Yep. In this post we're diving into the design choices in Monopoly. Because while it's easy to dismiss it as "just so very, very bad," becoming a better designer means being able to think critically about design choices, good or bad. There is a lot to talk about with Monopoly, so I am going to break my critique into categories. If you have already read one too many reviews of Monopoly, skip down to my conclusion.
Quality: This is one of the most mass-produced games. As a result, most of the components are middling-to-bad by hobby gamer standards. Notably, the best components, the tokens, are also the most iconic to the game. Additionally, the art and graphics really aren't up to hobby standards.
Quantity: Monopoly is a price point most families can afford. The physical size of the game is about right for what it is, but the shape of the box is pretty bad. I'd wager most families are like mine and kept games in a hall closet with the winter jackets, as the only place they would fit in the house. The problem with that is accessibility- games that are hard to reach won't get played very often. This ends up reducing the prospective value of the game. The number of players works for most families, but playing at either 2 or six could make the game overly cutthroat although for different reasons. Finally, the game is too long for what it is. More on that in a bit.
Composition: Let's get it out of the way and state that most players learn to play by oral tradition and that those 'house rules' actually make the game worse. That said, the intention of the game appears to be focused on auctions and trading of properties. The real estate theme fits the mechanics of auctions and trading, but the rest of the mechanics are not thematic. The mechanics are split between the highly random—roll and move, chance/community chest cards—and the highly economic—auctions and trades. To modern sensibilities, this mishmash of mechanics feels disjointed. While the auctions and trades bring a much needed dose of strategy to the game, the lack of structure around trades especially makes even the economic parts of the game feel random. Players can choose to simply not trade with someone if they are bent on having one player lose. The looseness of the rules around trading (and to a certain extent, auctions) also helps explain why so many play groups have 'forgotten' these rules. This is compounded in the second half of the game, after auctions have ended and trading is the only strategic recourse left for players to build monopolies. Returning to the idea that the game is too long, most players will know they have lost long before they go bankrupt. In Monopoly, it is possible to spend 30 minutes knowing you will lose, then another 30 after you have lost watching everyone else finish playing the game. Modern games have generally come to the consensus that playing the whole game with a hope of winning is the more fun way of playing. (Many of the bugbears of modern board game design—roll and move, player elimination, runaway leaders, high output randomness, king-making—are present in Monopoly.)
Dynamics: The arc of gameplay moves mainly through three emotions: boredom at the repetitive mechanics, frustration when landing on a bad spot, and anger that other players won't trade with you. This is punctuated by moments of joy when the dice finally go your way. Strategic players will tell you that the most skilled player will win every time, and they're right. But due to runaway leader mechanics, that means only one person playing (at most) will enjoy the game arc of seeing their strategy succeed. For fans of complex strategy games that may not be a defect, but Monopoly is marketed as a family game. Family games designed in the last decade are usually under an hour to play and lack the complex economic systems of Monopoly. This game is supposed to be for players age 8 and up. While some of the mechanics are child-friendly (roll and move), if you are playing to win or even to finish a game your child will likely experience the same boredom and frustration that many adults experience when playing. In my estimation, Monopoly fails as a family game. What about as a strategy game? Here, the design shows more promise. The freeform trading makes more sense in the context of competitive players used to similar mechanics in other games. The lack of art and good graphic design is also less out of place for a certain category of strategy game. The length of the game, 60-180 minutes, places Monopoly on the shorter, lighter end of the strategy game spectrum. Where Monopoly falls apart as a strategy game is the high level of randomness. One could argue that Merchants of Venus, famous as a heavy-strategy roll and move game, has enough systems to balance out the randomness of the dice. Monopoly is too light to overcome its high level of randomness. Yes the most skilled player will always win, but the experience of doing so falls short compared to other games of similar complexity or mechanism. (The fact that Monopoly is rated as less complex than Azul on BGG is a rant for another day.)
Meta: The mixing of the theme of cutthroat real estate management and the presentation as a family game contributes to the muddy feeling that is the experience of playing Monopoly. I would argue that this disconnect is a large contributor to the 'house rules' phenomenon— families are attempting to make the game feel more friendly. This oral tradition makes the game even longer, preventing many players from ever discovering the strategy of gameplay. This in turn results in fewer board games getting played by families who 'bounce off' of Monopoly. After all, based on their experience board games are long and tedious. And after around 90 years on the market, many casual players are not able to distinguish 'familiar' from 'fun.' This is doubly true for players who haven't played a game published since 1990—they don't know how board games have evolved to be faster, easier to learn, and more accessible to families.
Conclusion: Monopoly is a middling strategy game with mismatched mechanics and poor production quality masquerading as a pretty bad family game. However, there are plenty of people who love it and play competitively (including in tournaments). While I don't enjoy it, I do enjoy plenty of other games that are poorly designed. Enjoyment of 'low quality' entertainment is widespread in every form of media. Whether enjoyment of a piece of media renders discussions about its 'badness' moot is best left alone for now. The facts of the matter are that there are thousands of games better than Monopoly but people are still allowed to like what they like.
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