Monopoly…Brilliant!
After a week or so of Monopoly I just had to write something in honour of the astounding board game that has had a remarkable innings of over SEVENTY years.*
Millions of years ago, Ug the Caveman rarely had time to chat mindlessly, he rarely had time to copulate and he rarely had time to play games. Even if somehow in his busy schedule of hunting, discovering fire and realising that wheels are best off round, he managed to fit in a game, it would have probably been something along the lines of ‘Who can eat the raw mammoth fastest?’ or the family classic ‘Kill the Sabre-tooth!’ OK, my knowledge of cavemen social activities is very limited but I can tell thee one thing for sure: they didn’t have Monopoly, the game of the gods.
My love for Monopoly was rekindled about a week ago when I was offered the opportunity to play on my friend’s phone. I quickly said yes and after choosing the Iron (not wanting to look arrogant or flash by choosing a car or a boat) I started to make my way around the board and the game was under way. After a few free lessons and a couple of lunchtimes the game finished. I came a very close second…I lie…I did come second but sadly it was about as close as Peru is to Aberystwyth! However, not being disheartened I tried again and pretty much the same result occurred. Was I down? Was I sad? Did I want to retire from Monopoly after two dire showings in a row? No! I wanted to keep going until I prevailed a glorious master of Monopoly. (The current game is going well, although by the time this is published I will have probably finished the game and been obliterated again, I just hope people keep landing on Mayfair and Park Lane!)
To say, ‘The brilliant thing about Monopoly is…’ is wrong and immoral. The reason for this is simple: Monopoly is not brilliant for one individual reason, there are many reasons. The first being that it has the strange paradoxical power to bring people together while pushing them apart: the playing together and solidarity is there in the sitting down and playing the game, but the game itself is about crushing your opponents like ants and squeezing them for everything they have! You don’t play Monopoly to be nice; you play it to unleash the evil, money grabbing, fat cat side of you that you don’t want to come out but you know you have. You may say, how is this a good thing? My answer would be simply that it has to come out somewhere and why not let Monopoly be the tap for this evil entrepreneurial water.
In a world where games tend to be computerised and the frequently watched TV is a 24/7, pornographic, violence endorsing, non stop, uneducated and uncreative freak-show, you may think that Monopoly would lose its place in society. But no! Many board games have lost their appeal; Guess Who? Market Day, Battleship, Kerplunk (what a game!?), Hungry Hippos, Operation and maybe, just maybe, one could say Scrabble has lost its way. But Monopoly, although evolved, has managed to stand the test of time and live an amazing 70 years! Surely that’s brilliant? Even with the ‘Here & Now’ version that replaces cult places like ‘Pall Mall’ and ‘Old Kent Road’ and replaces them with lifeless places like ‘The London Eye’ and ‘New Wembley’ making the game less historic and traditional, the classic version will always live on, both in our hearts and on our tables.
There is one modern twist of Monopoly that I like, and that’s one that is partially my own. If you were to go into the Sixth Form Centre at Robert Smyth then you are likely to see me and a few comrades working away at our own board. With my house as Euston Road, Engelbert Humpedink’s house as Mayfair and the drunken person’s Mecca, Flames, we are making our own board that will no doubt give us lots of fun, fights and flatulence(OK not flatulence, I just couldn’t think of another ‘f’). Go to Jail has been replaced with ‘Go to Fleckney’ and the free parking space has been replaced with a ‘CHEEEEESE TOASTY’ and the 6th form Centre! You may think that by me making a board of my own, I am trying to undermine the original, but no, that’s the amazing thing. I want to make a board because of the original; if I hated the original I wouldn’t have promoted ‘Pall Mall’ to the position of ‘Bow Street’, or kept the ‘Chance’ spaces in. I wouldn’t have kept the format, I wouldn’t have done a lot of things but one thing is for sure: without the original I wouldn’t have even started creating the board which would mean many things. First of all I wouldn’t have had as much fun in making it; I wouldn’t have made further connections with fellow creators such as Liam Turner, Dan Crowley and Matt Hill; but most of all I would have been sitting on my fat arse doing sod all! I’m still sitting on my arse in making it, but I’m doing something constructive and for that, Monopoly is brilliant.
If I were to look deeper into Monopoly, I would start looking at the technical side of things. For instance I may say that the payback percentage on the purple/dark blue properties is far superior to that of the train stations but there is less chance of you landing on them. However I won’t go into too much detail, although I do love the browns and the light blues as if you have that entire stretch you are bound to get something- in the name of money- every time someone goes down that avenue and the great thing is, it hardly costs anything to buy then build on them.
Tactics are a remarkable thing in Monopoly and there can be many different approaches that may act as a parallel to your personality in real life. You could go Gung Ho and invest all your money in property straight away or on the other side of the scale you could keep all your money and invest in one or two major properties such as Mayfair or Park Lane. Personally I like to mix it up and try and get the cheap and the expensive with enough to subsist until I have enough money to invest more. (This tactic is yet to work on a mobile phone, but has proved a trusty way of doing things on the classic board). This variety of tactics, approaches and personalities is another brilliant thing, as unlike our segmented mixed society, Monopoly is truly mixed and to be able to bring people together that perhaps wouldn’t normally get a long is an astounding feat. We as a society can’t do it, it seems the human state can’t work it out, but Monopoly can with ease, and for that, it is truly brilliant.
Monopoly is pure, like the ‘Bible’ ‘said’ ‘Virgin Mary’ was, it brings people together, it creates relationships and then tests them, it builds character, it takes kids away from crime, it takes people away from the horror of the TV, it stops kids going square eyed with looking at screens too long and perhaps the greatest thing it does: gives us something to do when we are bored! Therefore I thank Monopoly for the simple fact that it is without doubt, utter brilliance on a board.
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I see i got a mention; yay!
However i do find that i just wasted five minutes of my life reading that drivel Daniel Gee…
And you actually wrote COPULATE! You said the teachers would hate that use of seedy language. Such a Renegade.
When is your custom board going to be finished anyway and how do you become a writer on this beautiful website?