Board Games

What has Monopoly got to do with Trump?

Last Sunday Aimee and I met our Anglo-Malaysian family for lunch. Then we played Disney Monopoly, which a recent bout of decluttering had dug out of the kids old stuff box.

I love how boardgames bring people together!

But winning didn’t feel good, because it meant extracting money from anyone who was unfortunate enough to land on my estates, eventually bankrupting my family members. It felt cruel and undeserved.

After I bought the most expensive properties, I realised that I turned myself into the asshole everyone else was dreading.

What’s the moral?

Games are different than storytelling because they generate meaning through gameplay, by rewarding certain behaviours within a system of rules.

So asking “what’s the moral” of a game means questioning the behaviours it encourages, and those it discourages or even eliminates from gameplay.

Monopoly gives us a Trumpist power fantasy. Become rich and successful by ruthlessly building a real estate empire. Win by crushing your opponents and exploiting their financial weakness. It is all about money. You spend most of the time handling money, paying or getting paid. You could be charitable of course, but you don’t get rewarded for it, so why bother?

Monopoly “gamifies” the property market in a tax-free, unregulated capitalist context. You may know that it is a rip-off of The Landlord’s Game (1904) by activist Elizabeth Magie, of which it took one half and discarded the other.

So what does Monopoly leave out?

It leaves out any question about property, public and private, and about the production and (re)distribution of value.

Everything in Monopoly is private, and some properties are just worth much more than others. There are no citizens, no public spaces, no services, no other activity than trading property.

Of course you may say all this is a necessary simplification of the complexities of the real world, because the game could become unbearably complicated if it were to include those elements. But in reality what determines the market value of an area, what makes it desirable? Its amenities and services, the people who work there and contribute to make it liveable and enjoyable.

Monopoly encourages endless value extraction, without contributing anything back. It makes me think of South Kensington (where I currently work), where large cultural institutions (aka knowledge workers) generate value for the area, which is then financially extracted by rentiers, food chains and real estate speculators.

Monopoly also leaves out any question about inherited wealth. By assigning the same starting capital to every player and relying on a (dice) roll&move mechanic, it says: “Everyone can be a millionaire, if they’re lucky enough”.

Wouldn’t it be more interesting if one player randomly started as the Duke of Westminster, inheriting half of the land, and everyone else were given “equal opportunities”?

Does it even matter?

Does it even matter that Monopoly leaves out the complexities of reality and sells us the ultra-capitalist dream of individual success?

Yes. Because Monopoly is a very popular “family game” and yet in order to win at it, you have to exploit and bankrupt your family, without ever contributing to the community from which you’re profiting.

And you may say “chill out Matteo, it’s just a game”. But when the incarnation of Mister Monopoly is the US president, this is not “just a game”. It’s a snapshot of the values, aspirations and anxieties of our time.

What is the antidote?

There’s hope!

Games can make complex systems understandable, help us explore alternative systems and ask questions in a safe, playful space.

Questions like: what would it look like if winning meant embracing and helping your fellow players, improving the collective wellbeing and enjoying success together?

Let’s talk about the subversive potential of boardgames.

Unlike digital games, radically modifying boardgames is as simple as agreeing on a different rule-set. You are the game engine. And you may have already played Monopoly with different rules.

What could be radically different ways to play Monopoly?

Ant-Monopoly, Refugeoly and Commonspoly look like interesting ones to start with.

Do you know of any other? Would you like to hack one together? Write a response below :)

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