Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulryanrogers | Hacker News Reader

I thought the point of Monopoly is to learn that monopolies are not fun, or fair

The point of Monopoly is to make money for the owner of the trademark, and condition people to buy games based on inertia, advertising, and nostalgia rather than complexity, balance, or fun.

Fortunately we have a plethora of much better games now. I think monopoly will be a quirk of history soon. How many boomers have never played monopoly (and hopefully never will) because they have so many other games to play.

I don't understand. Boomers? People born between 1946 and 1964? I think most Boomers in North America and Europe have played Monopoly at least once. "Monopoly has been translated into 47 languages. It's played in 114 countries. It's sold more than 275 million copies. Hasbro prints $30 billion in Monopoly money each year, and well more than $3 trillion has been printed since 1935." -CNN https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/living/feat-monopoly-80th-ann...

Boomers? Did you mean millennials?

Was that an autocorrect from "zoomers" to "boomers"?

and interestingly enough, the inventor of the original Monopoly (Elizabeth Magie and "The Landlord's Game") created an alternative rule set called "Prosperity" that was intended to balance out the Matthew effect [1] but this was left out of Monopoly when it was allegedly poached from Magie's game.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

Reply on news.ycombinator.com