Electronic Monopoly

[omly]

Electronic Monopoly (UK publication) just makes me mad. Parker Brothers has teamed up with Visa for a new version of the game sans paper money, just debit cards and a card reader. First of all you lose the simple joy of the brightly colored cash accumulating. (Was my sister one of the few who would trade her moeny in for small bills just to watch it pile up more?) Sure lets give in to the people who find physical money "baffling and insecure". What about all of the really good math skills this game used to encourage in children? Sure you will still have the cut throat negotiations and the brutal lessons in capitalism, but this removes the part that actually made people use that basic math. This just seems part of a adisturbing trend where people are expected not to know how to balance a checkbook or calculate the tip for dinner.

Comments

[notanangel.livejournal.com]

There is something seriously wrong with the idea of monopoly without money.

[quietlychloe.livejournal.com]

Did anyone else used to slip a $500 under the board to pull out triumphantly when needed? I don't like the debit card idea at all. It's just not monopoly that way...

[eoywin.livejournal.com]

That is wrong!

[mytheria.livejournal.com]

my housemate and i were bemoaning this last night as well. Monoploy was a game that you could play at the campground rec center when it was raining. Now it'll require batteries, and that just ruins the whole playing it by kerosene lanterns thing.

[forestjay.livejournal.com]

When I was a teen I would play monopoly with my cousins. We got board with standard monopoly so we added loans and credit cards (both of which included interest).

Did you know that monopoly was invented by Quakers in Rhode Island?

[omly.livejournal.com]

Really? Was it supposed to be a teaching tool (mathwise)? Somehow I don't really see them as "let's train children in the way of capitalism really early".

[forestjay.livejournal.com]

This has some good details of the original:
http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/36/monopoly.html

"the original purpose of the Monopoly game was to teach the evils of exploitation, that it was conceived by socialists rather than its alleged inventor, and that the giant gamesmaker Parker Brothers has no right to monopolize it."

"the Monopoly game, in its original form, was called "The Landlord's Game." It was invented and patented in 1903 by Lizzie J. Magie, a follower of Henry George and his single-tax theory, as a means of teaching the evils of exploitation by landlords and the capitalist business system prevalent in America."

"By the eary 1930s a group of Quakers in Atlantic City were playing the game on homemade boards containing the same names as on the commercial Monopoly board: Boardwalk, Park Place, Mediterranean Avenue, Baltic Avenue, etc."

"One evening in 1932 an unemployed salesman, Charles Darrow, joined the Atlantic City Quakers for a Monopoly game session. Recognizing the commerical potential of the game, and unsympathetic to the Quakers' view that it was not meant to be used for profit-making, Darrow copied the board and presented it to the president of Parker Brothers, Robert Barton, as his (Darrow's) own invention."

"Barton was not long duped. But instead of producing and marketing Monopoly in the only legal way permissible, as a game in the public domain like chess and checkers, he fraudulently obtained a private patent and told Darrow to keep his mouth shut. Monopoly soon became the most widely purchased and played board game of all time other than chess and checkers, earned more than a billion dollars for Parker Brothers, and made Darrow a millionaire."

[nabisprinkles.livejournal.com]

Monopoly without money is like a house without windows or doors. Sure, you could theoretically use it, but what's the point?