Monopoly is undisputedly the best board game, end of discussion.
Monopoly is undisputedly the best board game, end of discussion
Zachary Parker
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Adam Wood
I'm onto you
Kayden Long
You think you're baiting, but you know what? Let's consider something for a moment.
People say that monopoly breaks up families, starts civil wars and causes crops to fail. But the simple truth is that those same people often end up going back to that game over and over again and even having a modicum of fun in the process. Why is this a factor?
Furthermore, consider also monopoly's rules. They are actually semi-complex for a commonly played game, to the degree that a lot of rules (IE auctioning) are ignored or house-ruled. But in spite of this apparent complexity it is still a fair favourite compared to games such as Risk. Clearly there must be something here to make it attractive in spite of the apparent complexity.
Gentlemen, although OP is without a doubt baiting, I do believe there is a nugget of truth within the worm on the end of the hook.
Oliver Sullivan
>But the simple truth is that those same people often end up going back to that game over and over again and even having a modicum of fun in the process. Why is this a factor?
Because those people probably don't have any games other than Monopoly, and owning a copy of Monopoly is something most people do just because it's one of those social norms, like owning a coffee machine even if you don't drink it yourself or just go to fucking Starbucks all the time. It sits on the shelf between the decades-outdated Trivial Pursuit and the unfinished 1,000-piece puzzle.
People who actually enjoy playing board games and do it often don't play Monopoly.
Aiden Martin
>People say that monopoly breaks up families, starts civil wars and causes crops to fail.
This is a feature, not a bug. Monopoly is a heavily abstracted laissez-faire capitalism simulator.
Jordan Morris
But why is it a social norm user? That might not make it the best game, but that still makes it something of a success if it's that ingrained.
Jack Stewart
Monopoly is a world without the Land Value Tax simulator, Georgists are not fundamentally against laissez-faire.
Colton Martinez
>Monopoly with LVT
Why does that idea sound strangely like the exact fix needed to make it a competitive game again?
Aiden Smith
Because that was literally the rule what was meant to be in the original rules to demonstrate the point.
Jose Martinez
Evan Taylor
This just got me thinking. How could one improve Monopoly and perhaps make a board game that taught the fundamentals of capitalist societies whilst still keeping it accessible?
Taxation alone would change the game quite drastically, but meaningfully. Say, each time you pass GO, you're taxed based on the properties you earn. Larger taxes for more expensive areas and houses/hotels. Quite quickly, you could be losing more money by passing GO than gaining, but at that point you're banking on people landing on your properties and getting money that way.
However, that angle might help the game. It could mean that the best tactic might not be just to buy everything up in sight. You might be forced to trade useless cards for cash, even if they're mortgaged.
Or how about adding elections? Every few turns (4?) there's an election between three candidates. Each candidate has a positive trait (ie. new purchases are -50% if you do not already have that colour) and a negative trait (ie. you're taxed +100% on houses if you own more than 10. Hotels count as 5.) You roll a D6 and x100 for each candidate to see how popular they are. Players can then fund the candidate that they want to win and the winner has their "laws" enacted.
For instance, Player 1 has a load of money but no houses. He wants to fuck over Player 2 that has no money and loads of houses. Candidate A increases the tax on areas with houses, and gives more money at GO for those without houses. Candidate A, B and C rolled 1, 2 and 5 respectively (so 100, 200 and 500). When the election happens, Player 1 secretly writes down that he will fund A with £401 to get him elected. The results are in and... Candidate C is elected, because Player 2 knew what that sneaky shit was up to and put his last £200 down to ensure C would win.
Jonathan Gray
>"best"
I think you mean popular
Noah Collins
I could get behind this
Brandon Clark
...
Benjamin Price
Basically, everyone knows about it, in some way or form, most people understand what monopoly the game is about.
The game allows a relatively large amount of players, from 2 to 6, or possibly even more. So most groups of varying sizes may play.
Monopoly allows just about anyone to play. Even when you delve into the realm of board games, you realize that most are fairly rigid in their rules structure, and offer little variations.
Grayson Morris
Why not just play one of the many existing economic board games?
Leo Russell
While the core argument here is sound, the author seems to have severely overestimated Dungeons and Dragons, and severely underestimated Le Voyage dans la Lune.
Jack Wilson
About ten years ago I read a blog post somewhere which said it was exactly the opposite, a government controlled economy simulator, and blaming all its shortcomings on the fact that it's not a laissez-faire capitalism simulator. I haven't been able to find that blog post ever since.
I find it amusing that I've now observed in the wild both of these two opinions about why Monopoly sucks.
But what's it a success at? Being omnipresent? Well, ok, but that's sort of like saying that mice or rats are successful as pets or livestock because practically everybody has them around whether they want to or not.
>the fundamentals of capitalist societies include buying political influence for personal financial advantage
That may not be wrong in terms of how it works in reality a lot of the time, but do we really want children to grow up thinking about democracy that way? You know that the vast majority of eight year olds who were to play such a game would come away with the impression that that's how things SHOULD work.
Jeremiah Gomez
The origin of Monopoly, The Landlord's Game, had nothing to do with modern conceptions of "control over the market" vs laissez-faire. The author of the game was a Georgist, and made the game specifically to explain the merits of Georgism, but the original Georgist rules were removed from the Parker Brothers version.
Monopoly was not meant to be a socialist critique of capitalism, and was not an Austrian critique of state control. It is a Georgist critique of the concept of land monopoly. Unlike Socialism, Georgism and capitalism are not natural enemies.
Brayden Campbell
You know something that's bothered me since I was about ten years old? The term "socialism". It communicates nothing about what it's referring to, but it kinda sounds like it is or should be. "Capitalism" tells you that it's got something to do with capital. "Communism" tells you that it's got something to do with communes or communal living. "Georgism", "Marxism" etc are transparently opaque. They tell you only that somebody named George or Marx started it, and you can tell that that's all it refers to. "Socialism" sounds like maybe it has something to do with social interaction or something, but it doesn't really. Maybe you could say that it's a system for how a society could be run, but so are many other -isms. Its name tells you nothing about it, but you're left wondering if you've just missed the point.
Lincoln Gray
People hating on Monopoly only do it because it's popular. All the faults of monopoly exist in other games. Especially the pet hipster games you are trying to push instead of monopoly, because that is your real agenda. It's fucking painful to watch, hating on the most popular boardgame in the world because your shitty game could never make it.
Josiah Phillips
Don't worry you're not the only one confused. Most countries rarely stick to one "-ism" so the definitions to the different systems can be muddied.
But Georgism itself is fairly simple. Most Georgists want three basic things:
-To abolish all taxes other than the Land Value Tax.
-To allocate the majority of tax funds to a Citizens Dividend
-To introduce skepticism over intellectual property
Austin Martin
Well that's certainly an option, but I was talking about how Monopoly could improve. Just playing something else wouldn't help that.
I'd argue that it's a good teaching tool for how fucked many western political systems are. Many are personality cults with seemingly random popularity detached from their policies (hence the D6). No matter how good your policies and how honest you are, you will not get elected if you do not have some degree of advertising/propaganda.
Now, a lot of countries have a cap on how much a candidate can recieve from outside funding, but there are many ways to get around this system. This could be a game mechanic too, but then it would also detract from its satire of Capitalism.
As for kids, most of them seperate games from reality, but if they have someone with them that can explain this system and what it means in context of current society, then it could be an effective teaching point.
Nathan Martin
>but if they have someone with them that can explain this system and what it means in context of current society, then it could be an effective teaching point
Yeah, about that, only an utterly negligible minority of people will ever encounter the idea that it's a satire of anything. You're vastly overestimating the common populace. It's depressingly easy to do.