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Monopoly May Replace Iconic Pieces With Emoji Faces and Hashtags (cnet.com)
Hasbro, the toymaker behind Monopoly, is letting the public decide whether or not they should replace the game's iconic game pieces with new pieces inspired by pop culture and social media. CNNMoney reports: Gamers can visit the Vote Monopoly site and choose from more than 50 new options. The old tokens, including the thimble, top hat and Scottie dog, are also on the table. The voting takes place inside a digital house with shelves and furniture stocked with both classic and newfangled token options. Jazzy music plays in the background as you explore and take a closer look at the figurines. Some aren't too surprising. There's a horse, a sailboat, an airplane, a bike and a helicopter. Two of the stranger options are sliced bread and a fuzzy bunny slipper. Hasbro is offering up a number of tokens that may appeal to tech consumers. There's a cell phone that looks like it came out of the '80s, a television that looks very '50s, and a computer with keyboard that vaguely resembles the first flat-screen iMac. Internet denizens can also vote for a hashtag and emoji options, including a winking smiley-face, thumbs-up symbol, crying-laughing face and a Rich Uncle Pennybags version of an emoji face. Voting is open to internet users worldwide until January 31. The chosen tokens will be part of a fresh Monopoly game due to hit stores this summer, so think long and hard about whether you want to stare at a kissy-face emoji for the next decade or so. A special edition called Token Madness will offer the original tokens as well as the new winners.
Shouldn't really comment and give this article the air of publicity, but WTF? Perhaps they should change the name from Slashdot to 'things we read in the news section of our Hotwheels comic'. The headline isn't even true (except in the vaguest lying marketing bastard sense). Its the worst kind of 'regurgitate press release without activating brain' article.
The new cards would say stuff like:
You fraudulently bundle thousands of worthless loans together and sell them as Grade AAA investments to the unsuspecting. Millions of hoi polloi lose their homes and retirements, and the country's economy is almost destroyed. Collect 10 Billion Dollars and stay out of jail.
And:
You purchase a thriving, cash-rich company with borrowed money. Use the company's cash to institute a stock-buyback plan to increase the value of the stock options you've given yourself. Ship most of the company's jobs to overseas sweat-shops, further increasing the short-term value of your stock. Sell at the peak, rinse, repeat.
And:
You inherit 20 billion dollars. Use your pocket change to buy a few U.S. Senators and get them to change the inheritance laws.
And:
You run a large corporation. Strong-arm local and state politicians with threats to move your facilities to another state or out of the country. Get out of taxes free.
I could (and might) go on...
When you pass Go you would collect 1 BTC, with the current value of your stack of money determined by an extra roll of the dice. The Chance deck would include "Bitcoin exchange hacked, lose half of all money," "Civil forfeiture action, lose one hotel or three houses," "EPA closes down Electric Company," and "Intellectual property decision in your favor, collect 10 BTC." The Jail square would be replaced by Gender Change; if you land on it, you would have to replace your token with another token of your choosing, and the other players would have to just get used to that.
As a hobby-gamer, I say: please get rid of this terribly designed game!
"Why are they changing the pieces?" is not the issue. "Why are they still producing this?" is the more pressing question. Are there not already more copies of the damn game available in charity shops (thrift stores for left-pondians) than there are ET cartridges excavated from the desert? Who keeps on and on buying new copies?
Played by the rules as written, it's a mediocre game at best. Played how most people want to play it from sketchy childhood memories, it's fairly dire. Either way, if you want to play boardgames with your family, pick one of the many thousands of titles available that are better than Monopoly. Even in mass-market stores, you can probably find half a dozen better than this. (Ticket to Ride, Scotland Yard, Pandemic, Dixit, Perudo, for common examples).
http://monopoly-game.net/Class...
"The Bank never goes broke. If the Bank runs out of money, the Banker may issue as much as needed by writing on any ordinary paper."
I hate how Hasbro has a monopoly on Monopoly.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Why doesn't Monopoly come with a starter set of four classic tokens, and then offer add-on token sets? There could be themed sets (co-marketed with McDonald's!), memorial sets, holiday sets, and rare Beanie Baby-like individual tokens that sell for hundreds of dollars in secondary markets. Has the owner of Monopoly missed the last 20 years of marketing innovation?
Personally I'd prefer to see the original tokens being shipped, but sell new tokens to buy to use in the games. Maybe add some extras, but don't remove the originals. Don't really see a reason to change them. I wouldn't mind being able to buy extra tokens to use for current games I have, but I'll probably never not play as the dog...
You might want to read up on the actual history a bit more. Monopoly is based on a came called The Landlord's Game, which has two modes of play. In one, you won by constructing a monopoly, in the other you won by increasing the total size of the economy. The point was to illustrate how unconstrained capitalism would lead to monopolies and negative outcomes for most participants.
The modern version is a set of incremental changes to the 1933 game by Parker (later bought by Hasbro). This was a simplified version of The Landlord's Game, which eliminated the cooperative mode and left outright competition as the only objective.
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