I’ve played it. There’s a lot of the typical stereotypes you’re probably imagining, but also plenty of “this, but unironically” moments. Overall it’s an alright game that’s kinda frustrating for pretty much anyone that knows anything about socialism.
Oh I know, it’s even more of a cynical game playing it. It exists for the meme because Hasbro really wants people to forget the progressive history of Monopoly.
Hasbro puts zero effort into any games they make including monopoly. If you want a genuinely good board game experience check out the world of modern board games and just forget monopoly even exists.
There’s a new game out from one of the creators of Pandemic, called Daybreak. It is a cooperative game in which you and up to three others all play countries and work together to combat climate change. You don’t have to completely reverse the elevated temperature that occurs throughout the game, only to reach Drawdown in which you reverse the flow of carbon emissions, thereby starting the process of reducing the effects of increased climate.
I haven’t had a chance yet to play it with others, but I am excited to. The artwork is beautiful and is contributed by artists across the globe. None of the materials are plastic; cardboard boxes, cards on cardstock, wooden tokens, containers made from wood pulp…there wasn’t even plastic wrap around the box, just paper stickers.
My favorite part, though, is the QR codes. Each of the project and crisis cards (of which there are 230) has a QR code that links to an individual page on the game’s website that gives an overview of the concept that card, why it is a problem, and what can be done to fix it. There are also links to articles and studies for more details, and there are links to groups one can join to become an advocate for/against causes related to that concept.
Carcassonne is a classic and I think is essentially a perfect game at what it does, doesn’t have a monopoly feel to me though. Still hell yes.
Settlers Of Catan is a weird one for me, it brought me into modern board gaming years ago but I think it suffers from some flaws, the biggest one being that a newer player can quite visibly doom themselves from the very start of the game with poor placement of their beginning cities. There isn’t player elimination but it essentially feels like there is, and it is too long of a game for that feeling in my opinion. Ticket To Ride injects a huge amount of tension and players can doom themselves with bad choices (or be cut off by other players) but the game is far better paced for that kind of interaction, and the winning player usually closes out the game fairly fast once it becomes obvious who is going to win.
Yeah and I believe the game designer Elizabeth Maggie Phillips had an alternate version of the rules that kids could play after they got the message how random and cruel the base rules of the Landlord’s Game was (which got stripped of its politics and became Monopoly).
You make a great point about Monopoly, it is a badly designed game in terms of creating all kinds of un-fun situations for players. The genre of “euro games”, Concordia being probably the clearest example, consciously focuses on making it so players aren’t directly ruining each other’s fun while still having player interaction.
Good board game design is very careful to make interaction not stray into territories where friendships can be broken, which I know people joke about friendship ending experiences with board games, but it does happen and what an awful thing for a $50 box of cardboard that took up hours of you and your friends time to do.
If you look at high player interaction games like Inis, Brian Boru, Keyflower, Babylonia, Scythe or Troyes to name a few, they are very carefully designed so that one player dominating and drawing the game out even though they are clearly going to win doesn’t make the game fun at the expense of losing players. There is a reason chess is such an old game and is so strategically elegant and yet most people don’t play it, it takes a certain kind of mindset to have fun losing at chess, you get absolutely dissected by the better player and as the game goes on the other player winning means you have less fun stuff you can do.
I have this game. Before you drag me, I didn’t buy it; a woman I was dating was clearing out her storage unit and gave me several games she had and didn’t didn’t want any more. It isn’t an awful game. The one time I played it, three of us (all leftists) agreed to work together to beat the game instead of any one of us resorting to competitive capitalism to win solo. And of course we succeeded.
If anything, this might be a game you play with a group of acquaintances to figure out whom not to invite to parties.
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I’ve played it. There’s a lot of the typical stereotypes you’re probably imagining, but also plenty of “this, but unironically” moments. Overall it’s an alright game that’s kinda frustrating for pretty much anyone that knows anything about socialism.
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Oh I know, it’s even more of a cynical game playing it. It exists for the meme because Hasbro really wants people to forget the progressive history of Monopoly.
Hasbro puts zero effort into any games they make including monopoly. If you want a genuinely good board game experience check out the world of modern board games and just forget monopoly even exists.
Some recommendations:
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There’s a new game out from one of the creators of Pandemic, called Daybreak. It is a cooperative game in which you and up to three others all play countries and work together to combat climate change. You don’t have to completely reverse the elevated temperature that occurs throughout the game, only to reach Drawdown in which you reverse the flow of carbon emissions, thereby starting the process of reducing the effects of increased climate.
I haven’t had a chance yet to play it with others, but I am excited to. The artwork is beautiful and is contributed by artists across the globe. None of the materials are plastic; cardboard boxes, cards on cardstock, wooden tokens, containers made from wood pulp…there wasn’t even plastic wrap around the box, just paper stickers.
My favorite part, though, is the QR codes. Each of the project and crisis cards (of which there are 230) has a QR code that links to an individual page on the game’s website that gives an overview of the concept that card, why it is a problem, and what can be done to fix it. There are also links to articles and studies for more details, and there are links to groups one can join to become an advocate for/against causes related to that concept.
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Carcassonne is a classic and I think is essentially a perfect game at what it does, doesn’t have a monopoly feel to me though. Still hell yes.
Settlers Of Catan is a weird one for me, it brought me into modern board gaming years ago but I think it suffers from some flaws, the biggest one being that a newer player can quite visibly doom themselves from the very start of the game with poor placement of their beginning cities. There isn’t player elimination but it essentially feels like there is, and it is too long of a game for that feeling in my opinion. Ticket To Ride injects a huge amount of tension and players can doom themselves with bad choices (or be cut off by other players) but the game is far better paced for that kind of interaction, and the winning player usually closes out the game fairly fast once it becomes obvious who is going to win.
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Yeah and I believe the game designer Elizabeth Maggie Phillips had an alternate version of the rules that kids could play after they got the message how random and cruel the base rules of the Landlord’s Game was (which got stripped of its politics and became Monopoly).
You make a great point about Monopoly, it is a badly designed game in terms of creating all kinds of un-fun situations for players. The genre of “euro games”, Concordia being probably the clearest example, consciously focuses on making it so players aren’t directly ruining each other’s fun while still having player interaction.
Good board game design is very careful to make interaction not stray into territories where friendships can be broken, which I know people joke about friendship ending experiences with board games, but it does happen and what an awful thing for a $50 box of cardboard that took up hours of you and your friends time to do.
If you look at high player interaction games like Inis, Brian Boru, Keyflower, Babylonia, Scythe or Troyes to name a few, they are very carefully designed so that one player dominating and drawing the game out even though they are clearly going to win doesn’t make the game fun at the expense of losing players. There is a reason chess is such an old game and is so strategically elegant and yet most people don’t play it, it takes a certain kind of mindset to have fun losing at chess, you get absolutely dissected by the better player and as the game goes on the other player winning means you have less fun stuff you can do.
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Absolutely, I wholeheartedly agree!
I have this game. Before you drag me, I didn’t buy it; a woman I was dating was clearing out her storage unit and gave me several games she had and didn’t didn’t want any more. It isn’t an awful game. The one time I played it, three of us (all leftists) agreed to work together to beat the game instead of any one of us resorting to competitive capitalism to win solo. And of course we succeeded.
If anything, this might be a game you play with a group of acquaintances to figure out whom not to invite to parties.