Crowdsourcing ‘Monopoly’: The Mayfair Shuffle
Some of that content comes from Facebook. Last year, “Monopoly” fans voted on Hasbro’s Facebook page to jettison the poor old flat iron in favour of a new cat token. “Scrabble” players are voting on which word to add to the new dictionary (at press time, 16 remain, including “booyah”, “adorbs” and “cosplay”). “Monopoly” fans, meanwhile, are voting on which of ten house rules—among them collecting $400 rather than $200 for landing on “Go”, requiring players to make a full circuit of the board before buying property and “Mom always gets out of jail free. Always. No questions asked”—to make official.
The Economist has also asked its readers for new rules, through our website and Facebook page. However, we wanted ours to reflect modern business realities. Several readers proposed a more active role for the bank, inevitably leading to bail-outs by other players when things went south. One suggested that property prices in the London version of the game rise by 25% per turn. Building in inequality featured in several suggestions, the best being that some pieces begin far ahead of the others, with more money: these effects could be mitigated with cards such as “Art School” and “Finding Myself” that let other players catch up.
More: Crowdsourcing ‘Monopoly’: The Mayfair Shuffle