BOARD GAMES
MAY 5, 2022
The Essential History Of Monopoly Game
The Essential History Of Monopoly Game takes us to understand the real history behind the invention of Monopoly game and its development.
Monopoly is one of the most famous board games in the world. The object of the game is to dominate all the tiles on the board through buying, renting and exchanging properties in a simplified economic system.
Monopoly game is played by more than two players. Each player rolls the dice in turn to move his pieces. Each player can buy tiles that are not owned by other players. If the plot has been purchased by another player, he must pay rent to the owner.
The winner can be determined from the person who controls almost the entire land, or it can be the richest person with the most assets.
Monopoly game requires special equipment. These include a game board, pawns to represent players, two dice, cash, and a cash card. In the game of monopoly, we will be able to feel like being a rich hotel owner or even being a bankrupt tenant of a plot.
It takes 60 minutes to 90 minutes to complete this game. But there is also history that records that the longest game of monopoly was played for 70 days in a row.
Monopoly game originated in the United States. The inventor was Elizabeth Magie, a game designer. She introduced this game in 1903. The name of the game was The Landlord’s Game. Many people refer to this game as “Monopoly”.
Maggie then patented this game as her work in 1904. However, at that time there were no manufacturers who made this game in bulk.
Although Maggie subsequently obtained a patent for the Landlord’s Game in 1904, a US toy company called Parker Brothers purchased the patent for this game in 1935 from someone named Charles Darrow who claimed the Landlord’s Game design as his own. Therefore he is considered to have stolen Maggie’s idea.
Parker Brothers then began making and selling monopoly games to various countries on November 5, 1935. The game of monopoly quickly became popular and worldwide.
To date, the Monopoly guide lists the name “Charles Darrow” as its inventor. However, in fact, Darrow wasn’t the one, it was Elizabeth Maggie!
Adherents of Georgism (single tax), Magige from Illinois, United States (US) made Landlord’s Game, as a protest against monopolistic financiers such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Maggie also claimed to only get royalties for 500 US dollars!
Uniquely, monopoly is not only played as a home game, but also has competition at the world level. The Monopoly World Championship is usually held every 4 – 6 years, the last being held in Macau in 2015 and won by Nicolò Falcone from Italy with a prize pool of US$20,580!
So far, Monopoly has held 15 world championships with the US, Italy and Japan as the most title holders.
Monopoly icon named Rich Uncle Penny Bags (Monopoly Man) was inspired by the successful US banker, J. P. Morgan, who was famous for the financial firm J. P. Morgan & Co. Debuting in 1940, Monopoly Man and J. P. Morgan were both depicted wearing suits morning dress complete with bow tie and high hat. In addition, J. P. Morgan and Monopoly Man are also described as having eye-catching mustaches, as well as distinctive walking sticks that are often swung casually.
In 1991, Parker Brothers transferred the company to another toy company, Hasbro. Hasbro then developed a monopoly by creating various other innovations, such as the edition that is often played to this day. There are more than 300 licensed monopolies with a wide variety of media and topics, including monopoly versions of games, movies, and TV shows.
One of monopoly’s achievements was being inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame list in 1998 for being considered the most played game in history.
Monopoly has broken dozens of Guinness World Records also. Some of the records that Monopoly has broken are:
• Most Monopoly players in one place with 733 people in 2017 in Tulsa, USA;
• Largest Monopoly Board created in 2016 at Studentenvereniging Ceres, Netherlands with an area of 900,228 m²
• The largest permanent Monopoly Board was made in California, USA in July 2002, namely “Monopoly in the Park” with an area of 9.44 x 9.44 m² and can be played by the public with giant dice and tokens, and convict outfits too!
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