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Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

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Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#41

Post by jbay808 »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #17
chungy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you win, then?

Look up Pandemic or Forbidden Island for examples of cooperative games that put players against the game instead of each other.

An issue with games like Pandemic is that a more experienced or dominant player can tend to take charge of the whole team, with everyone else following their orders instead of autonomously making their own decisions. Especially if following the experienced player's advice really does maximize the chance of winning, it basically becomes a single-player game with spectators who help move the pieces around.

I think adding in secret information or hidden objectives can help prevent this.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#42

Post by falcolas »

chungy wrote: post #10

Monopoly teaches people a view of economics being a zero-sum game and too many people learn the wrong lessons from it. Real life isn't a zero-sum game.

From a purely monetary point of view at a global level, transactions are indeed a positive sum. But the "positive" value of transactions, globally, is remarkably small - it's effectively inflation minus population growth (between 1 and 3% yearly).

So, if your money is growing more than this 3%, someone else is losing money so you can make it.

EDIT: I figured this would be unpopular - please feel free to correct me, to point out where the money on, for example, 6% returns on investments come from if not from someone else.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#43

Post by pyrale »

chungy wrote: post #10

Monopoly teaches people a view of economics being a zero-sum game and too many people learn the wrong lessons from it. Real life isn't a zero-sum game.

The monopoly game is not zero-sum. Money increases when you pass start, and cards drawn are on average a source of money.

In fact, the money owned by players inflates as the game goes on.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#44

Post by epistasis »

mikestew wrote: post #29
andy_ppp wrote: post #4

I love how everyone who wins at monopoly acts like a right arse to the other people and it turns out it was just rolls of the dice that decided if they won... I certainly always feel like I deserve to have won.

As the title implies, the game was designed to be a lot like real life, and it sounds like that from your POV it has succeeded.

Reminds me of the story of the lucky coin:

> If 1024 fair coins are each tossed 10 times, chances are good (> 63%) that at least one will come up heads 10 times in a row; and that coin will be proud to explain how its skill, faith, guts & determination made its achievement possible, and how that combo can work for you too.

https://twitter.com/bayesiangirl/status/1214753289528434688?...

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#45

Post by proc0 »

deweller wrote: post #35
mcv wrote: post #2

I guess that explains why it's such a terrible game. People put up with it because it was all they had. Now we have other options, fortunately. (I guess this comment could apply to either the boardgame, or to capitalism.)

This is not due to its origin. It's just not a great game due to its widely varied play time, elimination of players and other flaws. If you're new to Euro-style games and enjoy games with some luck and rolling of the dice, check out The Settlers of Catan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catan ).

Ah, was that created to show the evils of colonialism? /s

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#47

Post by Mountain_Skies »

andrepd wrote: post #20
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly sucks because of using the house rule that Free Parking is a jackpot of money. Not doing property auctions and paying out $400 for landing on Go are lesser reasons for it sucking. Stick to the published rules and the problems mostly to away.

That house rule (which is far from universally applied) is a small detail. The game is boring (luck-based, little if any strategy) and unenjoyable in other ways: it takes too long to finish, players who go bust early are left watching the game continue for maybe hours, front-runners are almost certainly going to win yet it takes an excruciatingly drawn-out process to finish the process, etc.

The game rarely goes on for hours without free parking.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#48

Post by [deleted] »

doggydogs94 wrote: post #25
nicoburns wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still mostly luck (and who-has-the-most-social-capital-to-persuade-the-other-to-let-them-win) based though. There are lot's of much better board games out there.

That’s like saying that poker is mostly luck.

[deleted]

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#49

Post by Mountain_Skies »

doggydogs94 wrote: post #21
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly sucks because of using the house rule that Free Parking is a jackpot of money. Not doing property auctions and paying out $400 for landing on Go are lesser reasons for it sucking. Stick to the published rules and the problems mostly to away.

Adding a prize for Free Parking makes the game last longer. Adding more money into the game (in any manner) just serves to lengthen the game.

Yep. When we first started playing by the published rules, we were surprised by how quickly games ended. Property auctions help too as it quickly gets most properties into play instead of players just going round and round the board while hitting NOP spaces.

Re: Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)

#50

Post by karatestomp »

larrik wrote: post #5
eitland wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boardgame can be great fun especially if people follow the rules.

Any boardgame that involves eliminating players from it is a non-starter for me.

They're fine if they're short. I'd prefer elimination to longer games where a couple clear leaders after lucky first couple rounds are the only ones who can plausibly win, which I've also seen in a few enlightened modern games. Best case for those games is you spend the remaining 80-90% of the game playing spoiler or kingmaker, which is kinda shitty, or in the worst case the game's designed such that you can't do much about it, so you're going through the motions to see if you can manage 3rd place out of 5 (or whatever) for the rest of the game.

Monopoly's pretty short if you play by the rules and everyone knows how to play and isn't screwing around. I don't really like it, but I don't think elimination is the main problem. It's not like world-conquest risk where it typically drags on forever, well after the first player elimination.

[EDIT] economy-building games with low interaction between players and a significant randomness component seem especially prone to "well that player happened to go first and got the only good thing available to buy this round so has its benefit the rest of the game, and will proceed to stomp everyone else, obviously". There's a particular cards-based game with an age-of-sail trading vessel theme I've played several times that's my (least) favorite example of this: I've won, I've lost, both are fucking boring because you spend most of the game knowing where you're going to place and you can't even rage-harm other players out of boredom. Drawing a blank on the name. Anyway, I'd much rather be eliminated in a game like that.

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