Monopoly is a classic board game that involves real estate trading, where players circle the board, buying and selling real estate, building homes and hotels, and success depends on accurate speculation, successful investments and wisely conducted transactions. What is the history of this one of the most popular board games in the world and what is the reason for its popularity?

Original monopoly board game

The general design of the Monopoly game was created over 100 years ago by Elizabeth „Lizzie” J. Phillips née Magie. In her assumption, the game was not to be just a form of entertainment, but above all it was supposed to show the influence of monopolizing the rental of real estate. Hence the first name of the game was „The Landlord’s Game”. A year later, the author obtained a patent for her game. In the original form, the game Monopoly was one of the first board games, which was based on the continuing path of pawns moving. In this version, it was also used at the time to study economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Monopoly original game

Another patent on a slightly modified version of the game received Charles Darrow. In 1935, Charles Darrow, claiming to be the creator of the game, sold the rights to Monopoly to the professional publishing company Parker Brothers.
The success was rapid, but it was quickly discovered that there are older versions of the game. The company could have tried to get out of the situation in various ways. The rate, however, was too high to withdraw from the sale or allow the lawsuit. That’s why Parker Brothers sought out people who had rights to different versions of Monopoly and bought them back.

First original Monopoly game – assumptions

The original game created by Elizabeth Magie was extremely close to socialist ideals and was created as an educational tool to sensitize children to social inequalities. Her intentions of the game’s creator were clearly specified:

„Nine and ten years of average intelligence can easily understand the rules of the game and get pleasure from it. Little landowners like to hold reliable money and enjoy it when they can demand from other players to pay for rent. They learn that the fastest way to gain wealth and power is to get all the land they can in the best possible location, there are those who will warn you that it’s dangerous to teach children how to use others, but let me say that there are no more honest beings than our American children. they play and how quickly, when someone starts cheating and using others, they shout „it’s not fair.” Who has not heard how little girls say: „I will not play with you unless you play honestly.” Let the children see the clearly disgusting injustice of today Earth system. ”

Ultimately, however, what can be considered an irony of fate, Monopoly has become a game about the capitalists’ race, aimed at the economic domination of the individual over the whole.

New monopoly versions

Currently, Monopoly is available in dozens of versions. From such for smartphones, through edition with payment cards instead of banknotes, to the edition created entirely from non-combustible materials, ordered in duplicate by NASA. Monopoly is certainly the most profitable board game in history, with which only chess could compete in terms of popularity.

In our game Landlord Real Estate Tycoon we went even further, creating an extremely innovative version of Monopoly for smartphones in which the player can buy real estate around him. We use not only geolocation, but also Big Data to determine the value of real estate data based on their popularity in social media.