules aren't complex enough some people will tell you that the house rules slow the pace down and extend the game out the only constant bit of feedback i had from that twitter poll is that the elimination mechanic is is bad but why trust the opinions of people online when i can play monopoly with real life people and to do that i've come to one of my favorite places in london draft to play a game with friends let's play monopoly yay yeah okay come on let's play monopoly uh joined by isaac laurie yo and blair yes uh and i am playing as the penguin this is a new character a new character he's got a really rich backstory starting with a chance
starting with chance you have been elected chairman of the board play each player 50 pounds oh cheers mate that's great what okay so that was my first gun ten who are you i'm the dog i'm the i am the
just give me money goddamn pizza game okay oh what is it take all of the 100 bills this is the one i was talking about no seriously wait are we throwing it in the air it's a money crab when can we grab when it hits the table in the air you can only grab when it's in the air you can't grab it okay okay three two one i am a
one two three four oh my god isaac oh my god i turn around and fortunately wow wow how's your heart it's a racks to richie's story how's your heart doing well it's actually it's the britches to rags to rich's story that was basically the wolf of wall street i literally now have nothing i have nothing although i feel like i've never really had anything in this game oh and you're in the danger zone as well i know i think this might be the end of me now but four all right that is 450. uh i'm going to have to just give you everything i have in that video yay i am so sorry that's no fun for you but lots of fun for me is monopoly actually good no it's just slowing me down isn't it
okay so i don't even think i will even i know but even if i sold all my so you can only sell them at half the price right yeah so if i sold 15 things yeah so i can sell 225 pounds worth no if i sell all of it then it's yeah 250 quid and then i would yeah because it's like 20 20 yeah they're only 25 so like if i sold the whole tails i sold three hotel sorry i could only make 325 how much was it 700 750. one two three four five six hundred seven hundred seven fifty
thank you 751 and let's be done do i have anything up nope nope there you go so you're going to make some choices now about you know i can just go and stretch my legs now yeah you're not delivering and it's not even four times bitterness build up enough funds to put hotels back on my three locations that i own in order to start generating it feels fitting to die to power one two three four five
give me the sweet release of death all right and the terrible thing about it also is that like you don't feel satisfaction from winning no you just feel like my god it's over one of my 900 pound deck that's it that's it thought i would be excited to win um but no i had a terrible first few rounds where i just went round and didn't land on anything you could buy or anything unoccupied so i was so far behind in the beginning of the game i basically just clung on for dear life like a small business owner until the very end of the game in which the mega corporation that was blair eventually swallowed me whole i i was actually out of the game longer than i was playing the game it's long when luke was out of the game officially uh it definitely made us all feel at least for me it made me feel like i really need to just get this going um i started rolling my dice really quickly like the moment that i knew it was my turn and yeah you just feel bad you don't want your friends sitting there just watching and so you feel a bit like uh okay let's let's get let's get a move on and then that move on took two hours when someone goes out it really changes the game because the person they lose to gets all of their stuff and if in a position to gain it all back
then it really changes the tide of the game and everyone else just kind of suffers it's a game that like drags out each moment of joy for about two hours until the point you get to a point where you're just like this should be something i'm proud of achieving or i should feel like this moment is worthwhile but actually always just feels like slowly bleeding out in a sort of death by a thousand cuts kind of way do i want to play monopoly again no no no i had a terrible time playing monopoly and it's not just because i lost and i was out first it's because i was out first about an hour into the game and the game lasted three hours and those two hours were just the other three players swapping money back and forth no one really gained an advantage no one was ever really in any major peril we did all agree that me going out added a certain level of drama early doors but the problem is that drama then took two whole hours to end so why has monopoly endured i think monopoly has endured for as long as it has because we all grew up playing it we all know it it is a game that is pretty much in every household if you have a board game it's probably monopoly there's something really sort of i don't know reassuring about getting up getting out your monopoly the start of the game is always really fun collecting all the properties and building a little impact it's towards the end it seems to just not come to a finish quick enough yeah there's a nostalgia element to it
um i think there is a very kind of take that element to it when you're kind of doing one thing over the other you me and my family we play we end up alliant like me and my one sister will become an alliance against my other brother and sister and that becomes kind of a game within a game for most people when you're playing it it gets the point where it sucks there'll always be one or two people riding high and really enjoying it and especially with house rules you don't get the the awkward slog where like nothing's really happening you get one person who bullies everyone and they will land on free parking and they'll continue to bully everyone and it's game over everyone's unhappy i mean monopoly is great and it's obviously never going to go away but i guess my one bit of advice even to myself would be next time i play it make sure i play it by the exact rules that are in the rulebook rather than the sort of rules that i grew up learning which make it go on way too long it all comes back to that twitter poll we referenced earlier monopoly to people isn't about the game itself it's about who you play it with it's about the memories the game has created it's about those never-ending games that you tell stories about at christmas dinner if monopoly was released now it would be destroyed by the tabletop gaming community because it's not a fun game to play it's long it's arduous it's got bad mechanics and the elimination of players alters the mood for everyone else playing meaning when all is said and done no one has a good time and as you saw in the game that we played earlier those last two hours with
the same moves being done over and over and over again blair winning was inevitable but it took the length of a marvel cinematic universe movie to get there but monopoly wasn't released today it was released 80 plus years ago when people were simple idiots and because it's now in the cupboard of every simple idiot around the world it's become a staple of quality family time going over the replies to that twitter feed people reveled in the fact that it caused arguments people loved the idea that it breaks up families and it takes ages to play but even with that all in mind i cannot ignore the game that we played in draft and those three bored faces that just wanted a game to end is there really any argument against that is monopoly actually good no it's [ __ ] rubbish
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