Slashdot Mirror
In-Game Advertising Comes to Board Games
Grooves writes "Monopoly is getting rid of paper money in favor of credit cards. From the article: 'The new card, which resembles a debit card, is inserted into a small plastic reader/writer that can display and update the balance on the card. Traditional money is gone altogether, though purists can still purchase the original version.' Does this mean the end of complex Monopoly games where I charge grandma interest to borrow money?"
The way we played, there were no rules outside the banker. Pickpocketing, bribes, free trade, all tricks allowed. Shuffle that house two fields away onto your area and claim it's yours, or put the dice down, 6-up and claim you just threw them. Bring your own monopoly money from home. Nobody got desperate enough to trade the in-game cash for real money, but that would be perfectly legal too.
The "dirty" version of the game was fun. Electronics will most likely kill this kind of gameplay.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
- Credit cards are a toy.
- Credit cards are the same as cash.
- Money on credit cards represents an asset instead of a liability.
There is nothing responsible about what this game teaches kids about credit cards.If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I can't imagine that this game will be popular, even with a computer-literate set. For one thing, ideas like this credit-based Monopoly ignore the very real fact that a symbol is not the same as the thing symbolized, either conceptually or in emotional terms.
Now, I'm a woman, so my perspective may not be shared by the estrogen-challenged among us, but for me part of the satisfaction of board games (as well as of many other hobbies) is the opportunity to interact with and manipulate real objects-- to see a stack of money grow, move around a little iron doggie, build wooden roads in Settlers, construct fields of color in Blockus, etc. It's not especially smart, I know, but it is a very visceral and very real component of my enjoyment of the game. For children, exploration of the objects involved may constitute most or all of the pleasure they take in gameplay, and rightly so, since that kind of play is needed to build spatial relations and motor skills.
Even for adults, though, I can't help feeling as though interactions with concrete physical objects are necessary to keep in touch with our environment and maintain a sense of control and comfort in our world. We evolved from monkeys, after all-- manipulating objects is what we do best. Abstract thinking is useful and necessary, too, of course, but I can't help feeling as though the ongoing virtualization of everyday life is going to result in increased stress and poor decision-making for our recently-ex-hunter/gatherer selves.
That said, I do hope the social scientists mount some comparative studies of virtual-Monopoly vs. real-Monopoly gameplay. What a great opportunity to examine the psychology of credit!
I'm really not that keen on the "updates" that have been made to Monopoly, or even the "localized" editions. I guess that in the U.K., purchasing property named for places in London makes a lot more sense than keeping the Atlantic City, NJ names, but as an American, I've never been to Atlantic City, either, and I've always wondered if Mediterranean Ave. was the dump the game portrays it to be.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
The thing that keeps a Monopoly game mildly interesting is all of the under-the-table and back-room (or bathroom) wheeling and dealing going on. It makes it more about the people, and the players' interactions.
Take that away, and you get mind-numbing tedium. Wasn't that what computers and microeletronics were supposed to save us from?