Interesting Links for 01-06-2024

[andrewducker]

1. The Monopoly Case Against Ticketmaster (Live Nation artists only appear at Live Nation venues, selling tickets only through Ticketmaster)

(tags:monopoly music usa )

2. Majority of Brits think that a Brexit rethink should be 'front and centre' of election campaign

(tags:uk europe )

3. What politics should be versus what it is in the UK

(tags:politics UK OhForFucksSake voting )

4. Winnipeg man caught in scam after Facebook's AI told him fake Facebook customer support number was legitimate

(tags:Facebook ai fraud OhForFucksSake )

5. Progress at Edinburgh's Gorgie City Farm

(tags:farm Edinburgh )

6. Edinburgh's Low Emission Zone now in force: Worst-polluting vehicles banned from city centre

(tags:pollution Edinburgh cars GoodNews )

Comments

[mountainkiss]

My instinctive first response to #1 was “but Ticketmaster isn’t on the Monopoly board!”

[jducoeur]

Now I want someone to make Corpopoly, the honest modern version of the game.

(It would get sued to dust instantly, of course, but would make a great anonymous open-source project.)

[mountainkiss]

How do you regard the current version as dishonest?

[jducoeur]

Mostly in that (AIUI) the game was originally designed to be an anti-capitalist lesson, and then in a fine bit of irony the design was lifted and made into the most pro-capitalist board game around.

[mountainkiss]

In that case I asked my question badly then. What would make a new version honest?

[jducoeur]

Ah, good question. Dunno (it was a flippant offhand remark, not a game design), but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too hard to flip the script and make the monopoly-building more overtly rapacious, even if you left terrible core gameplay mostly alone.

Interesting design question. I think step one would be to decide thematically which aspects of modern monopolism you want to underscore. Hmm...

[mountainkiss]

I don’t quite see how it could be more overly rapacious. That’s how you win. Am I being dim?

[jducoeur]

It's all about framing. The game Monopoly presents monopolism in a largely positive light, with no real sense that there is any societal downside to it. Memetically, it's a somewhat ghastly bit of social engineering. That is the fundamental dishonesty of the game as published, and what I'm referring to here...

[mountainkiss]

Ah, gotcha.

I suppose the problem is that you can’t tell people how to frame things and assume that they’ll stick to it.

This isn’t really my field, but I suspect that any game where the object is to accumulate maximum resource will inevitably align within a capitalist model, because of its incentivisation. And I don’t think you can play the game with the object of losing because it’s too easy for everyone to do. I think you’re going to have to design an entirely different game.

[jducoeur]

I agree that the game's structure is inherently capitalist. But we're talking about reskinning here (what Monopoly is best known for nowadays), and I do think that you could retain the game's general structure and reskin it to be much less positive (and more up to date, so that it actually gets the point across) than the official presentation.

The result would be pretty didactic, of course, but as far as I know that would just be getting back to the game's roots...

[mountainkiss]

How are you going to get anyone to want to play this game? People don’t love being told what to do, in general, and I’m not sure that’s why they come to games.

[jducoeur]

I mean, I don't know why anyone plays Monopoly in the first place -- it's a terrible game.

But it wouldn't surprise me if you could put a nastier spin on it and actually make it more fun while getting the point across: there is a niche of games where you are monsters trampling the city underfoot, and that's not a bad way of thinking about this.

[mountainkiss]

At what point does it cease to become Monopoly and become an entirely new game? I mean, what are you required to retain for this to be a respin? The board only? The dice and round-the-board format? Money? Houses and hotels? Chance and community chest? None of the above?

[jducoeur]

I'm not proposing structural changes -- I'm not sure why you seem to be inferring that I am. I'm just saying that a reskin with actual modern companies, and rewriting of the cards, could probably do a lot to make the game more relevant to the modern day and more visibly sinister.

But seriously: I'm done with this conversation. You seem to be trying to repeatedly call me out and picking nits over an offhand remark, and I'm not sure why...

[mountainkiss]

Totally happy to be done if you’re not enjoying it - sounds very sensible!