Have you ever actually finished a game of Monopoly? If the answer's "no," that's the first hint that there's something wrong with the game.
 Courtesy of Hasbro. |
When I played Monopoly with my friends, I quickly found the game to be boring. To buy or not to buy seemed to be the game's primary conceit, and the answer was always buy – buy like your life depended on it! The game was called Monopoly for a reason.
So that's what I did. And every game, all the players would get too sleepy to continue and quit. This didn't just happen once, but every single time I ever played Monopoly. I finally had enough. The next time we played, I played to win. I was going to ground my opponents under my big business heel until they cried little pink dollar bills.
To my surprise, this not only made me very unpopular, my friends were really bored. Once one player began to dominate, the game was largely predetermined – in fact, the only way to keep one of the losing players in the game was a made-up rule, wherein one player gave the other a loan of a dollar. As I continued to crush my opponents one by one, I started to feel a little dirty. And that's when I realized Monopoly isn't much fun.
There are other problems too. Monopoly's simply too long. The longest game of Monopoly lasted over two months. Two. Months! According to Benjamin Powell and David Skarbek of The Free Market, Monopoly doesn't accurately represent an actual market economy. Even Parker Brothers, the original publishers of the game, knew there was a problem. In 1933, Parker Brothers rejected the game on the grounds of over 50 fundamental playing flaws.
But maybe I'm being too hard on the game. Maybe the problem isn't Monopoly at all—it's you.
Mark Jackson of Game Central Station lists several oft-ignored rules to improve the game. The idea is to keep the game fun throughout play for all players. One particular rule encourages more interaction: when a player chooses not to buy a property, it immediately goes up for auction, ensuring that property gets distributed much more quickly amongst all players. It also speeds up the overall game, potentially reducing the playing time in half.
And yet Monopoly persists as the board game of choice for Americans everywhere. Perhaps it's because Monopoly evolved in the public domain before it was commercialized, leading to hundreds of variants, all of them branded with street names unique to their markets. Chances are, nobody's finishing those games either.
Monopoly is on notice. As board game theory expands and more inclusive games reach American markets, customers are slowly realizing that there's more to a game than just winning. Andrew Curry explains how German board games are revealing Monopoly's flaws in his Wired article, Monopoly Killer.
Despite these misgivings, it's clear that Monopoly's not going anywhere soon. So maybe we should all just get over ourselves, play a quick game that breaks most of the rules, and cheerfully bail out the losers so they can still play. And if that seems a little too familiar, there's always Anti-Monopoly.
For more info: Skip Maloney, the Board Game Examiner, agrees with me.
Comments
Great article, glad i am not the only one who hates Monopoly.
Thanks! Maybe I'm being too hard on Monopoly but having played several "German-import" board games, the difference is tremendous. Monopoly seems more like a game you own rather than actually play.
A rule listed in the direction for "quick play" suggests that each player start out with 3 random properties. Removing Park Place, Boardwalk and the railroads, shuffle the remaining properites and deal them out.
Playing this way has allowed me to finish several games that otherwise would have gone unfisnished.
I still think it's sad that there are a separate set of "quick play" rules. I think the quick play rules should be the core rules, and "long play" should be the option, but then I'm very impatient. Thanks for commenting!
"One particular rule encourages more interaction: when a player chooses not to buy a property, it immediately goes up for auction."
This is what you are supposed to do.
The reason Monopoly games take too long is because nobody ever actually follows the rules.
Yeah.. The reason why the game is lasting to long for you is because you don't even know how to play it. It's not rocket science. Its a board game. I have never played a game of Monopoly that lasted more than two hours, and I play it at least once a week. Don't write stupid crap like, "Let's play a quick game that breaks most of the rules", thats the reason it takes you too long to finish a game in the first place! How can you play the game more incorrectly than you already are? I'm really curious.. I'ts called a INSTRUCTION BOOKLET. Read it before you play next time and you should be done with the game within an hour and ten minutes. I promise. Monopoly is the greatest board game invented in the past 7OO years. The greatest board game of all-time is CHESS.
P.S. I don't know which GERMAN BOARD GAMES you are talking about, but if any of them includes 1835, settlers of Catan,or Carcasonee(Or however that crap is spelled) then you suck just as much as thoes games. MONOPOLY kicks those games to the garage sale curb.
I particularly like the part where you write seven hundred as "seven oh oh" (700 vs. 7OO). It looked like you were writing the past ZOO years, which would actually make more sense.
Speaking of years, this article is two years old. You showed me Internet troll!
Monopoly=the best board game of the past 700 years? What a laugh. Ive been playing Chess for over 3 decades, and saying Chess is the best board game of all time is a stretch. Chess definitely has its flaws. There are many games out there that handle the theme of acquiring and maintaining property FAR better than Monopoly. If you play Power Grid, Puerto Rico, Acquire, or Age of Steam, you will be enlightened as to how empty of a game Monopoly is.
My vote for best game (and this is totally subjective) is Tigris and Euphrates.
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