Monopoly, to the bitter end

Saw an interesting post on a friend's facebook feed today. There was no link to an article, so I am copy/pasting the entire post here, as written by some guy named Todd Alcott:

In the new movie Heretic, Hugh Grant delivers a monologue -- a chalk-talk really -- that uses the board game Monopoly as a metaphor for religion. And one of the points that he brings up is that everyone plays Monopoly but no one has ever read the rules, and no one has ever finished the game. That last point hit home with me, because I, in fact, have finished a game of Monopoly, and what I discovered is almost as terrifying as the conclusion of Heretic.

In the mid-00s, I was contacted by a world-famous, Academy Award-winning director, to write a screenplay based on Monopoly. It was to be a family comedy with a lead role for a comedy star. My own memories of Monopoly from my childhood were that Monopoly is a game to be dreaded rather than played. Games of Monopoly were torture sessions, where the true dynamic of our family was starkly exposed, as every family member turned on one another and everyone leaned on the smallest, weakest member first, and moved on from there, until the oldest child won.

That is to say, when people play Monopoly, there are two power struggles going on: the one on the board, and the one around the table. That was what gave me the hook for the screenplay (which I will neither laud nor denigrate here). Half the movie would be set in the imaginary Atlantic City of the board, and half would be set around the table of the family playing the game, so that we see that the dynamics of the family are played out in the fictional world of the game.

I'm an antisocial bastard, so to research the game and its dynamics I had to find a way to play it by myself. Luckily, at that very moment, Parker Bros released on online version of the game, where an individual could play against bots. It's not a difficult game to play against bots, because bots can only make decisions based on the rules of the game, they can't weigh probabilities or gauge the wills of the other players. So I won every time.

After winning my tenth game or so, I decided to see what happens if one keeps playing after the other players are eliminated.
Here's what happens: one keeps going around the board, collecting $200, and buying up all the unsold or forfeited properties left in the game, until one owns every property, railroad and utility. The player has then truly achieved a Monopoly and controls the entire fictional Atlantic City.

Now, what happens after THAT?

What happens after that is that the player keeps going, around and around the board, collecting $200, but now there are no other players, so there is no one to collect rent from, which doesn't sound that bad, but then the bills come due. There are the various taxes and fines that the player must ultimately pay, until finally, the "winner" of the game goes bankrupt and the only real winner of the game of Monopoly is The Bank.

This is all another way of saying that, in the end, I was absolutely unable to find a single positive thing to say about the board game Monopoly in a screenplay based on the board game Monopoly. It's a horrible game, one created to start fights, and can only serve as a harsh lesson about the evils of capitalism, although very few people ever see it that way. But if Monopoly is played to its absolute conclusion, one owns everything but has no friends, and must eventually must hand everything over to the bank.

While it is tempting to attribute this "end game of Monopoly" as a condemnation of capitalism, it's really just the end state of EVERY closed loop system. With nothing new coming in, we all succumb to entropy eventually. Expansion, conquest, renewal, upheaval, constriction, THESE are the ways society really lives. That theoretical "communist utopia" would have the same end result of 'the bank' owning everything because just like capitalism, eventually one party exterminates all competition and then can't innovate themselves out of the pit.

What we need are MULTIPLE games of Monopoly where you can take your cash and jump from one to another, or get demoted to poorer and poorer boards as you are driven out of your board. Obviously no one would ever want to play this way, but you could run it all with bots and I bet you would see some interesting things about upward and downward mobility, probably see if that "middle class" is long term sustainable or if everyone eventually ends up on the poorest board and a few (the 1%) up on the top.

I thought it was common knowledge that Monopoly was originally designed to deliver this exact experience.

Nodens wrote: I thought it was common knowledge that Monopoly was originally designed to deliver this exact experience.

Yes - wasn't it designed by a lady in the 1920s/30s as an anti-capitalist game.

And in answer to the writer's end game result - if you owned all the properties in a town and no one was renting them and you didn't change then you will eventually go broke from all the expenses

Not anti-capitalist, but Georgist — understanding land as a wholly distinct category from either capital or labor.

I went off on it, uh, apparently 18 months ago:

therewillbe.games/forum/10-ameritrash/20...lar-this-week#339955

Uba never did publish my article-length rewrite of it though.

dysjunct wrote: Not anti-capitalist, but Georgist — understanding land as a wholly distinct category from either capital or labor.

I went off on it, uh, apparently 18 months ago:

therewillbe.games/forum/10-ameritrash/20...lar-this-week#339955

Uba never did publish my article-length rewrite of it though.

I wondered what had happened to that article. I can throw it on the GftC site if you need a place for it to live. I think we will revisit Monopoly soon (this time with proper cabling so you can hear all the panelists). I would be super interested in having your material as a reference.

So about a year ago I went to the Museum of Play in Rochester NY, which is generally a pretty neat place, which also contains the Toy Hall of Fame. So I deliberately hunted down the Monopoly entry to see if they credited the original designer, but NOPE, no mention of her. I know she technically didn't invent Monopoly (the Landlords game?), but c'mon. Really disappointing when women are already under-represented. I'd share a photo, but Google photos makes that a pain...

I'm always a bit perplexed by what people expect from Monopoly. Do people keep playing Checkers after the other player is eliminated? Moving around the board in arbitrary ways to see if something exciting unexpectedly happens?

You want to make a film about Monopoly? Here's the take-away. You pay taxes all your life, you cover your bills as best you can, and then you leave in a box, just like all the other people that played the game before you. It's one hell of a metaphor for life whether anyone cares for it to be or not. Maybe you shouldn't be looking to turn what is fundamentally a financial con-sim into rom-com. Nobody is making Castles of Burgundy into a film either.

It's become so damn cliche to shit on Monopoly that it's now "in" to be against the people that are against the game. It's like the hackneyed joke that people just can't seem to let go of no matter how many times it's been told. Take the game for what it's worth, and always remember that no one is forcing you to play the damn thing.

Any screenwriter that can't create a story between modern day family relationships and 1920s business isn't worth hiring. I thought of a couple of plots driving on the way home from Walmart.

Sagrilarus wrote: I'm always a bit perplexed by what people expect from Monopoly. Do people keep playing Checkers after the other player is eliminated? Moving around the board in arbitrary ways to see if something exciting unexpectedly happens?

You want to make a film about Monopoly? Here's the take-away. You pay taxes all your life, you cover your bills as best you can, and then you leave in box, just like all the other people that played the game before you. It's one hell of a metaphor for life whether anyone cares for it to be or not. Maybe you shouldn't be looking to turn what is fundamentally a financial con-sim into rom-com. Nobody is making Castles of Burgundy into a film either.

Hey now, some of us get to be mummified and entombed in a giant stone sarcophagus with all our lordly wealth....only to be tomb raided centuries later and have our corpses paraded around, WINNING!!!

Hmm, thats not a bad idea for a game, sort of a variant on Dungeon Lords perhaps. Build the most dangerous, trap filled final resting place to stymie future plundering. Isn't there some chinese emperors tomb supposedly submerged in a LAKE of pure mercury to prevent this very thing?

I absolutely love Monopoly and saying that is a super well designed, tight, relatively fast game is a hill I will die on.

I hear these tales of idiots playing 4P games that last 5 hours and I always ask the same question, and always get the same answer: Oh, we play the way we always played.

Read the rules. Like, internalize them.

When you do that, you soon realize that this game is Cosmic Encounter, Pit, and Catan. There's negotiation, there's auctions, and there's fuckery. It's perfect, and played well and without the absurd house rules designed as catchup mechanisms, you can crush the entire city in an hour. Every time.

As a criticism of capitalism, it holds no water, because monopolies are illegal, price fixing and collusion is illegal. The idea of the game is to have renters pay for homes that they would otherwise not have if nobody was building them. The capital pays for the homes and hotels. Without the capital, there's no homes and everyone suffers. No need for rails, no need for utilities and no culture - no beauty contests and no art shows. Only crime and poverty.

People who decry capitalism from their nice homes on their world class phones made by people building them in communist countries by people little more than slaves in buildings subdued by nets because suicide is so prevalent...they turn my fucking stomach. The blessings of capitalism produce the best standard of living on earth and always have. Dont hate capitalism, hate the laises faire bureaucrats who ate corrupt and refuse to regulate the companies who are the true enemies.

That's my 2 cents, as someone who has travelled the world and has seen what we have.

A lighter look at Monopoly:https://www.instagram.com/ailaughatmyownjokes/reel/CpLsncdjGiu/

(Had to post this without a break after the colon, because Instagram got unhappy.

jason10mm wrote: Isn't there some chinese emperors tomb supposedly submerged in a LAKE of pure mercury to prevent this very thing?

God I hope so!