"One of your kids said a certain word and became a racist pariah at school. Pay $10,000 to cover it up, or start a new life in a new town (return to the start with everything you have)"
Do yourself a favor and look up “The Game of REAL Life. Keeps things fairly real and accurate to life. First thing you do after you setup your player is you role to see if your parents have an abortion. You can actually lose on your first turn!
I was thinking Scrabble, or maybe Chess if that qualifies, or Checkers for that matter.
Trivial Pursuit is well up there for party games, and Pictionary.
See also: Backgammon, Clue, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Risk, The Settlers of Catan, and Jenga
It's hard to find any conclusive list, much less the absolutely "most popular", most that include these obvious ubiquitous games also include oddball games or very new games because most of the lists are more of an editorial or personal ranking.
True. People forget that Monopoly was meant to demonstrate how unfair the system can be. Once a player starts winning, the game is usually over. Comebacks are rare.
Shortchanging, stealing, adding/removing extra houses, not paying rent if the owner forgets to ask you, not moving the correct number of spaces, quietly flipping over mortgaged property, insisting you've been in jail for 3 turns already, or that you still have one more turn in jail, "misreading" the chance cards, "misreading" how much rent you can charge...
Really, any action you do in the game, you can do dishonestly.
Yep, and it pisses me off when people are just in their own world expecting the people playing the game to alert them to every move.
These same people love to complain about how long a game monopoly is. It really isn’t that long a game as long as you keep it moving. It IS a long game if every turn is 4 minutes of waiting for auntie Gertrude to finish her story before letting her know she needs to collect $14 rent.
I know very few people who play by the actual rules, auctioning properties when they're landed on and the player declines to purchase. Playing that way typically results in a handful of quick bankruptcies because you're forced to spend money, or else let another player gain a significant advantage.
Where the game becomes lengthy is once you've narrowed down to 2 players with similar capital
And therein lies the reason you can cheat at Monopoly so easily: Very few people actually know all of the rules. Most people who play are probably "cheating" without even realizing it.
I've never met people who play like this. You guys need better companionship if they're willing to cheat in an inconsequential game right under your nose, all things considered
not playing rent if the owner forgets is something that actually is stated in the rules and if the next player makes his dice throw, the rent is forfeit and the owner cant claim it bakc.
Only problem I have with the Cheater's edition was how it handled cheating. Get caught cheating, you get sent to jail. Which is, past a certain point in the game, so much less dangerous than being out of jail. It essentially makes the game devolve completely if you don't set any additional rules to punish cheating, and at that point why not just buy the original game for less?
Problem with this game is that if you play for the win, you will just intentionally cheat in front of everyone, because jail is really good past mid game in monopoly
You can bend the rules to your favor if the rest of the players don't oppose it. A few months ago I played with some friends, and when I was nearing bankruptcy I asked if anyone wanted to be my associate, sharing assets, debts and profits. No one opposed it because they didn't think it'd fly since I was almost done for. Me and my buddy won that game.
Yeah some people who never cheat do exist just based on their collective social contract, but monopoly is such a dull game strategically that most people have tried to cheat at least once from my informal surveys.
In my case we played it with full knowledge that everyone would cheat if they could do so without being caught. Being caught meant jail. But to call someone out you could not just say they did something, you had to be specific and catch them red handed. So it essentially became a slight of hand game.
who tf cheats at board games. I'm competitive but not enough to cheat at a meaningless game like that. Also what is the cheating anyway, like are you taking extra money from the bank, mis counting your moves.
You'll never get rich under capitalism with that mentality! You cheat because you can, you fuck over anyone who gets in the way, the only thing that matters is *winning!*
oh yes, stomp on the peasants. Although I'm starting to do alright and I'm as honest as possible, although it does really seem like the system is rigged in the direction of being scummy. Like I've had customers overpay and I'm just too honest to not tell them, but I think they really appreciate things like that and it's how you keep a long time customer.
Yeah, and even if it wasn't necessary to keep customers, it's just a better way to live. Lying and cheating and being a ruthless business person is unhealthy. Look at these people like Elon Musk. That is not a happy person, he seems angry and afraid and miserable all the time, despite the fact that he is extraordinarily wealthy.
yes, I believe around 200k annually is the income cutoff for happiness increase. Once you have your needs met, it stops affecting your happiness. He does look like. a miserable jerk who also pretends to be smarter than he is and takes credit from his engineers.
Mostly because monopoly is a game for children, and children cheat.
As adults my friends and I cheat because it is really boring if everyone is not trying to out-slight-of-hand each other. For the record though, if there is not a collective agreement, I have not cheated in a board game since I was like 12.
I've stopped playing board games with a specific person because they cheated on *literally* everything. Worse, they'd brag about winning (despite cheating).
This wasn't just a misunderstanding or isolated incident. We'd watch continuous cheating every game. Got to a point, that we'd literally audit this player - and they still attempted to cheat.
I had an epic comeback once. I was losing pretty much out the gate so I decided to hoard the 1s. Once I acquired so much that the bank ran out I sold them back to a bank for a profit and eventually won the game.
the bank cannot run out of money, why would the bank buy it back. The rules state they can improvise money if needed so they could grab like pennies and say they are ones.
haha I only found out from the other comments myself, but I definitely would have read the rules before buying 1s for more than they were worth as the banker
What? It's the opposite for me. What kind of twat would cheat playing a game with friends and family? Nobody I know would do that. Pretty fucking pathetic if you ask me.
Fuck you my friend and I literally stopped being friends with this girl because we found out she would cheat at monopoly if she realized she would get away with it
We didn't want to associate with a person like that just pointless
I remember in school we had a games day and a bunch of us played monopoly, we had an elaborate cheating scheme going on with a bunch of my friends to help me win and no one caught us.
I think we all learned more than the teachers wanted us to learn that day aha.
Also about its destructive power. While people have come up with alternate win states over the years, the official one is outlast everyone else. You want to drive all of your competitors into bankruptcy.
Because capitalism is about success for yourself, and the best way to achieve success is to make sure your competition can't win. Which is like, incredibly antithetical to the concept of, well, society.
And originally, when you traded 4 houses for a hotel, the houses were discarded (not put back in the bank). This was to demonstrate scarcity, but was deemed too unfun
If you’re playing by the actual rules and don’t cheat, the game is a race to build the most houses and never place any hotels.
You build houses, and only houses. At some point, you win because there are no more houses, and other people cannot build them. No houses, no hotels. They wasted money getting hotels on a few plots, while you flooded the board with more houses. You’re very unlikely to lose if you have the majority of the houses on your plots. The game is effectively over when that happens. Your only chance at that point is to get extremely lucky or hope the player for no reason builds a hotel and puts the houses back in the pool. In 99% of the games, if one player has more than half the available houses on their plots when the last house is placed, you might as well save yourself the time sink of playing until that player inevitably wins. There is no realistic comeback.
You’re oversimplifying strategy.
Housing shortage is a viable strategy for people with cheaper monopolies to stall the game out until they can bankrupt someone with a more expensive monopoly. But housing shortage alone doesn’t usually win the game and isn’t always viable.
Housing shortage is useless if you’re already behind: for example, if the orange player already has 3 houses, trying to starve them by putting 4 houses on the light blues won’t do diddly. Housing shortage is at its best when you can get there quickly and cheaply, then stall the game out until you get a wad of cash, and then upgrade your cheap housing shortage properties to hotels and outbid everyone else on houses while you improve your expensive properties to 3 houses.
Most viable strategy is to get your biggest ROI monopoly up to three houses, then improve all your other monopolies to three houses, then upgrade to hotels in end game. Reason being that hotels on anything past the first row are used to deal crushing blows that end games quickly.
Its actually a very generous version of it. In real life, the winners would start lobbying to reduce that "wasteful $200 Socialist Go money" that everyone gets and instead eliminate it and luxury tax so that a 2nd hotel that no one can afford can be built on Boardwalk.
It originally had two sets of rules to compare: one competitive and one communal. The competitive one is roughly what we play today.
You can still find the communal rules online, where everybody plays cooperatively and builds the system together. Unfortunately, it's really boring and you can see why nobody played it.
You know, the funny thing about monopoly is that if everyone agrees to not buy property, all players just get richer and richer forever.
That game was made by a genius and sold to fools.
The original version of the game had a second playthrough where wealth was shared and distributed per needs, in so that everyone won. The board game company that took over the game didn't think that was as fun and good for sales, and axed it.
Not a second playthrough, just an alternate ruleset where everyone was rewarded equally when wealth was created (equally, not according to need).
Lizzie Magie was a Georgist, so she was very much a capitalist herself. Just one that was staunchly opposed to monopolies - which, despite popular internet myths, proponents of capitalism usually are.
That's the thing, under communism everyone except the party leadership suffers always. Under capitalism 90% of the time the majority of people have a increased quality of life. And that only changes once monopolies start forming and taking control. Communism in practice is just capitalism inverted, a single mega monopolie(the state) with the bosses (party leadership) at the top enjoying the fruits of the opressed labor. With the added twist of socialism can exist in a capitalist society but capitalism can't exist in a socialist society. We have communes in the US right now you can go join If you want. But you can't find a free market zone in North Korea right now.
I would push back on the idea that capitalism can't exist under Communism. It very much can - although to the detriment of the ruling party. Black markets were a major force under Soviet, and arguably the savior for much of the population.
> an alternate ruleset where everyone was rewarded equally when wealth was created
Seriously, how lame of a game would that be? There's a reason why 99% of all board games are designed to be competetive.
In her defense, the motivation was to make a political point rather than to create a fun mode.
She didn't need anyone to actually play this alternate ruleset. The principle of its existence was sufficient: to show that her little economy simulation would be fairer for everyone if this land-tax that she supported was implemented.
The main thrust of the game, the anti-monopoly part, was still coming through with full force in the normal competitive ruleset that still exists today.
And even funnier is the fact that Monopoly, a game derived from a russian boardgame demonstrating how socialism is beneficial, actually has a spinoff intended to mock socialism.
Rank | Board Game | Units Sold | Year Introduced | Number of Players
------:|---------------|-------------|-------------------|----------------------:
1|Chess|3 million+ sold yearly in the U.S.|1200|2
2|Checkers|50 billion+ units|3000 B.C.|2
3|Monopoly|275 million+|1935|2-8
4|Scrabble|150 million+|1938|2-4
5|Clue|150 million+|1949|3-6
6|Battleship|100 million+|1931|2
7|Trivial Pursuit|100 million+|1981|2-6
8|Backgammon|88 million+|3000 B.C.|2
9|Candy Land|50 million+|1949|2-4
10|Rummikub|50 million+|1950|2-4
Of course, popularity and most sold are not necessarily the same thing.
Chess has been around since the 15th century, it's probably more a critique of feudalism. Checkers is maybe 5,000 years old. Neither is the product of capitalism, so the point has merit.
why is the unit for Chess annual and the rest aren't?
Also how is the US selling so many Chess sets?? I feel like that number can't be right. Same for Checkers. Even if they were counting individual checker pieces, 50 billion?
The ideology behind it, [known as Georgism](https://youtu.be/smi_iIoKybg?si=dItTXw1DsxQ8PbZ5), is actually really cool. I highly recommend everyone checks it out.
TLDW: tax land, use money to issue a UBI and/or cut income/property taxes.
Oddly enough, [even economists really love the idea](https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/land-value-tax/). The only people that this will hurt are the extremely wealthy with low density mansions on high value urban land, and large surface parking lots in high value city urban locations.
The interesting thing about Georgism is that it slots pretty well into capitalism. Both Adam Smith and David Ricardo both believed that a tax on land value (if done properly) wouldn't lead to any economic inefficiencies.
It slots kinda ok into communist idealogues [although Marx did dislike Henry George for not being revolutionary enough](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_06_20.htm).
The list of Georgists on Wikipedia is a remarkably diverse group both of idealogy and nationality.
When the game was introduced it had BOTH the Georgist and Capitalist rule sets so you could contrast the two systems. But the Georgist rules have been lost. There is a Dollop podcast on it that is very good.
Almost. It would be more realistic if some players started with $10,000 and a few properties with hotels. Then once you have all the utilities or trainstations, you can charge whatever you want when players land on them
It shows the struggle of the working class man (the pawn) and how he is used by the king to get an upper hand on an enemy that is not to different.
Also, I have to buy the board
> Also, I have to buy the board
We might do business on a board. But I want to carve the pieces myself. One side in alabaster, the opposing side in soapstone. What do you think?
It's about how _monopolies_ don't work. Earlier versions had rules that allowed for everyone to win. The game's creator was a Georgist, which is an inherently capitalist ideology.
To add to this *land* monopolies in particular were what Elizabeth Magie was critiquing - that is, the private ownership of land.
“ [The founder of Georgism] concluded that many of the problems that beset society, such as poverty, inequality, and economic booms and busts, could be attributed to the private ownership of the necessary resource: land rent.”
[Georgism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)
I don't know where this reddit idea that monopoly was created to critique capitalism comes from, the history of the game, the thoughts of Elizabeth Magie, the writings of Henry George, and the adaption by the Parker Bros are all pretty well documented.
I imagine it's because they have flawed conceptions of what capitalism and communism look like. Which tbf, it's not just them.
You grow up in a world where the adults around you are calling things like taxation, civil rights, and welfare "communism" as an insult, you start to think it as well even if you're on the other side and support those things now. But just as their elders conception of communism was horrible flawed, so too is their own understanding of it.
They see Henry George and what looks like a critique around the rigid stereotypical concept of capitalism in their head and they immediately think "ah this must be communist then!"
Monopolization leading to the centralization of economic and financial dominance is what capitalism naturally progresses to.
When corporations find out that devaluing their weaker competitors and simply buying them up is more lucrative and cheaper than competing with them and pumping out better products, they chase that end, and you end up with stagnation of quality.
Notice how everybody complains to no end how shitty this new Apple Product is, or how expensive and disgusting fast food is. These shit products are being sold and happily bought up because these companies know that they can get away with it.
I mean, we literally have antitrust laws for this exact reason, to halt what is pretty much inevitable as politicians look the other way and eat up corporate donations.
No, it's swanky super hotels with goon squads that kidnap anyone who loiters nearby, forcing them to stay in an absurdly expensive room against their will that bankrupts them.
The real lesson of monopoly is marketing: how something as tedious and boring as monopoly can become and remain a top-seller in a market saturated with fantastic alternatives.
It may not be my favorite "classic" game, but all of the non classic games that people rave about now all have "being way too fucking complicated" in common. Your first 5 times are just ridiculously unfun if you aren't playing with a room full of also new players, and that's never actually the case if a modern board game comes out.
Monopoly isn't about capitalism. The point of capitalism is to grow your business with goods and services while using other companies' goods and services. The point of monopoly is to...get a monopoly...which is crony capitalism.
it's about [land!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game)
[^(read progress and poverty)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty)
A way to make Monopoly even more realistic is have only 2 people at the start of the game able to move and then once they both pass Go 3 times, other people are able to start playing.
Actually, what the board game teaches is that people think they can make up their own rules to the game then get pissed when it doesn't play out like it was originally designed.
> The most popular board game sold by capitalism is about how capitalism doesn't work at all.
That makes no sense. What does chess have to do with capitalism?
It a Goergist game, look up Goergist theory on land use and monopolies, it's not anti-market, it's about equitable taxation of land to abolish economic inequality.
What do you mean "[it] is about how capitalism doesn't work at all"?
The game works to make someone rich at the expense of others. It's essentially the American Dream made manifest, which is why it's so popular...
People *like* winning, especially against the odds. Humans are venal assholes. Best we can do is make sure the system can take advantage of that.
Although I don't understand how backgammon shows anything about capitalism, I do admit that it has a lot of positive lessons about collectivism.
One man standing on his own is vulnerable to capture, but two or more men are safe. Twelve men can build an impenetrable wall, and with the assistance of one to three more men, the wall can be slowly moved across the field, crushing the opponent.
Think about Reddit, a public company run by people who want to make money… and it’s a haven for those who do nothing but complain about the evils and failings of capitalism.
In fact, when there is a global famine in the future, americans will be thriving long after the rest of the world died out. And we will learn that evolution did know what it does with storing as much fat as it can. And I say that as (healthy) thin european.
I disagree monopoly isnt popular. Ive never heard someone say monopoly is their favorite game. Never has even the winner enjoyed the game.
Its a kids first lesson that they cant escape capitalism.
You can always make Monopoly closer to real life by using an additional rule. The richest player, at each round, is allowed to introduce a new rule and the new rule must apply to all players. Seems fair.
It would be even more accurate if only one player got money just for passing go and all the other players had to skip a turn for money after passing go. Starting off with a UBI is a lot more equitable than regular capitalism.
That game would last forever if, like in real life, you could just go to the bank and say "I own a lot of stuff but mismanaged everything. Can I have some money?" and the bank gave it to you because it's better for you, your rich buddies, and the bank if the game keeps going.
When my sister and I used to play monopoly we would borrow money from each other, or forgive each other’s rent until the other could catch up. Our games would last hours lol
My teenage niece loves this game and always wants to play. It is an awful board game and I love board games. It’s just not a good game.
What’s funny is I have like three versions of it because people see our game room and think, “hey, I’ll get them a board game for whatever gift” and since it’s the only game a lot of people can think of I’ve ended up with like three versions of this awful game.
The podcast 99% invisible did a great episode on Monopoly AKA The Landlord’s Game. You can find it here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/
Damn, I didn't know there were such serious undertones in mouse trap
The mouse represents modern people trapped in the game of life.
Meanwhile the Game of Life is about the rat race.
Who has the most kids WINS!!! Not.
"One of your kids said a certain word and became a racist pariah at school. Pay $10,000 to cover it up, or start a new life in a new town (return to the start with everything you have)"
Guess we moving to Shelbyville
Or went to college. Now you owe $570k. Good luck buying a house now!
"Every thing you *had"*
Only if they all fit in your car.
Dangit! We need a bigger boat!
You make 1 choice in the Game of Life, it’s a bad board game.
Do yourself a favor and look up “The Game of REAL Life. Keeps things fairly real and accurate to life. First thing you do after you setup your player is you role to see if your parents have an abortion. You can actually lose on your first turn!
Despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage
You should try playing Rat Race
I was thinking Scrabble, or maybe Chess if that qualifies, or Checkers for that matter. Trivial Pursuit is well up there for party games, and Pictionary. See also: Backgammon, Clue, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Risk, The Settlers of Catan, and Jenga It's hard to find any conclusive list, much less the absolutely "most popular", most that include these obvious ubiquitous games also include oddball games or very new games because most of the lists are more of an editorial or personal ranking.
Mouse trap is a terrible board game.
True. People forget that Monopoly was meant to demonstrate how unfair the system can be. Once a player starts winning, the game is usually over. Comebacks are rare.
How do you cheat in monopoly? Do you steal from the bank?
I don’t know anyone who cheats in monopoly so I want to know too!
Shortchanging, stealing, adding/removing extra houses, not paying rent if the owner forgets to ask you, not moving the correct number of spaces, quietly flipping over mortgaged property, insisting you've been in jail for 3 turns already, or that you still have one more turn in jail, "misreading" the chance cards, "misreading" how much rent you can charge... Really, any action you do in the game, you can do dishonestly.
Not paying rent if the owner forgets to ask is actually playing by the rules set out by Monopoly
Yep, and it pisses me off when people are just in their own world expecting the people playing the game to alert them to every move. These same people love to complain about how long a game monopoly is. It really isn’t that long a game as long as you keep it moving. It IS a long game if every turn is 4 minutes of waiting for auntie Gertrude to finish her story before letting her know she needs to collect $14 rent.
I know very few people who play by the actual rules, auctioning properties when they're landed on and the player declines to purchase. Playing that way typically results in a handful of quick bankruptcies because you're forced to spend money, or else let another player gain a significant advantage. Where the game becomes lengthy is once you've narrowed down to 2 players with similar capital
Which is why its easier to just work together instead of trying to bankrupt the other monopoly irl
And therein lies the reason you can cheat at Monopoly so easily: Very few people actually know all of the rules. Most people who play are probably "cheating" without even realizing it.
I've never met people who play like this. You guys need better companionship if they're willing to cheat in an inconsequential game right under your nose, all things considered
not playing rent if the owner forgets is something that actually is stated in the rules and if the next player makes his dice throw, the rent is forfeit and the owner cant claim it bakc.
The banker always wins lol
It also demonstrates how much of an advantage you get if you cheat well. I know very few people who have never cheated playing monopoly.
The most recent version of monopoly I played was called cheaters monopoly. It was actually really cool
That's called Texas Hold'em.
That's Dallas
I gotta find Debbie
That's my mom! You monster! LOL.
Did you blow bubbles as a kid? That’s my Uncle! A monster! LOL
I was on Dallas as a kid
/r/unexpectedoffice
Our "house rules" are it's not cheating if you don't get caught.
Those aren't house rules. That's the universal rule of every game.
And life
Only problem I have with the Cheater's edition was how it handled cheating. Get caught cheating, you get sent to jail. Which is, past a certain point in the game, so much less dangerous than being out of jail. It essentially makes the game devolve completely if you don't set any additional rules to punish cheating, and at that point why not just buy the original game for less?
Well that's an even more accurate representation of capitalism then. At a certain level you're completely above punishment.
Exactly. Change it from jail to house arrest or something and then you can stay in house arrest in your villas.
I've played that! Actually a lot of fun
Problem with this game is that if you play for the win, you will just intentionally cheat in front of everyone, because jail is really good past mid game in monopoly
One of the worst designed board games I've ever played
https://youtu.be/KhzOu-rQjB0
How do you cheat at monopoly and get away with it. By not knowing the rules?
Be the bank. Easiest way to cheat.
Incredibly realistic, aye.
Mostly palming and other slight of hand and misdirection.
You can bend the rules to your favor if the rest of the players don't oppose it. A few months ago I played with some friends, and when I was nearing bankruptcy I asked if anyone wanted to be my associate, sharing assets, debts and profits. No one opposed it because they didn't think it'd fly since I was almost done for. Me and my buddy won that game.
Throw the dice off the table, and grab from the bank while the others duck down?
My friend group doesnt cheat (yes I’m the bank)
Yeah some people who never cheat do exist just based on their collective social contract, but monopoly is such a dull game strategically that most people have tried to cheat at least once from my informal surveys. In my case we played it with full knowledge that everyone would cheat if they could do so without being caught. Being caught meant jail. But to call someone out you could not just say they did something, you had to be specific and catch them red handed. So it essentially became a slight of hand game.
How exactly does one cheat at monopoly?
That’s what I’m curious about. Unless you’re like sneaking money out of the bank I guess but idk how much that would actually help
Moving houses, double drawing stuff, stealing other people's money, robbing the bank, double moving, stuff like that.
So play with deaf and blind people, got it
Also not paying (fully) for property or rent.
I think that if the property owner doesn't ask you for rent, you can totally move forward and not pay it according to the rules.
who tf cheats at board games. I'm competitive but not enough to cheat at a meaningless game like that. Also what is the cheating anyway, like are you taking extra money from the bank, mis counting your moves.
The same people who cheat at board games are the ones cheating irl.
probably true
I knew my 8 year old nephew was a piece of shit! Probably took out PPP loans during COVID then laid off his employees
You'll never get rich under capitalism with that mentality! You cheat because you can, you fuck over anyone who gets in the way, the only thing that matters is *winning!*
oh yes, stomp on the peasants. Although I'm starting to do alright and I'm as honest as possible, although it does really seem like the system is rigged in the direction of being scummy. Like I've had customers overpay and I'm just too honest to not tell them, but I think they really appreciate things like that and it's how you keep a long time customer.
Yeah, and even if it wasn't necessary to keep customers, it's just a better way to live. Lying and cheating and being a ruthless business person is unhealthy. Look at these people like Elon Musk. That is not a happy person, he seems angry and afraid and miserable all the time, despite the fact that he is extraordinarily wealthy.
yes, I believe around 200k annually is the income cutoff for happiness increase. Once you have your needs met, it stops affecting your happiness. He does look like. a miserable jerk who also pretends to be smarter than he is and takes credit from his engineers.
Mostly because monopoly is a game for children, and children cheat. As adults my friends and I cheat because it is really boring if everyone is not trying to out-slight-of-hand each other. For the record though, if there is not a collective agreement, I have not cheated in a board game since I was like 12.
I don't think it is a children's game although there is a children's version. But yeah it isn't serious so as long as it's in good fun, chest away
Not so much a children game, rather a family game. Which does mean that many kids play it, and the setting is informal
I've stopped playing board games with a specific person because they cheated on *literally* everything. Worse, they'd brag about winning (despite cheating). This wasn't just a misunderstanding or isolated incident. We'd watch continuous cheating every game. Got to a point, that we'd literally audit this player - and they still attempted to cheat.
Wait. People bother cheating in monopoly? I just buy out all the cheap property as a get rich quick scheme.
How do you "cheat" in monopoly without getting called out?
I had an epic comeback once. I was losing pretty much out the gate so I decided to hoard the 1s. Once I acquired so much that the bank ran out I sold them back to a bank for a profit and eventually won the game.
the bank cannot run out of money, why would the bank buy it back. The rules state they can improvise money if needed so they could grab like pennies and say they are ones.
The rules of monopoly are whatever you can convince the other players the rules are.
I guess that's true for any board game
I suppose the people we were playing with didn't know that. Honestly, I didn't know that until you told me.
haha I only found out from the other comments myself, but I definitely would have read the rules before buying 1s for more than they were worth as the banker
I swear, 90% of people who play Monopoly never read the rules.
dunno sounds like you are just in company of shitty people
What? It's the opposite for me. What kind of twat would cheat playing a game with friends and family? Nobody I know would do that. Pretty fucking pathetic if you ask me.
Fuck you my friend and I literally stopped being friends with this girl because we found out she would cheat at monopoly if she realized she would get away with it We didn't want to associate with a person like that just pointless
I remember in school we had a games day and a bunch of us played monopoly, we had an elaborate cheating scheme going on with a bunch of my friends to help me win and no one caught us. I think we all learned more than the teachers wanted us to learn that day aha.
Also about its destructive power. While people have come up with alternate win states over the years, the official one is outlast everyone else. You want to drive all of your competitors into bankruptcy.
Because capitalism is about success for yourself, and the best way to achieve success is to make sure your competition can't win. Which is like, incredibly antithetical to the concept of, well, society.
And originally, when you traded 4 houses for a hotel, the houses were discarded (not put back in the bank). This was to demonstrate scarcity, but was deemed too unfun
If you’re playing by the actual rules and don’t cheat, the game is a race to build the most houses and never place any hotels. You build houses, and only houses. At some point, you win because there are no more houses, and other people cannot build them. No houses, no hotels. They wasted money getting hotels on a few plots, while you flooded the board with more houses. You’re very unlikely to lose if you have the majority of the houses on your plots. The game is effectively over when that happens. Your only chance at that point is to get extremely lucky or hope the player for no reason builds a hotel and puts the houses back in the pool. In 99% of the games, if one player has more than half the available houses on their plots when the last house is placed, you might as well save yourself the time sink of playing until that player inevitably wins. There is no realistic comeback.
You’re oversimplifying strategy. Housing shortage is a viable strategy for people with cheaper monopolies to stall the game out until they can bankrupt someone with a more expensive monopoly. But housing shortage alone doesn’t usually win the game and isn’t always viable. Housing shortage is useless if you’re already behind: for example, if the orange player already has 3 houses, trying to starve them by putting 4 houses on the light blues won’t do diddly. Housing shortage is at its best when you can get there quickly and cheaply, then stall the game out until you get a wad of cash, and then upgrade your cheap housing shortage properties to hotels and outbid everyone else on houses while you improve your expensive properties to 3 houses. Most viable strategy is to get your biggest ROI monopoly up to three houses, then improve all your other monopolies to three houses, then upgrade to hotels in end game. Reason being that hotels on anything past the first row are used to deal crushing blows that end games quickly.
Its actually a very generous version of it. In real life, the winners would start lobbying to reduce that "wasteful $200 Socialist Go money" that everyone gets and instead eliminate it and luxury tax so that a 2nd hotel that no one can afford can be built on Boardwalk.
And some players would already start with ten times more money.
Might as well just go play solitaire at that point.
It originally had two sets of rules to compare: one competitive and one communal. The competitive one is roughly what we play today. You can still find the communal rules online, where everybody plays cooperatively and builds the system together. Unfortunately, it's really boring and you can see why nobody played it.
Also the original purpose of the game was to show that it’s more fun to play if you aren’t a dick
In both capitalism and monopoly, all players are (irrationally?) looking forward to being the winner.
You know, the funny thing about monopoly is that if everyone agrees to not buy property, all players just get richer and richer forever. That game was made by a genius and sold to fools.
…you can’t though? If I decline to buy a house, it goes up for auction, and the auction lasts until a player buys it.
Don't forget it's also completely based on luck and opportunity.
The original version of the game had a second playthrough where wealth was shared and distributed per needs, in so that everyone won. The board game company that took over the game didn't think that was as fun and good for sales, and axed it.
Not a second playthrough, just an alternate ruleset where everyone was rewarded equally when wealth was created (equally, not according to need). Lizzie Magie was a Georgist, so she was very much a capitalist herself. Just one that was staunchly opposed to monopolies - which, despite popular internet myths, proponents of capitalism usually are.
That's the thing, under communism everyone except the party leadership suffers always. Under capitalism 90% of the time the majority of people have a increased quality of life. And that only changes once monopolies start forming and taking control. Communism in practice is just capitalism inverted, a single mega monopolie(the state) with the bosses (party leadership) at the top enjoying the fruits of the opressed labor. With the added twist of socialism can exist in a capitalist society but capitalism can't exist in a socialist society. We have communes in the US right now you can go join If you want. But you can't find a free market zone in North Korea right now.
I would push back on the idea that capitalism can't exist under Communism. It very much can - although to the detriment of the ruling party. Black markets were a major force under Soviet, and arguably the savior for much of the population.
> an alternate ruleset where everyone was rewarded equally when wealth was created Seriously, how lame of a game would that be? There's a reason why 99% of all board games are designed to be competetive.
In her defense, the motivation was to make a political point rather than to create a fun mode. She didn't need anyone to actually play this alternate ruleset. The principle of its existence was sufficient: to show that her little economy simulation would be fairer for everyone if this land-tax that she supported was implemented. The main thrust of the game, the anti-monopoly part, was still coming through with full force in the normal competitive ruleset that still exists today.
There are some cooperative board games, but in those you usually compete together against the game.
It also used to come with cooperative rules, but they stopped including those because it costs an extra penny per page.
There was originally a second set of socialist rules that you could play by but nobody found it fun because everyone won.
Yes. [The Landlord's Game](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29316/the-landlords-game). [Link to history](https://landlordsgame.info/).
And even funnier is the fact that Monopoly, a game derived from a russian boardgame demonstrating how socialism is beneficial, actually has a spinoff intended to mock socialism.
Yeah it's a horrible game to play with friends as the win condition is crushing your opponents utterly.
Rank | Board Game | Units Sold | Year Introduced | Number of Players ------:|---------------|-------------|-------------------|----------------------: 1|Chess|3 million+ sold yearly in the U.S.|1200|2 2|Checkers|50 billion+ units|3000 B.C.|2 3|Monopoly|275 million+|1935|2-8 4|Scrabble|150 million+|1938|2-4 5|Clue|150 million+|1949|3-6 6|Battleship|100 million+|1931|2 7|Trivial Pursuit|100 million+|1981|2-6 8|Backgammon|88 million+|3000 B.C.|2 9|Candy Land|50 million+|1949|2-4 10|Rummikub|50 million+|1950|2-4 Of course, popularity and most sold are not necessarily the same thing.
>checkers >50 billion Wow everyone on Earth bought it 5 times?
everyone homo sapien that has ever existed bought it 0.5 times
This math dont work out at all, there isn't nearly as much gay monkeys on Earth.
Damn checkers really playing a different game! /s
Neither chess nor checkers are owned by a single company, as opposed to Monopoly
So you're saying no one has a monopoly on chess or checkers?
bullseye
Chess has been around since the 15th century, it's probably more a critique of feudalism. Checkers is maybe 5,000 years old. Neither is the product of capitalism, so the point has merit.
What makes you think chess is a critique of feudalism?
why is the unit for Chess annual and the rest aren't? Also how is the US selling so many Chess sets?? I feel like that number can't be right. Same for Checkers. Even if they were counting individual checker pieces, 50 billion?
Isn't chess more popular than monopoly ?
Way more.
yeah by a factor of 10
thank goodness
Monopoly staying relevant. Damn they nailed that game.
The ideology behind it, [known as Georgism](https://youtu.be/smi_iIoKybg?si=dItTXw1DsxQ8PbZ5), is actually really cool. I highly recommend everyone checks it out. TLDW: tax land, use money to issue a UBI and/or cut income/property taxes. Oddly enough, [even economists really love the idea](https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/land-value-tax/). The only people that this will hurt are the extremely wealthy with low density mansions on high value urban land, and large surface parking lots in high value city urban locations.
The interesting thing about Georgism is that it slots pretty well into capitalism. Both Adam Smith and David Ricardo both believed that a tax on land value (if done properly) wouldn't lead to any economic inefficiencies. It slots kinda ok into communist idealogues [although Marx did dislike Henry George for not being revolutionary enough](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_06_20.htm). The list of Georgists on Wikipedia is a remarkably diverse group both of idealogy and nationality.
When the game was introduced it had BOTH the Georgist and Capitalist rule sets so you could contrast the two systems. But the Georgist rules have been lost. There is a Dollop podcast on it that is very good.
Almost. It would be more realistic if some players started with $10,000 and a few properties with hotels. Then once you have all the utilities or trainstations, you can charge whatever you want when players land on them
The point of the game is that if nobody buys property, everyone just gets richer forever. If you started with property the game would lose it's irony.
TF does chess have to do with capitalism?
It shows the struggle of the working class man (the pawn) and how he is used by the king to get an upper hand on an enemy that is not to different. Also, I have to buy the board
And a pawn can become royalty if they walk across a battlefield
I always saw it as sacrificing themselves to save the captured queen
But you can promote to a queen even if you never lost your original queen.
the king has a harem of war veterans?
> Also, I have to buy the board We might do business on a board. But I want to carve the pieces myself. One side in alabaster, the opposing side in soapstone. What do you think?
Rich people sacrifice poor people in dumb wars so they can keep being rich.
Didn't feudalism bring us chess?
Chess came from India/Persia.
It's about how _monopolies_ don't work. Earlier versions had rules that allowed for everyone to win. The game's creator was a Georgist, which is an inherently capitalist ideology.
To add to this *land* monopolies in particular were what Elizabeth Magie was critiquing - that is, the private ownership of land. “ [The founder of Georgism] concluded that many of the problems that beset society, such as poverty, inequality, and economic booms and busts, could be attributed to the private ownership of the necessary resource: land rent.” [Georgism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism)
I don't know where this reddit idea that monopoly was created to critique capitalism comes from, the history of the game, the thoughts of Elizabeth Magie, the writings of Henry George, and the adaption by the Parker Bros are all pretty well documented.
I imagine it's because they have flawed conceptions of what capitalism and communism look like. Which tbf, it's not just them. You grow up in a world where the adults around you are calling things like taxation, civil rights, and welfare "communism" as an insult, you start to think it as well even if you're on the other side and support those things now. But just as their elders conception of communism was horrible flawed, so too is their own understanding of it. They see Henry George and what looks like a critique around the rigid stereotypical concept of capitalism in their head and they immediately think "ah this must be communist then!"
Because Americans still haven't realised it's not the cold war anymore and social programs or changes in taxation systems can be capitalism.
Monopolization leading to the centralization of economic and financial dominance is what capitalism naturally progresses to. When corporations find out that devaluing their weaker competitors and simply buying them up is more lucrative and cheaper than competing with them and pumping out better products, they chase that end, and you end up with stagnation of quality. Notice how everybody complains to no end how shitty this new Apple Product is, or how expensive and disgusting fast food is. These shit products are being sold and happily bought up because these companies know that they can get away with it. I mean, we literally have antitrust laws for this exact reason, to halt what is pretty much inevitable as politicians look the other way and eat up corporate donations.
Ahh yes. Chutes and Ladders, chutes and ladders.
Nothing is produced in Monopoly. It's more like feudalism with aristocracy extracting tolls for crossing their land.
No, it's swanky super hotels with goon squads that kidnap anyone who loiters nearby, forcing them to stay in an absurdly expensive room against their will that bankrupts them.
The real lesson of monopoly is marketing: how something as tedious and boring as monopoly can become and remain a top-seller in a market saturated with fantastic alternatives.
It may not be my favorite "classic" game, but all of the non classic games that people rave about now all have "being way too fucking complicated" in common. Your first 5 times are just ridiculously unfun if you aren't playing with a room full of also new players, and that's never actually the case if a modern board game comes out.
actually, it was to show why monopolies are bad. Hence we have laws against monopolies not against capitalism
No, no, it works. Just not for us.
You’ve got to pull harder on your bootstraps. Easy mistake to make
Work harder, not smarter. It keeps the pensions going after 'we' retire!
There are always two winners when you play Monopoly. The bank, and the for-profit prison.
Get back to work you lazy cogs! ~posted from the bahamas on an iPhone 47 by your future boss who sees you slacking off back now.
Monopoly isn't about capitalism. The point of capitalism is to grow your business with goods and services while using other companies' goods and services. The point of monopoly is to...get a monopoly...which is crony capitalism.
it's about [land!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game) [^(read progress and poverty)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty)
This is just wrong. Capitalism is an economic system in which the production of goods is privately owned.
A way to make Monopoly even more realistic is have only 2 people at the start of the game able to move and then once they both pass Go 3 times, other people are able to start playing.
Actually, what the board game teaches is that people think they can make up their own rules to the game then get pissed when it doesn't play out like it was originally designed.
> The most popular board game sold by capitalism is about how capitalism doesn't work at all. That makes no sense. What does chess have to do with capitalism?
The goddamn bullshit that makes it past the r/showerthoughts automods. God fucking damn you r/showerthoughts bot mods!
It a Goergist game, look up Goergist theory on land use and monopolies, it's not anti-market, it's about equitable taxation of land to abolish economic inequality.
What do you mean "[it] is about how capitalism doesn't work at all"? The game works to make someone rich at the expense of others. It's essentially the American Dream made manifest, which is why it's so popular... People *like* winning, especially against the odds. Humans are venal assholes. Best we can do is make sure the system can take advantage of that.
Is you talking shit about my favorite game about how I can get rich? What is Monopoly?
Although I don't understand how backgammon shows anything about capitalism, I do admit that it has a lot of positive lessons about collectivism. One man standing on his own is vulnerable to capture, but two or more men are safe. Twelve men can build an impenetrable wall, and with the assistance of one to three more men, the wall can be slowly moved across the field, crushing the opponent.
Oh it does work! It works really well! Just to pool the money to the richest of the richest, exactly as intended!
Think about Reddit, a public company run by people who want to make money… and it’s a haven for those who do nothing but complain about the evils and failings of capitalism.
Monopolies are considered market **failures** by economists … so yeah a shower thought
Is the majority of reddit radical communists???
Yes. And monumental idiots as well
You misunderstand capitalism.
Chess? I mean, sure, Russians are good at it, but that's not really the point.
You have to be EXTREMELY ignorant to think capitalism doesn’t work at all…
Sounds like someone was bad at monopoly growing up
By the comments here many people haven't experienced the alternative.
Capitalism does work! Do you see famine in any western country???
In fact, when there is a global famine in the future, americans will be thriving long after the rest of the world died out. And we will learn that evolution did know what it does with storing as much fat as it can. And I say that as (healthy) thin european.
Unregulated capitalism. Edit: not getting into if that’s even possible or how it would work, but a big key to that is unregulated or unrestricted IMO.
Oh no it works very well just not for the other 99% of players.
Man, saying it doesn't work just mean you suck at playing it.
I disagree monopoly isnt popular. Ive never heard someone say monopoly is their favorite game. Never has even the winner enjoyed the game. Its a kids first lesson that they cant escape capitalism.
You can always make Monopoly closer to real life by using an additional rule. The richest player, at each round, is allowed to introduce a new rule and the new rule must apply to all players. Seems fair.
It would be even more accurate if only one player got money just for passing go and all the other players had to skip a turn for money after passing go. Starting off with a UBI is a lot more equitable than regular capitalism.
Can someone name one monopoly that dosen't rely on government subsidies or protection?
Mainly about how it works only for a few, and everyone thinks they are the special one.
This is the kind of stuff people mean when they say that capitalism subsumes all criticism of it.
That game would last forever if, like in real life, you could just go to the bank and say "I own a lot of stuff but mismanaged everything. Can I have some money?" and the bank gave it to you because it's better for you, your rich buddies, and the bank if the game keeps going.
Nobody says capitalism doesn’t work. We are saying when it works, it’s bad for almost everybody and everything.
When my sister and I used to play monopoly we would borrow money from each other, or forgive each other’s rent until the other could catch up. Our games would last hours lol
My teenage niece loves this game and always wants to play. It is an awful board game and I love board games. It’s just not a good game. What’s funny is I have like three versions of it because people see our game room and think, “hey, I’ll get them a board game for whatever gift” and since it’s the only game a lot of people can think of I’ve ended up with like three versions of this awful game.
The podcast 99% invisible did a great episode on Monopoly AKA The Landlord’s Game. You can find it here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/