London Turned into Giant Board Game

webponce writes "Hasbro have fitted out 18 London cabs with GPS tracking devices, and hooked them up to a real time, real life game of monopoly. You get to choose which cab driver you want to 'play' with, and then pick which properties around London you want to put your houses and hotels, hit go, sit back and wait for the other cab drivers to land on your square and make you rent. You get 24 hours of your cab running around London, and you have to see how much money you can make in a day (my bet, put your property on Wimbledon this week ;)"

Comments

but...

[torrents]

real life counterstrike would be better... guess you'd have to go to iraq for that though...

Re:but...

[dominiv]

Well, I can only agree and do not see why this is regarded as being a troll, the parent has a valid point, especially since we know that american soldiers are nowadays trained using shoot-em up's. Heck, the american army even releases their own shoot-em up.

Shoot-em ups are fun, if you keep yourself saying they are not for real. They become disgusting and dangerous if they are a replacement and/or training for real life.

Re:but...

[ISaidItOmega]

You're missing the biggest problem of all:

The US soldiers would probably give up their positions once the Iraqis heard them shouting "FUX0RING N00BS!!!11" or "thiS GUYS USING a WaLLHACK!!"

....fucking Iraqis and their wallhacks..

Re:but...

[rho]

They might have such devices, but it's not so that generals in remote locations can direct a battle. The Army spends a lot of time and money training their soldiers and officers to be independent thinkers and to react intelligently to new situations, but grounded on solid foundations of tactics and mission objectives. Directing blips on a screen is more likely to be harmful than useful. There's a lot that simple locations cannot tell you about what's going on on the ground.

Monopoly for CEOs

[michaeldot]

Steve Jobs is also playing and he's landed on Regent Street.

i'm "playing" this now

[Anonymous Coward]

basically you set it up, it ticks for 24hrs, then at the end it tells you how much money you made. im on about 300m last i checked, the game ends at 24hrs and you start again.

it isn't fun.

Re:i'm "playing" this now

[spongeboy]

yeah, but it did help me come second in a beauty contest.

Re:i'm "playing" this now

[pcmanjon]

I happen to be friends with one of the guys who works at Hasbro; and he's told me it isn't GPS controlled as they claim.

This is just marketing to make it appealing and feel "real."

He's told me that although he didn't do any of the programming work for the cab stuff, he has done some apache configuration and stuff for the server.

He tells me that they used a "deamon" like program coded in C to sned the current location to an SQL database, and the webserver handles it from there.

It makes sense that they would make it all fake to save money, having GPS's and stuff for real cabs just seems like too much work.

Oldschool Monopoly ...

[egypt_jimbob]

Oldschool cardboard-and-paper Monopoly is boring as hell. This sounds much more fun, since you can just get out of the cab and go to the pub.

Does this mean...

[bc90021]

...that some lucky cab rider gets a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card? If so, are there limits to what they can do to land themselves in jail? ;)

Re:Does this mean...

[mmkkbb]

It was 1934, the height of the Depression, when Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, showed what he called the MONOPOLY game to the executives at Parker Brothers. Can you believe it, they rejected the game due to "52 design errors"! But Mr. Darrow wasn't daunted. Like many other Americans, he was unemployed at the time, and the game's exciting promise of fame and fortune inspired him to produce it on his own.

http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/pl/page.history/dn/ default.cfm

crank cabbie callouts?

[jamesh]

I'm not sure if the cab system differs in London compared to where I live, but I'd predict a large increase in abandoned calls from locations people have bought a lot of property on.

Re:crank cabbie callouts?

[screwballicus]

I should think that London, like New York, has many thousands of cabs in its fleets (despite the comparatively strict regulation of the taxi system). What kind of dint can you make in that kind of business by sending out a few fake calls?

Amidst real estate where several taxis pass by every minute, what do you do to substantially increase taxi visits? Hire out a call centre in India?

Go directly...

[Bifurcati]

In other news, thousands of Brits have been trying to hack the game so that Margaret Thatcher, and indeed any other of her party, land on the "Go Directly to Jail" square.

Democrats flew President Bush over (on the pretense of buying him a pet sheep) for a similar trick, but Bush simply changed the constitution so that while he didn't have to go to jail, he did get to collect $200, and without having to pass Go, either. He then rewrote to board to read "Go directly to Guatanamo Bay. And stay there."

No Wimbeldon

[os2fan]

For those who have not seen a proper monopoly board, the streets are (by colour-group, from Go)

• Old Kent Road, Whitechapel
• The Angel of Islington, Euston Road, Pentenville Road
• Pall Mall, Whitehall, Northumberland Ave
• Bow street, Malborough street, Vine street
• The Strand, Fleet street, Trafalgar Square
• Leister square, coventry square, piccadilly
• Regent street, Oxford street, Bond street
• Park Lane, Mayfair.

The railway stations are in order, Kings Cross, Marylebone, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street.

Utilities are Electric Company and Water-Works.

You still have chance and community chest, with such joys as "go back three spaces", and "take a walk on the broad walk, advance token to mayfair", although not the German "go back to Old Kent Road".

Re:No Wimbeldon

[jonwil]

Of course, that is only on a British monopoly board.
American boards, Australian boards, Star Wars boards, Star Trek boards, Simpsons boards and others have totally different stuff :)

Re:No Wimbeldon

[indianajones428]

I guess they aren't using the standard British Monopoly setup, because there is a Wimbeldon. IIRC, it's about where St. James Place usually is on the American board.

On the "Monopoly Live" board, the streets are (sorry for any spelling errors):

-Portobello Road Market, Camden Market
-Hammersmith Apollo, Wembley Arena, GMTV
-The Oval, Wimbeldon, Wembley Statium
-Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Tate Museum
-London Eye, Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square
-Tottenham Court Road, Covent Garden, Regent Street
-Notting Hill, Soho, Kings Road
-Canary Wharf, The City

The railway stations are now airports, and are in order: London City Airport, Stansted Airport, Gatwick Airport, and Heathrow Airport

Utilities are Telecoms and The Sun

There is still Chance and Community Chest, but you have to text message for those, so your guess is as good as mine (anyone in England willing to tell the rest of us what they are like?).

Re:No Wimbeldon

[Muttley]

Growing up in Australia I always thought the UK edition of the game was the 'true' version of monopoly, but the game was in fact invented in America, and so the original version, and the version used in all monopoly world championships, is the American version of the game.

Forget London...

[__aaclcg7560]

Playing real-life Monopoly in London is kinda of dangerous with all the spooks, CIA agents, and Russians with posion-tipped umbellas running around. Personally, I would try my luck with a pissed off New York taxi driver since it would be safer as the muggers get run over more often than the pigeons.

Ummm...

[Trejkaz]

1. You wouldn't be in direct control of the soldiers, they'd just go where they wanted to.

And this is different from Counter-Strike how, exactly?

Mornington Crescent, anyone?

[Anomalous Communard]

London's been a board game for ages.

Re:Huh?

[aussie_a]

It's actually more fun for the passengers.

Cab: Where do you want to go?
Passenger: Regent Street
Cab: You sure you really want to go there? I hear they've got some hotels on that street.
Passenger: Yeah I'm sure.
Cab: Alright. ....10 minutes later a police-man pulls them over....

Cab: What's the problem officer?
Policeman: This one of them monopoly cabs?
Cab: Yup.
Policeman: Can you and your passenger get out of the vehicle, this street has been designated the go to jail street.
Cab: Aaah shit.
Passenger: Don't worry, I've got a get out of jail free card.

I'm sorry I haven't a clue

[bullgod]

Mornington Cresent, cabbie.

Make extra money by requesting an chance or...

[Quazion]

community chest card by smsing a text to 82222, this i what they try you to do while playing the game, i am telling you its just another get rich quick sceme!

Grand Theft Auto: Monopoly

[AndroidCat]

Steal another player's cab and drive it around. (Yes, stealing a data-linked cab with GPS would be stupid. So what? Plenty of stupid crimes every day.)

No big deal,

[ImaLamer]

You simply stop by Chance and get a "Get out of Jail Free" card.