monopoly – PLAYTIME

Propagandopoly: An Essay

Posted on November 13, 2017March 4, 2019 by Eugenia Bell

Is it possible for the world’s playful introduction to capitalism to transmit a new set of values? Writer Naomi Russo looks at Monopoly as an ideological tool.

Monopoly is a game in which anyone from a child to a grandma can become a ruthless property mogul. Sold in over 114 countries, the game was first commercially marketed as a success story of the American dream—a game invented, its packaging claimed, by an unemployed man for whom it made millions during the Great Depression. As a potent worldwide symbol for capitalism it has become so well recognized that during the Occupy London protest in 2011, an oversized Monopoly board sat outside St Paul’s Cathedral, featuring a destitute Rich Uncle Pennybags and attributed by many to famous street artist Banksy. The message to everyone was clear.

The young woman who originally invented the game, however, had far different ideals. Elizabeth Magie was inspired by her passion for the anti-monopolist economic theories of politician Henry George, and her desire to teach them to others in a simple, compelling way led her to develop The Landlord’s Game. In the words of her 1903 patent application, the game was designed “not only to afford amusement to the players, but to illustrate to them how under the present or prevailing system of land tenure, the landlord has an advantage over other enterprises.”

[Elizabeth] Magie struggled to generate commercial interest in her game and told that it was “too political” because of its anti-capitalist message.

The game had two sets of rules. One was similar to today’s Monopoly, while the other rewarded everyone and avoided monopolies. The game was featured in The Review in 1902, where Magie was quoted as saying, “There are those who argue that it may be a dangerous thing to teach children how they may thus get the advantage of their fellows, but let me tell you there are no fairer-minded beings in the world than our own little American children. Watch them in their play and see how quick they are [ . . . ] to cry, ‘No fair!’”

Nonetheless, Magie struggled to generate commercial interest in her game. Parker Brothers told her it was “too political,” most likely because of its length, complexity, and anti-capitalist message. The game was fairly didactic, and its values were at odds with the American economic system, not to mention with Parker Brothers, a company that stood to benefit from the very practices that the game sought to censure.

Still, the game had popular appeal and quickly evolved beyond Magie’s control. Some changes were slight, such as adaptations of the street names to the players’ neighborhoods, but others were radical. Perhaps the biggest change was the reversal of Magie’s original intent: as players created their own boards and rules, they focused on the elements that were the most exciting for them, and for non-Georgists, those were accumulating capital, building a real-estate empire, and dominating the market. This shift was so marked that the game came to be known colloquially as “Monopoly.”

Communist countries were quick to ban the game as a bad influence.

Monopoly was also the name used by Charles Darrow, an unemployed salesman, when he took the game to Parker Brothers, pretending it was his original invention. His version, stripped of Georgist ideals, was already selling well, so Parker Brothers decided to take a chance on it, and Monopoly’s popularity spread quickly across American and European nations.

Communist countries were quick to ban the game as a bad influence that spread capitalist values. In Cuba not only was the game banned, but the existing boards were destroyed after a direct 1959 ruling by the newly empowered Fidel Castro. Some countries such as Hungary adopted the alternative route of providing a replacement. After banning the Hungarian version of the game, Kapitaly, they began to sell a low-budget board game known as Gazdálkodj Okosan! Loosely translated as either “Economize Wisely,” or “Budget Shrewdly,” the game was far more politically correct, encouraging hard work and exercise with didactic Chance cards chastising bad behavior. “You have dirtied the street! Pay 10 forints,” read one such not-so-subtle card.

But as Professor David Stark writes, a state-sponsored game couldn’t usurp Monopoly as simply as that. He tells the story of a Hungarian friend, writing, “You did not need to be a nine-year-old dissident to see that Monopoly was the more exciting game,” and going on to explain that in his friend’s home Gazdálkodj Okosan! boards were turned over and used to form the basis of a homemade Kapitaly. The result was something of a hybrid born from remembered rules of Kapitaly, the cards of Gazdálkodj Okosan!, and the innovations of Hungarian children themselves.

Monopoly spin-offs included a Hasidic version entitled Live Piously to Class Struggle, which aimed to show the superiority of Marxism.

The failure of Gazdálkodj Okosan! to impart its message has not discouraged others from creating their own politically motivated adaptations. In fact, the spin-offs by academics, artists, and others seem endless, from a Hasidic version entitled Live Piously that reinforces Satmar community values, to Class Struggle, which aims to show the superiority of Marxism. None of these adaptions have had anywhere near the success of Monopoly. Their small sales suggest that they mostly remain within their community rather than spreading their values more widely.

If games can transmit values, however, why did Magie’s version fail while Darrow’s succeeded? As Keith Devlin, the “NPR Math Guy,” told KQED ’s Mindshift, “Games are just simulators with an internal incentive structure.” And The Landlord’s Game lacks real incentive. As professors Dr. Mary Flanagan and Dr. Helen Nissenbaum discuss in Values at Play in Digital Games, students at Virginia Tech who played both versions found that while The Landlord’s Game made its point, Monopoly was much more fun.

So are users learning to be ruthless capitalists when they play Monopoly? Research fellow Dr. Marcus Carter says probably not, arguing that “despite the arguments and allegations of betrayal Monopoly is likely to cause in homes this Christmas, its morality is as unrealistic as that in Grand Theft Auto. Players are granted no moral choice whether or not to bankrupt their opponents and consequently, there is little moral involvement.”

A social psychologist found that Monopoly can be set up to simulate moral decision processes.

On the other hand, social psychologist Paul Piff believes that Monopoly might be able to be used to expose moral codes or ethics. Piff uses rigged games, in which the rules are changed to make one player unbeatably wealthy, to reveal what he believes his earlier research has shown: that wealthier people tend to lack empathy. His studies with rigged games showed that the person given all the advantages quickly became accustomed to them and played ruthlessly, feeling little to no regard for the other less fortunate player. His conclusions supported his continued work on the so-called “empathy gap,” but they also reveal two things about the game: first, that Monopoly can be set up to simulate moral decision processes, but second and more importantly, that those morals are affected by the rigged circumstances of the game. In other words, how people play isn’t necessarily how they act in the real world, but it is affected by the type of player the game sets them up to become. There is no evidence that they continue to act in such a fashion after they stop playing that role.

Flanagan contends that “Monopoly successfully imparts the values of competition, individual wealth, and exclusivity,” but it’s worth noting that these values weren’t a critique of the society in which the game evolved, nor of our society today, but rather a reflection of it. This makes it hard to know whether Monopoly really encourages such values, or simply represents the values its players already have.

So can games like Monopoly work to transmit new values? The more than 200 versions would seem to suggest that many believe so. But the lesson from the many adaptations that have failed to catch on, and from Magie’s original game, is clear: a game can be used to spread a message, but for it to reach beyond a limited target audience, first and foremost, it must be fun. ♦

“Propagandopoly” originally appeared in Works That Work, No 9. Photo credit: Courtesy of Thomas Forsyth, LandlordsGame.info.

Tilt: An Essay

Posted on October 18, 2017March 4, 2019 by Eugenia Bell

In the second installment of her two-part essay, writer Virginia Heffernan continues her pinball pilgrimage and humanizes the digital-analog divide. Missed part 1? Read it here.

There were also beeps in this game. When my balls—my extra balls by now, I’m that good—hit one particular bumper and bounced back on it, again and again, piling up points and aiming me for the leaderboard, the beeps beeped furiously. Each one was a half-second, more or less tonal, and—as usual for me—beeps sit on the knife’s edge of puzzling and rapturous.

Beeps belong to nature and electricity and electronics and the Internet. All the centuries. Like the railroad toot but unlike an old telephone ring, beeps have both a distinct start and finish, marked by the twin plosives “b” and “p,” and an elastic center that can generously expand and contract like an accordion: beeeeeeeep. You can create Morse code in beeps. Beeeep beep beep beep. Beep. Beep. Beep beeeep beeeep beep. Yes, they’re a frankensound—but nature can almost, almost suggest them. They certainly seem to have always existed. Maybe art teases beeps out of nature.

The beep is synthetic; it’s manmade, like climate change. Plants don’t beep, nor weather, nor animals, nor birds except Road Runner. If you hear a beep, you know that a person, or more likely his artifact, is signaling. There’s no wondering, Is that a beep or a nightingale? Is that a beep or a tornado? Beeps are also not voices or music.

And still, sonically exotic as they may be, beeps are, as my pinball home insistently suggested, easy to make; they are cheap and light. No wonder everything beeps. E-mail beeps. Texts. Trucks in reverse. Hospital monitors. Stoves, dashboards, cameras, clocks. Coffee machines. Dishwashers. Elevators. Toys. Robots. Toy robots.

[In] the Monopoly game the beeps were modulated and engineered to define my experience, the very victories I thought I was creating with my analog tendons and fingertips and wrists.

The onomatopoeic word “beep” launched in 1929, and prewar beeps were produced by car horns, though sonar, electric elevators, and clown horns may have beeped or protobeeped even before the 1920s. Other car horns of the period, and now especially those of big cars, are usually heard to “honk.” Beeps as the sound of cute cars—makes sense. A small, zippy, nuisancey thing chirping, “’Scuse me, could you move a smidge? Thanks!” That’s a beep.

As a source for beeps, car horns gave way to piezoelectric technology, a breakthrough used increasingly after World War II in labs, hospitals, and military operations. With the arrival of the transistor, small piezo buzzers could be made to beep in devices like electronic metronomes and game-show buzzers. An efficient, low-power way to gin up a tone for a device to emit. Beeps could now be heard in a range of contexts, but the sound still managed to speak of seriousness and technology.

The material world and our bodies, in concert, can reconfigure themselves, as if to prove they can’t be digitized.

Were those beeps on the pinball playfield digitized? I choose to believe they were not made in sound labs, but date from the bells and horns of J.P. Morgan days. That every time a ball hit a bumper it squeaked because it was weighted metal on hard, smooth rubber, and something in the angle—and I misread it as a beep—but I’m not crazy: Naturally on the Monopoly game the beeps were modulated and engineered to define my experience, the very victories I thought I was creating with my analog tendons and fingertips and wrists.

Beautifully, submissively, we have adjusted to the hegemony of computers. But this Monopoly table, with its rusty screws and peeled paint, suggests one road back or through to an ecstatic, three-dimensional, and entirely mortal form of culture, in which our imperfect and limited bodies might reassert their centrality to culture, politics, and philosophy. This reassertion I anticipate with some giddiness the way, in my Bolshevik days, I used to anticipate the digital revolution. This time I resolve not to be so impatient with my elders.

The material world and our bodies, in concert, can yet reconfigure themselves, as if to prove they can’t be digitized. I believe that. In games like this one, from 2001, before broadband razed our nervous systems, I hear trills of promise. Of course, on this day, I was at forty-five in the middle of the journey my life, lost in the dark wood of an executive hotel. I was a truant; I had skipped a conference for a stolen pinball game. And reader: I was winning. ♦

(Image credit: Pinball by el-toro on Flickr.)

Tilt: An Essay

Posted on September 2, 2017March 4, 2019 by Eugenia Bell

Digital devotee Virginia Heffernan finds herself seduced by pinball and the wonders of the arcade.

In the middle of the journey of life, I found myself astray in a vast executive conference center, my pulse ramping up as it can during weekends of airports, strangers, and vertiginous hotels cold as meat lockers. I was trying to avoid a tech conference. I aimed to look intent on something, improvising a straight path, though all I was really looking for was an armchair where I could be alone with my phone.

Down one hall and up the next was nothing but evidence of other conferences: still lifes of coffee and KIND bars flanked by signs announcing plenary and breakout sessions on subjects ranging from—well, the one I remember was “Rendering.” Horses to glue. But it wasn’t as simple as that; rendering had made giant strides.

At last I found what it turned out I’d been looking for all along: an arcade. Dated, neglected, this oddly shaped chamber, lined in cola-stained linoleum contained maybe seven gaming machines, three of them lightless and lifeless. It was a floor down, visible through a slanted window, two glass doors away from a swimming pool. I zagged around and burst into it.

Over the last twenty-five years, the Internet has doggedly modeled for us a strange but familiar truth.

A vintage machine offering the holy trinity of nostalgia—Ms. Pac Man, Asteroids, and Centipede—presented itself as melancholia too picked over. I admired a bulky game with a low-slung vinyl seat that turned out to be an entry in the Cruisin’ World driving-game series. In this one, you could zoom perilously through the gold-beige light of the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, where Princess Diana died.

And then there was a pinball game. I love pinball. I was dressed in a sleeveless khaki summer dress and pumps for my own morning plenary session, a panel on the scourge of ad-blocking software for business. But I decided I’d play pinball better out of heels, so I kicked them off. Bare feet allowed the minor transgression of naked soles on cold linoleum sticky with RC Cola, a welcome taste of the unsanitary in a prison of antisepsis.

A clattery token machine took my $10 bill and returned fistfuls of chances. I sized up the game. We’d be at it a long time. The conference session I was skipping (“Does Hollywood Need a Hard Reboot?”) faded from memory. Token in. The swallowing sound of the game accepting my opening sally—not fighting it—and coming alive, suggested that the pinball table, with its Monopoly theme, had been waiting for me. Presiding over my detour to belled and blinking Atlantic City was Parker Brothers’ icon of cheerful avarice, J. P. Morgan made cute: Rich Uncle Pennybags.

My fathom-long body, as the Buddha called it, returned to me as I stood before Pennybags. It had been gone a long time. Monopoly-themed pinball would seem to be an unlikely agent for this physical homecoming, but those homecomings are rare for me and I’ve decided that when they come it’s stupid to reject them.

Now the central nervous system flipped to automatic, but also to a kind of insensate virtuosity (remember: a deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball). Without will, my palms worked the flippers to keep balls in the game, and after losing one—shucks—my brain (left? right?) registered with satisfaction the next one’s self-reloading, a mechanical caddy getting me just what I needed when I needed it, and then the suspenseful exertion of pulling back the spring-loaded plunger against its non-negligible resistance, noting the partial unspooling of the spring, touched with rust, and then of course the release.

It is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception and intellect, that I declare that there is the cosmos, the origination of the cosmos, the cessation of the cosmos, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the cosmos.

Over the last twenty-five years, the internet has doggedly modeled for us a strange but familiar truth. Our lives are both here—in our beating hearts, in our thick-skinned, small-boned feet, in our despised fat, our buzzing brains—and elsewhere, in a fathomless realm channeled through our phones that we can but dimly intuit.

The first thing you notice with non-digital games is all the disreputable excitement possible with mere mechanics and electricity.

A conference space free of natural light or breezes is the ideal non-place to feel neither the richness of our bodies, nor the kaleidoscope of the internet, but only the uneasy suspension that comes from being monotonously tweeting and texting while walking, soundless steps on carpet that mutes our heft and gait. Now, as my game heated up, my phone sat on the ledge of a radiator by the soda machine, using its amoral programming to case the joint for open WiFi, casting about for signals like a hophead, still warm from my excessive attention to it. Dancing attendance on my phone, while pretending it is dancing attendance on me, is a charade I need long breaks from. Today pinball was my interlude.

The Monopoly-branded playfield was fundamentally non-digital, though I should add that I didn’t dissect it. I wanted my analog illusion, from a game launched barely after the millennium’s turn. I was willing to repress all evidence of even electronics, so profoundly did I want reprieve from nonlinear signal processing.

The first thing you notice with non-digital games is all the disreputable excitement possible with mere mechanics and electricity. The pinball “interface,” such as it is, doesn’t screen you out from its greasier machine parts, the way Apple has taught us hardware must. Being closer to grease means being closer to the sordid and further from the embalmed interfaces made up as if by a mortician: Apple, Google, Facebook—further from, let’s say, the lies. Mechanics don’t lie. The madness of our living, dying, jamming, clogging time on earth is laid bare in a carburetor. Mechanics worked well on this pinball table because Monopoly, with its theme of greed, is not a wholesome story. There’s something in rusted springs and leering monopolists that belongs in the half-finished basement of a cathouse, as entertainment for the preteen sons of sex workers eager to forget the corruption around them without outright going to church.

Springs, plungers, tilt sensors, bumpers, holes. I played and played till my wrists ached. Every time a ball hit a bumper and the machine trilled with points, my person thrummed harder; if the ball ricocheted against the bumper and the points racked up—these sounds must have organic analogs in the blood vessels—I felt as if time stopped, I was for that throbbing instant immortal and, better yet, had no end of appetite for winning. Also, I was in the world and screened out. Things were in three dimensions and took up space. Non-LED light was produced by things big enough to make light: candle-sized, torch-sized. And balls hitting bells might have happened in the Middle Ages.

A harmonious experience is analog pinball—un-uncanny.

Check out the second part of “Tilt” here.

(Image credit: The Pinball Hall of Fame by Kent Kanouse on Flickr.)