My dad (in his 50s) spends a lot of his free time playing it. Like, over an hour every day. It takes the worst and most addictive parts of every brainrot game ever made and rolls them all into one thing. Clearly it's been worth it. π€¦
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Never heard of it.
Me neither. It's crazy.
I don't count marketing as part of a videogame budget.
You might not. Finance and wikipedia does.
Monopoly, stripped of it's context as a political statement, is a very mean and cruel work of art.
It shows that capitalism will market anything, even critique against capitalism.
It's the board game equivalent of people buying Che Guevara T-shirts at Primark.
No. Printing out blurbs of communist theory on collectible cards, selling binders for when you complete a 'book'.
Possibly giving them stats so they can fight each other.
The current meta is super pro centralism since the last rules change, and i got some hot boosters this week, so my maoist third worlder deck is probably my strongest right now, but i really prefer my bonnot-kropotkin deck, it's just the cards i need to make it pop off before like turn 10 are too expensive so it's kind of a mess right now.
Okay, fuck it, lets get on cockatrice and do this.
She said with white knuckled terror and a kilo of zofran.
You don't want any of that. Sure communist M:TG looks powerful, but capitalism M:TG has access to all the money buys power cards like the Power9 and all the dual lands and the broken shit that is too expensive to play with.
No, no, communist mtg will have that too. That's the point.
Say the line, Joyce
The story behind it is also quintessential capitalist bullshit
Apparently it earned this dubious honor purely from marketing... It has a marketing budget of 1 billion dollars. But it's allegedly made 5 billion, so... guess it was worth it to someone.
Funny, this is the first I've heard of it.
Me too. My guess is that the marketing was targeted mostly towards kids.
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inb4 OP is on the marketing team
I've never even heard of it. Is that successful marketing?
If you aren't the kind of person to blow money on a shitty mobile game, an effective marketing campaign won't target you.
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I'm more of a board game connoisseur and seeing people play monopoly when there is a whole ecosystem of much better designed board games out there that either already have dedicated apps or good online implementations absolutely enrages me :<
So many people think board games are just not something they like. And if you ask them what they played before, it's always any combination of Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Risk or the Game of Life.
If you look at the list of the top 20 best selling games of all time (https://moneyinc.com/highest-selling-board-games-of-all-time/), all of them are somewhere between terrible, bad and lower end of mediocre.
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Whatβre some of your favorites?
Spirit island is a game where "the spirits" have been living in harmony with humans on the island for generations, but now, new invaders are showing up with guns and cities and destroying the balance. You take the role of the spirits resisting the invaders to defend the island.
Gloomhaven is a massive experience that simulates a small group of adventurers dungeon delving in a fantasy world.
Terraforming mars is about.... Terraforming mars. Win historical recognition by making the greatest contribution to humanities most ambitious project.
Personal favorites:
- Spartacus - Perfectly captures the essence of the gratuitous Starz series. You take the role of Domin(us/a) of a Ludus, a school of gladiators, and strive to become the most influential in the city. You do so by bidding against competing players to acquire talented gladiators/slaves/equipment, using them to win gladiatorial combat against others in The Arena, and of course conspiring against your fellow Domini when they've overstepped their bounds.
If you do play this game make sure to use "the blue dice variant" for combat which fixes the main flaw with combat. The game length is also very adjustable by changing the amount of influence a player needs to win so you can go for an epic 3-4 hour game or a quick 1-2 hour phone booth knife fight.
I can't say enough about how much I love this game. It's always a good and loud time with players constantly interacting in often literally pokey ways :>
- Lords of Waterdeep - A relatively vanilla worker placement game with a pasted on D&D theme but my favorite way to introduce people into the world of hobbyist board games. The game is very well done and so simple to teach so folks can stop learning and get playing fast. Literally have a few workers to place each round on spaces to get the things. Use those things to complete quests to get points. After 8 rounds whomever has the most points wins.
It's always gone over well with new players and I personally still enjoy the game but with some expansions that add a bit more crunch to things!
- Quest for El Dorado - A deck building race through the jungle that's incredibly easy to teach and a favorite of younger kids (6+) getting into the hobby. You use various cards you acquire to get through the different terrain types of the jungle before your opponents do or use them to acquire even better cards. The skill in this game comes from being able to survey the path ahead and acquire the right cards to most efficiently get you through your desired path and knowing when it's time to stop focusing on building your deck and just race.
- Just One - Incredibly approachable even for people that aren't into hobbyist board games. One person trying to guess the mystery word using one word clues given by the other players (works best with 4+ players). The catch is any duplicated clues are removed so you've got to think of clues no one else is likely to use! We often round out our board game nights with this if there's at least 15 minutes to spare!
Here's one starting point: https://boardgamegeek.com/hotness
That website (boardgamegeek) has a lot of other resources for finding different types of games that might appeal in different ways.
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Sorry to make this seem even worse, this isn't even what you think it is. Not a Niantic gps game.
It's literally like any other mobile board game. You hit the dice roll button and the piece bounces around the board and your cash goes up. That's about it. It's interactive because sometimes where you land takes money away from other players (those you have friended or randos)
There is nothing novel here.
source: my children forced me to play with them when it was super trendy. All of their friends (and their friends parents) were playing. So. Many. Popups. It was CONSTANTLY trying to get you to spend. We did not, but know people who poured money in to keep the dice rolling
edit: also thank you for this, I always like my kids to be aware of why they or their friends are doing something. They're hyper aware of trends and marketing (but also don't want to be left behind when their friends are doing something new).
Damn, thanks for the insight. I just read the wiki article and the source claiming the marketing budget of that game, because I couldn't believe it, and the name Niantic was somewhere in there, so I figured Niantic did what Niantic does. Apparently, it's not even that.
It's ridiculous, seriously. Monopoly is a horrible game in it self, and I thought everyone and their dog was already sick of it, but I guess I'm just projecting.
Or pumping the equivalent of the GDP of Samoa into the marketing of some stupid mobile game version of this really bad board game really does something.
Even funnier, I told my kids it was the most expensive video game and they said, "oh because of Chris Pratt?"
Apparently the ads all featured Chris Pratt.
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Monopoly go is a mint card game like, but don't think a video game version needs to be that heavily marketed. Also I didn't even know it had a video game adaptation, so where the fuck did that money go?
Edit: I'm wrong on the game. I was thinking of Monopoly deal. I don't know what go is.
Tbh, marketing is mostly just a scam to funnel money to marketing people.
You are not entirely wrong. It's a boubble where no person involved benefits from saying "hey, is our budget too big?" It's basicly given, that any known brand have negative ROI on it's marketing, but we are all, so brainwashed with need for growrh, that that we know only one solution to decreasing results. Throw more money at it.
There's a reason many big corporations have pulled out of online advertisment and focus on print/radio/TV/sponsorships instead: The effectiveness of online advertisment can be measured and it sucks royally.
The whole concept of marketing is just a huge game of "the emperor's new clothes". Nobody wants to be blamed if they stop doing marketing and it turns out to actually do have an effect, even if everyone secretly knows it's garbage.
Yes! And we have examples natural experiments where becouse of the error advertise didn't launch in some regions... And nothing happened. And no one inside the industry is even talking like this. Bubble will burst on day and it will take entire free internet with it.
But measuring online is not that accurate as everyone portrait it to be. Long story short if you show ads to people waithing for the waiter in the restaurant than you can report that it had amazing "buying dinner conversion rate". We are getting better and that, and tools are getting better at forcing you to do it or obscure that you do it in the first place.. And it's still expensive as hell.
You are right with that, but there's actually a reason why companies book adspace on searches for their own product name (e.g. Lenovo booking ad space on searches for "Lenovo"), and imho it's even worse.
That way they want to stop competitors (e.g. HP) from booking the adspace, which would lead to HP being the first hit on a search for Lenovo.
That's pretty much digital racketeering. "That's a nice website you have there. It would be a right shame if something would happen to the traffic going there."
The branded searched keyword are the tip of the iceberg. Every campaign auto-optimize toward people in late stage of their purche yourney. For people wha already made.the dexision, but are not ready to purchase yet. But branded keywarods are a good example. While this is most common explanation given by the agencies - agencies LOVE the branded keywords - it's not supported buy any acctually reaserch. When one is done, almost without fail, it shows that branded ads for competitors doesn't work. Who intentionally clicks on HP ads while they intentionally searched for lenovo specifically? Users are very good at ignoring those and clicking on the next one. Organic or paid. All clicks are basicly exidental and are trash. This is a "cheap" defense from non-existing threat. You compeat alomost exclusively with your own organic.
There is even a study of a company who merged with his own competitor. Both brands existed perarelly for a while, so they choose to test those assubtions. Conclusion: waste of money. But agencies will die on the hill of branded.keywords every time.
Oh totally, you are right with every word you say.
They are just playing with fear to justify their existence.
That's refreshing to hear, thanks. I never manage to convince ANY of my coleagues.But I'll be using your "emperor is naked" methaphor mov8mg forward. It hit the nail in the head.
looks like monopoly go is a niantic job, so it's probably something like their earlier work pokemon go. but you... catch monopoly men? idk.
oh, maybe you buy up actual streets
Aka money laundering.
Who the fuck audits a "gaming" company??
No one
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And all marketing budget at that, we don't even know what it cost to develop.
This is extra funny because not only is the gameplay shit on purpose, it's shit on purpose as a criticism of capitalism.
Monopoly is supposed to be frustrating as a reflection of how frustrating life is under capitalism, and here comes capitalism to sell an even more annoying version full of popups and money grabs.
The death of satire is a well with no end.
Most stupid game ever created. Downloaded it and played for 15 minutes then Uninstalled. What a waste of 15 minutes.
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