edit: Monopoly was originally called "The Landlord's Game" for a reason. Do you want to play the landlord's game?
> Monopoly is derived from The Landlord's Game, …… as a way to demonstrate that an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where monopolies hold all the wealth
( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game) )
The less outright-capitalistic part didn’t survive in the rules.
The history aside, the game Monopoly describes the concept of monopoly quite well and how it is a bad thing.
It's called Monopoly because the winner is the one that gets the monopoly, and because The Landlord's Game originally had a second phase called "Prosperity." "Monopoly" and "Prosperity" go well together.
I'm still confused, actually. The game is not a depiction of Georgism, it's a depiction of the world as it is. The solution is Georgism, which Magie thought would lead to Prosperity.
Are you sure that you’re not being very literal yourself? (See my last paragraph here.)
> It's called Monopoly because the winner is the one that gets the monopoly, and because The Landlord's Game originally had a second phase called "Prosperity." "Monopoly" and "Prosperity" go well together.
Ok?
> I'm still confused, actually. The game is not a depiction of Georgism, it's a depiction of the world as it is. The solution is Georgism, which Magie thought would lead to Prosperity.
“Georgeism of the precursor to Monopoly or Monopoly itself” means that the designers were motivated by that particular ideology. And if the game is a critique of something then it makes sense that the game itself won’t represent that reality but will represent the critique of the status quo which will motivate said ideology as a solution to the problem of the status quo.
Talk about tricking everyone into participating in a direct, visceral lesson, and somehow failing to actually teach anyone anything.
Locally: everyone I remember talking to played a variant of the game as a kid, and didn't like it. Matches my experience too. Hell, the most fun I had with this game as a kid was grabbing the box and spending half a day alone role-playing with the little plastic houses.
Globally: the game has meme status for what I described. Things that get to the point of being memes tend to be broadly representative.
Played by the rules (or using the official "short game" rules), it is not that bad. There has been a lot of progress made in board game design in the last few decades and there are way better options today, but if you are stuck with Monopoly, just read the damn rulebook, it will improve your experience a lot.
A game should take less than an hour, involve a lot of negotiation, and be pretty aggressive (gameplay-wise!).
Monopoly without rule modifications is nearly unplayable.
Specifically, the monopoly dynamic.
Games have a fine tuned balance between resource sinks and sources, if you break the balance, for example by removing a sink, as it is the case here, you break the game. Here it tends to result in much longer and boring games.
Plus, it is a poor comeback mechanism. If you don't have property, cash alone is not enough to get you back into the game. Monopoly already has a limited but better designed comeback mechanism with "repair" cards.
By terrible house rules I mean things like collecting money on "free parking", limiting trade or not auctioning unbought property.
I have yet to see commonly practiced house rules that improve the game. I am sure there are, but most people who know enough about game design to actually improve on the game typically don't play Monopoly.