Monopoly

Monopoly was first introduced to America in 1935, but its roots go deeper. Boon Leng Teo/Dreamstime

My wife beats me at Monopoly and now ... my 8 year old granddaughter does the same thing though I think I finally learned how to win against both my tormentors but one never knows. Maddening, greedy and altogether predatory, the game encourages capitalism at its worst while being disguised as a pastime for the ages. With that being said, it seems Monopoly has a rather interesting story to tell.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Monopoly, patented on December 31, 1935 by Charles B. Darrow, is not a game: It’s a world. The basic template: a multiplayer economics game, in which players roll two six-sided dice, move around the periphery of a square board, buy properties, collect rent when opponents land on their spaces, and buy up or trade for connected properties to build houses and hotels on. You win when everyone else goes bust. Played the right way, it’s as much about psychological warfare as economics; sidebar wheeling and dealing is not only encouraged but necessary. Things have to keep moving, and generations of family and friends have convinced and cajoled, causing epic fights in households worldwide. 

Charles B. Darrow is credited with inventing Monopoly as we know it today,
based on real locations in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Bettmann/Getty Images

Darrow’s Monopoly is set in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the properties around the board mirror the one-time values of real estate on the actual streets of that city. The street names were genius from a game design perspective. Many of the town’s streets are named after states, so you get to travel the whole country block by block, which means that the town is both specifically a fun resort destination and Everywhere, America, at the same time. But there’s a troubling side there as well: the city’s deep racial and socioeconomic ghettoization surfaces in Monopoly’s setup. Baltic and Mediterranean, the cheapest properties on the board, correlate to historically ethnic neighborhoods (even in name), while the historically rich, white enclaves, such as Park Place and Boardwalk, constitute the game’s more expensive zones.

Nothing ever happens in a vacuum, including Monopoly

The Landlord’s Game, on which Monopoly is based, has a very different philosophy. It educated about taxes and criticized the landlords. Thomas Forsyth/LandlordsGame.Info/Public Domain

And Atlantic City Monopoly is itself a version of another game, a debt it doesn’t recognize for obvious reasons. In 1904, inventor Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord’s Game, at its heart an educational tool to teach players about taxes. The Landlord’s Game is the same concept and mechanism—players travel around a game board, buy properties, and pay each other rent. But there are crucial differences. For one thing, the game is criticizing, not celebrating, landlords: The purpose is to show players how rents put money into the coffers of fatcat landlords while impoverishing tenants. There are monopolist and anti-monopolist versions of the rule set. Darrow’s 1935 version, while in many ways a copy of Magie’s, misses the original point: The goal of his game is to revel in the fantasy of being a land-grabbing property owner who bleeds renters dry and uses under-the-table deals to create structural inequality. Barring incredible dice luck, you can only win at Monopoly by dominating trades.

Nothing personal but I like The Landlord's Game a lot better. :)