Re-Tooling Monopoly

It's not by changing the name of the cities that they are going to attract more people to play the game. On my point of view, they really need to remake the game to remove bugs, balance the game and add new features. By Making "Monopoly II : The return"(^_^) they might convince people to buy Monopoly again.

The whole "vote for your cities" Monopoly thing is a marketing ploy, as they still plan on selling Monopoly "classic". Still, a nice sleazy way to get some free press (which obviously a lot of other companies use to their advantage, too).

Actually, I'm not convinced that the game is broken anymore. It's just that noone really plays it the way it's meant to be played. The game apparently SHOULD be played with everyone wheeling and dealing all the time. Instead, it's mostly played as "Aw,shucks, the stupid dice made me land on income tax AGAIN!" In a lot of ways, it's a lot like poker. There's a lot of randomness to it, but the true skill is overcoming the bad randoms and playing the other players, not the game components.

This was a fairly interesting article on "professional" Monopoly players:http://www.thedicetower.com/interviews/int090.htm.

I don't think that Hasbro lacks imagination. I think they are just smart enough to not mess with a good thing. If there is a single game in America that everyone knows how to play (Or thinks they do) it is Monopoly. To make rule changes etc would either just alienate players or they would be ignored and people would play how they always do.

As to weather it is a good game based on the real rules. I think it is better without free parking bonus etc, but it still isn't a great game. The interesting bits are, 1. Trading properties, and 2. managing houses and hotels. And those two events don't happen all that often. Its like playing peurto rico where you pick roles on every 5th turn, and the rest of the time you wander around a roll and move board.

When I was working on a Monopoly-licensed slot machine, about 8 years ago now, we had a few meetings with the Monopoly folks. They pretty much realize that most of the Monopoly line of games are never played/opened. Most Monopolys are given away as themed gifts; ie "my brother likes NASCAR, so let's give him NASCAR Monopoly."

They have a whole marketing department dedicated to Monopoly; they know what they are selling isn't a game, What they are selling is an icon at this point, so there's not need to refresh the "game" parts, just the icon parts. And they churn a good business doing it.

As a side note, I've always thought that there's probably some good money in taking some successful German games and re-themeing them with licenses to offer them to a broader market (however, I'm not sure how to get around some of the price point issues that a Monopoly game currently enjoys).

Starfarers of Catan just seems to scream out to me as a Star Trerk license, Acquire would make a great Las Vegas Strip Hotel game, and maybe even somehow turn Puerto Rico into some weird Trump-inspired business game or something.

This one is particularly intringuing and scary at the same time. "Selling games that are never played" is indeed a weird concept. I can't think of a game idea where people will buy it and actually not play it.