this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Monopoly started out to show that capitalism is based on luck and opportunity, and that the end result is one person owning everything.

The whole process is miserable and even when you win you have to sit thru a prolonged ending where you slowly drain every last resource from you friends and family.

It's not a bad game, they just overestimated how well Americans can pick up irony.

Originally called "The Landlord's Game" Parker Brothers changed it to something less obviously terrible in the run up to the great depression.

I don't know if Far Side is really that deep but:

The only way to win is to not play

Is literally the point the game tries to beat over family's heads for hours at a time.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago

In an ironic twist of complete capitalist predictability, the game we know today was also stolen from the original developer.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Far Side? Here I thought that was from War Games.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It definitely is. As an avid fan of The Far Side, I can’t come up with any connection between it and that quote.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Originally called "The Landlord's Game" Parker Brothers changed it to something less obviously terrible in the run up to the great depression.

Goes to show you how indoctrinated and manipulated we all are when we think that the idea of a monopoly is more acceptable than a landlord.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

They clearly meant it's a worse name for a board game, not that it references a worse thing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

That's what I've been saying all the time when my brother says monopoly sucks when you don't win. It's literally designed to make you suffer

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Not quite. Parker Brothers had always intended it to have a pro-capitalist message. The woman (and of course it was a woman who got fucked over) who invented The Landlord's Game essentially got duped.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-origins