Okay, let’s begin with Monopoly, a board game wherein the goal is to bankrupt your fellow opponents, leaving you with all of their money and property. As you move around a square board, you land on various properties–in the original game, they’re from a fictionalized version of Atlantic City, New Jersey, but that changes depending on region and edition. For instance, in the Pokemon version of the game, properties include Tangela and Raichu. Anyway, if you land on a property, you can purchase it, and then if you establish a monopoly, you can build houses and hotels on your properties. And then when other players land on places you own, they have to pay you rent.
There are many problems with Monopoly, but maybe the reason the game has persisted for so long–it has been one of the world’s bestselling board games for over 80 years–is that its problems are our problems. Like life, Monopoly unfolds very slowly at first, and then distressingly fast at the end. Like life, people find meaning in its outcomes even though the game is rigged toward the rich, and insofar as it isn’t rigged, it’s random. And like life, your friends get mad if you bankrupt them, and then no matter how rich you are, there’s an ever-expanding void inside of you that money can never fill, but gripped by the madness of unregulated capitalism, you nonetheless believe that if you just get a couple more hotels or take from your friends their few remaining dollars, you will at last feel complete.
The worst thing about Monopoly is its convoluted, self-contradictory analysis of capitalism. Like, the game is essentially about how acquiring land is literally a roll of the dice, and how the exploitation of monopolies enriches the few and impoverishes the many. And yet, the point of the game is to get as rich as you can. I mean, Monopoly’s cartoon spokesperson is literally named Rich Uncle Pennybags.
Monopoly’s mealymouthed take on economic inequality is also like life, of course, at least life in Monopoly’s home nation of the United States, where many of us think of billionaires the way I thought of the popular kids in middle school: I despised them, but I also desperately wanted to be them. And I think Monopoly’s thematic inconsistency might be a product of the game’s complicated origin story, which, in the end, may say more about capitalism than the game itself does.
Analysis
The game of Monopoly is known for breaking families and friends apart as players ruthlessly compete to become the best capitalist of them all. It’s long, tiring, and usually ends in more flipped boards than any actual victory (I know this from personal experience). But, as John Green mentions in this article, we like Monopoly because of how realistically it mimics our lives. It mimics the rigged systems, the bias towards the rich, and the chaos that capitalism can sometimes bring. The message the game sends is not a good one (everyone hates the rich, but they also want to be the rich), and yet it still remains one of the most popular games of all time. But this article bring a few questions to light: Is there a way to better depict the financial struggles of our world in a way that might teach others about how to survive, and perhaps even thrive in such an environment that doesn’t bring other people down? Or, is there a way to more properly gamify today’s financial experience? Is there a way to gamify banking in general? We’ll have to see.
Source
Green, J. (2020, April 30). Monopoly and academic decathlon: The anthropocene reviewed. WNYC Studios. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed/episodes/anthropocene-reviewed-monopoly-academic-decathlon
