Why thousands of board games are buried beneath Mankato

https://www.startribune.com/anti-monopoly-mankato-landfill-board-game-history/600279625/

by PaulHoule • 3 years ago

114 34 3 years ago

I just assumed they were buried cause they were sucking kids into a jungle world and Robin Williams isn't here to save them.

reaperman• 3 years ago

Anspach played Monopoly in Czechoslovakia as a child, Pilon wrote. Later, in Berkeley in the early 1970s, he played with his wife and sons. But with an oil crisis developing and consumer suffering on the rise, the game's message seemed less fun. "The board game rewarded something in play that hurt people in reality," Anspach thought, according to Pilon's account.

A somewhat well-known fact is that the creator of Monopoly created it in 1903 as anti-monopoly social commentary:

American anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie created a game that she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George. It was intended as an educational tool, to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies.[0]

The creator of the original game was relatively radical for her time:

Taking out a newspaper advertisement, she offered herself as a ‘young woman American slave’ for sale to the highest bidder. Her aim, she told shocked readers, was to highlight the subordinate position of women in society. ‘We are not machines,’ she said. ‘Girls have minds, desires, hopes and ambition.’[1]

Anyways, it seems this "Anti-Monopoly" was, in fact, more of an "extension" than a rebuttal. It appears that the creator (Ralph Anspach) was aware of that and actually crusaded to bring public awareness to the origins of Monopoly, partially to weaken the intellectual property rights of Parker Brothers.[2]

Also of note, these games were destroyed after Anspach lost the first court case but he ended up winning on appeal, despite federal congress passing a statutory law specifically to address Monopoly vs. Anti-Monopoly! To prove the historical connection, you can read a report[3] to the Committee on the Judiciary which talks about the justification for the law, in context of these board games. Due to this law, Parker Brothers and its parent company, Hasbro, continue to hold valid trademarks for the game Monopoly. (And OpenAI can trademark "Generative Pre-Training").

Anti-Monopoly was, however, exempted from the new law; after winning appeals, Anspach later reached a settlement with Hasbro and markets his game under license from them. It is still published by San Francisco University Games to this day[4] and can be purchased on Amazon[5].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)

1: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170728-monopoly-was-i...

2: https://archive.ph/C2FDO

3: https://www.ipmall.info/sites/default/files/hosted_resources...

4: https://www.universitygames.com/games/family/antimonopoly

5: https://www.amazon.com/8509-Anti-Monopoly-Spiel/dp/B000LPA9F...

ilikepi• 3 years ago

There is an episode[1] of NPR's Throughline that covers some of this. That episode was excerpted into a Planet Money episode[2] as well.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108728257/do-not-pass-go

[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/25/1151367036/story-monopoly-ame...

jandrese• 3 years ago

My parents had a copy of Anti-Monopoly II and we played it as kids. The game seemed poorly balanced as the monopolists always won. Maybe that was the lesson it was trying to teach?

pessimizer3• 3 years ago

The creator of the original game was relatively radical for her time:

Relatively radical for that time makes you far more radical than people are now.

zoklet-enjoyer• 3 years ago

Mankato city council passed a year moratorium on marijuana stores. Mankato is just a no fun zone

superkuh• 3 years ago

There was a brief time on the early web where Mankato (Minnesota) had, and was proud of, it's joke website describing Mankato city as a near-tropical paradise due to local hot springs. This was "well known" back in the 90s. Back then it came up as one of the only sites about Mankato. Now google is useless and can't return any results other than spam.

AuryGlenz• 3 years ago

This it? First result for me for “Mankato Hot Springs:” http://city-mankato.us/sibley.html

Second was an article about the page.

jvanderbot• 3 years ago

Wow! To see Mankato on HN is amazing. They had an incredible punk scene back in the day, when Billie Joe would come through to see his GF. Highly recommend Pagalias pizza!

philshem• 3 years ago

Further reading: https://www.mankatofreepress.com/news/lifestyles/green-day-f...

bovermyer• 3 years ago

I love seeing Star Tribune links on HN. They still run on infrastructure I designed, as far as I know.

avgcorrection4• 3 years ago

Georgeism of the precursor to Monopoly or Monopoly itself aside: it seems pretty obvious that the world described by Monopoly game is not a fun one. The lucky one gets to charge all the other players rent for just existing which he can then use to charge even more rent.

Maybe you think I’m being too literal here. But the concept of “monopoly” is the same.

pessimizer3• 3 years ago

That's the point. You can start everyone in the same place with the same resources, operating by the same rules, and eventually one player through an accumulation of luck and skill will own all of the other players. It's no way to run a society.

edit: Monopoly was originally called "The Landlord's Game" for a reason. Do you want to play the landlord's game?

misnome• 3 years ago

And this is literally true, OP your interpretation is exactly how it was designed:

Monopoly is derived from The Landlord's Game, …… as a way to demonstrate that an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where monopolies hold all the wealth

( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game) )

The less outright-capitalistic part didn’t survive in the rules.

nameless_prole• 3 years ago

Leave it to America to turn that game into a massive commercial succuss, while somehow using it to teach people the exact opposite message.

wahnfrieden• 3 years ago

People will say landlords do work too. They’re busy, right? However none of the work they do is necessary as owner and can be contracted out to management. If they do labor, such as maintaining a property, sure that’s value producing labor, but is only coincidentally occasionally shared with the role of raw ownership (landlording)

paulddraper3• 3 years ago

the world described by the Monopoly game is not a fun one

Hell, it's not even a fun game :/

Shawnj2• 3 years ago

The version of monopoly we have wasn’t designed to be fun, it was originally created to criticize capitalism and point out that it’s unfair and was spread among groups opposed to capitalism. Ironically a guy ripped off the game from these groups and claimed it as his own, renamed it Monopoly, changed some of the rules to turn it into a real game that people would actually want to play, and made a fortune off of it.

cookie_monsta• 3 years ago

The documentary called "Ruthless: monopoly's secret history" covers this story quite well. It's streaming for free on SBS in Australia and PBS in the US

nayuki• 3 years ago

Why thousands of board games are buried beneath Mankato

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