City Room squinted when a new edition of the board game Monopoly — Monopoly City — landed at our desk.
A new edition of Monopoly, which allows players to develop skyscrapers, was released in the middle of a worldwide real estate bust.
Given the financial crisis and real estate’s role in it, is this really the ideal time to be introducing a game that encourages people to be aggressive property moguls?
Isn’t that what got us into this problem in the first place?
Donetta Allen, a spokeswoman for Hasbro, which makes Monopoly (having acquired the game’s original publisher, Parker Brothers), admitted that the economy faces “a little bit of recession, real estate woes.” The game had been in development for more than a year before the economy lurched into paralysis last September. Clearly prepared for this question, Ms. Allen had a sunny spin.
“It’s about the dream,” she said. “Monopoly has always been about that — the aspiration. I can’t do it in real life. I want to do it on the board game.”
To be fair, the original version of Monopoly, while developed early in the 20th century, really gained momentum during another financial crisis — the Great Depression — when Parker Brothers acquired it in 1935. Perhaps even then it provided for a bit of tycoon escapism.
While there have been many different editions of Monopoly issued throughout the years, Monopoly City is essentially the first that significantly changes game play. It is accompanied by an online version, Monopoly City Streets, a multi-user game that gives each player $3 million to buy any street in the world that can be identified. (How are they making money on Monopoly City Streets? “We’re not,” Ms. Allen said.)
But Monopoly City would make the development-happy administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proud. Instead of simply hotels and motels, the pieces now include skyscrapers, stadiums, wind farms, prisons, sewage plants and rubbish dumps.
By Jennifer 8. Lee
Source: Cityroom, Blog, The New York Times – United States
Se el primero en dejar un mensaje