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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?"
Now how will I cheat?
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
It's so much easier for the banker to 'accidentally' press the wrong key, than to stuff bright pink notes under something. And I'd be so pissed if the battery died halfway through the game.
Sure a game with the name Monopoly would be above the influence of corporate interests like Visa!!
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
On the bright side, we won't have to deal with those stupid 5s and 1s, which only serve to get in the way.
On the other hand, this is going to make a lot of rulesets more complicated... ranging from embezzlement to the more common and legitimate Free Parking "put $500 and any taxes/fines in the middle, pick them up when you hit Free Parking" rule.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
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What? People still play this horrible game? It's a nightmare form a game design perspective! The winner of the game is decided so early on in play, 80% of the time spent playing the game is virtually pointless because everyone can tell who is going to win (unless he/she makes an incredibly dumb trade or someone cheats).
At least if they're going to upgrade the game aesthetics, why not change the name to "Microsoft: The Game"?
*runs and hides*
If you old fuddy-duddies can't wrap your head around these elecomotronics, Parker Brothers is still offering the cold hard cash version.
However, I hope that they keep the currency version around for a long time. To a kid, having large wads of paper in front of yourself to show off and rub the fact that you're winning in the other players' faces. If everyone has the same boring card, that just makes things even, now doesn't it?
Also, if they stop the cash edition, I won't be able to fulfill my dreams of filling a room with monopoly money and swimming around in it ala Scrooge McDuck.
What's next, identity theft?
Have you read my blog lately?
Take a ride on the Reading: $25
A house on Atlantic Avenue: $150
The look on your brother's face when he lands on Park Place with four houses: priceless.
And it's educational, too! Who doesn't charge their rent on a credit card? It's good, sound personal fiscal policy, the kind of lesson that I want my children to learn!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
At least it not paypal -- you could be winning the game and have your funds frozen for suspect activity.
No, but every time you land on a space owned by another player, they'll run a credit check on you before you are allowed to stay there.
Will the bank will also keep 2.5% per transaction like in the real world?
Crack the card reader!!! Simply program it to send the fractional pennies left over from every transaction into a seperate account linked to yours. No one will every notice their money is gone!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
One nice thing about Monopoly is that children learn things like how to count money. With the credit card version it will be easier (and less time consuming) to play a game, but will there be the same educational value? Probably not.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I grew up playing Monopoly, but I've come to realize that Monopoly is a terrible board game. It is sad that it is still played so widely when there are so many great boards games to come out just recently. Monopoly changing the names and adding an electronic gimmick won't save itself from poor mechanics.
At bare minimum families should be playing Settlers of Catan these days. *Maybe* Carcassonne. Puerto Rico and Reiner Knizia games for families that claim to know something about board games.
A good site for other games, review, and community check out Board Game Geek
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"
They make a paper money version? I wish someone had told me sooner.
I've been playing the "Monopoly: Yap Edition" from Micronesia. Keeping track of and moving hundreds of giant stone discs is not as fun as it sounds. Passing Go! is usually seen as physical punishment, not a reward. Toes get stubbed. Basically, after about 15 minutes, everyone gets too exhausted to keep going.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Monopoly the boardgame + American Express = new tagline:
"Don't leave home."
IF they are going to update they economics of the game, they should go all out..... You can buy Park Place with a 7 turn interest only ARM, inflate the profits using mark-to-market accounting and dump all the loses to a dummy corp setup under the Thimble. Genius!
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."
No, credit history is built with every cent you borrow. It's true that, starting from scratch, it's very difficult to qualify for larger loans. Without a strong credit history, you probably won't be able to get a home loan, or a car loan with any kind of decent interest rate. In fact, pretty much the only large loan available to someone without a good credit history or collateral is a student loan.
Using a credit card, and paying the balance in full each month, is probably the easiest and best way to get a good credit score. However, it's certainly not the only way.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
That's a violation of almost every merchant account agreement I've ever seen. You ARE allowed to offer a cash discount, but you may NOT charge a price higher than the displayed price for credit card purchases.