It has come to my attention that some of you enjoy the game “Monopoly.” Perhaps you love “Monopoly.” Maybe, much to my horror, you go so far as to claim that “Monopoly” is the best board game ever made. You are wrong. You are so incredibly, overwhelmingly, unintelligibly wrong that I am taking hours out of my important life to write this editorial especially for you. You’re welcome.
What should a board game be, exactly? One might say “fun,” but one would, once again, be wrong. Board games satisfy a far more savage and visceral need — a need for dominance. A game, above all, aims to be a valid arena for competition and rivalry. You know this. You, too, have felt the primal instincts emerge uncontrolled in the midst of an otherwise fun-filled “family game night.” Brother is set against father, daughter is set against mother, and in-laws are particularly set against in-laws. Board games have come not to bring peace, but a sword. This remains true of “Monopoly” — one is never more unhappy with life than at the end of a game of “Monopoly” — yet it fails to meet the two basic requirements of a good, competitive board game.
First of all, a good board game utilizes chance, but chance must be diluted and susceptible to influence. The unpredictable is fun, but it can quickly devolve into something that robs players of all dignity. Who can taste the sweet succor of victory when they owe it all to a roll of the dice? Decisions should influence probability, not the other way around. Take for instance “Risk,” an excellent game, in which a dice roll controls a large portion of combat. Players might get a lucky break, or an unlucky break, but ultimately a player influences their probability of success by the placement of their armies. “Monopoly,” on the other hand, has players rolling dice to send them helplessly around the board in an endless carousel of boredom. Will you ever land on Park Place? Who knows? There’s nothing you can do to increase or to decrease the likelihood. Instead, a dice roll will probably determine the entire game.
Next, people often speak of a board game’s “balance.” I would take this trait further, describing it as balanced asymmetry — that is, players should have an equal potential for victory, yet not have such similar positions as to make identical decisions. “Monopoly” establishes neither of these conditions. On the first journey around the board, the game immediately demonstrates a vast disparity between each player’s potential success. Player No. 1 might land on only highly-coveted properties, while player No. 2 might hardly land on any properties at all. Furthermore, “Monopoly” decisions rarely muster the dynamic possibilities a board game should offer. Any player — either intuitively or having researched the most basic strategies — will approach the game with nearly identical choices. A cursory Google search reveals the stagnant state of the game’s strategy which is based on binary, unchanging opportunities: buy this, don’t buy that; sell this, don’t sell that; etc. Ask yourself this: would anyone else with a basic understanding of “Monopoly” property values play any differently? Does your gameplay demonstrate any mastery? Any superiority? The early game is nearly always a buy-what-you-can situation, and the early game often determines the leverage by which players win in the late game. Boasting becomes pointless because competition disappears; the game giveth and the game taketh away.
Let me renege on my opening statements. It is okay to enjoy playing “Monopoly.” I guess. It is also okay to enjoy playing “Candyland” or “Chutes & Ladders.” The real sin of “Monopoly” is that it masquerades as something more valuable than our other childhood games — something worthwhile of our time and competitive energies. All it really achieves is an almost perfect imitation of capitalism: the sleek veneer of a fair contest barely concealing the injustice of a tedious and manipulative game of chance.
