Overview of Monopoly and its relations to BASIS- Episode Four of The BOG

Monopoly is a popular board game where the goal is to make everyone else go bankrupt. There are different versions of the game and players can choose different items to play as. The rules can be flexible and many families have their own traditions. Monopoly can be played with family or friends and it can get competitive. At BASIS, the game is popular and often played during Project Week. Monopoly combines strategy and luck, making it enjoyable for many players. The game has been around for almost 100 years and has different versions based on pop culture themes. It is seen as a critique of capitalism and monopolies. Monopoly and other board games are popular at BASIS during AP and final seasons. Um, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On the conclusion of this short mini-series on board games and baseless life more broadly, we would like to talk about Monopoly. Now, my co-host over here, Therese, has not played Monopoly before. That is true, I have never played it. So TJ, can you explain the rules of Monopoly? I know there's many versions of this game, but can you explain the rules in general? Of course. So basically, you can choose an item to play as, like it can be a car, or a hat, or whatever. That doesn't matter. And so you can begin the game by, or at least this is how my family plays it, the person who rolls highest goes first, and then they go clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on how the first person wants it to go. And so that's how you start the game. Now, in Monopoly, there are many properties, railroads, and other utilities that you can buy. These utilities, properties, and railroads can serve as rent, and it helps you accumulate money. The goal of Monopoly is not to accumulate the most money, but rather make sure that everyone else goes bankrupt. That's why Monopoly can take a long time, because you're given a set amount of money, and so for that money to waste away, it takes a while. And so there are different additions that make the game either go faster or slower, depending on how you play. And so that's basically a quick summary of how you play Monopoly. Okay, and what are these different versions? Because although I know there are different versions, I just don't know the types, you know? Okay, so for example, my family plays, in Monopoly, if you pay a tax, because you'll have these, and I did not mention this earlier, much to my own dismay, you have these community chests, and you have these chance cards that you can pick up. Now, once you pick up these cards, there's a chance that you'll get money, which is good, or you might get taxed, which is not good. If you get taxed in my family, what happens is you put that money in the center of the Monopoly board, and if a player lands on free parking, they can get all that money in the middle. And so that's a way for the game to go faster, as by giving players more money, they're able to buy more properties, build houses on those properties, which, again, I didn't mention that before, is how you increase the rent on said properties, and thereby you quicken the rate at which the people you're playing against go bankrupt. Okay, which leads me to another question. Are the rules of Monopoly definitive, like some other games, or is there a lot of flexibility with them? Well, similar to other games like Uno, I would say, there are more house rules. I'm sure there's an official rule set for Monopoly, but I don't think anyone cares, frankly, about what Hasbro has to say about how to actually play Monopoly, because people develop these family traditions as to how they play Monopoly, and in my experience, have no intention of changing that fact. So, like, if tomorrow I realized that in the official rules you don't have the free parking bonus of sorts, I would still play like that because that's how my family has always played. Yeah, does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Do you play Monopoly more with your family or with your friends in school? Definitely more with my family. Which is not to discredit or dismiss how popular Monopoly is at bases, but I would definitely say that I play Monopoly much more with my family, because I've been playing Monopoly with my family all this while, and it's just become a family tradition. Playing it particularly on holidays like Christmas has become quite fun for me and my family, and so I would definitely say that I play Monopoly much more with my family than anyone else. Similarly to other games, do you notice any distinct behavioral changes when playing Monopoly? I would say so. I would say that people definitely become more competitive, and because it's usually a family setting in which you're playing, many people become very determined to win. There's also a problem of teaming, which in my experience, it sucks. My mother, for example, often teams with my brother because he's not good at Monopoly, and that's why he actually has a lot of wins in Monopoly. We keep track. But frankly, if you ask me, I'm the best in my family at Monopoly. Much better than anyone else. Which brings me to another topic about the popularity of Monopoly at bases, which results in another behavioral change. When you're playing it at bases, you're usually playing it with a large setting, and so they make their own rules to accommodate this large setting. Take, for example, the fact that many bases students will decrease the money that's allocated at the beginning of the game to make the game go faster, because usually to play Monopoly, besides Project Week, you're given a finite 50-minute period to do so. There's another thing where they'll probably allow people to build properties easier, make trades run more smoothly to quicken the pace of the game, as most Monopoly games at bases have definitive time constraints. Okay, to be honest, I haven't seen much Monopoly games being played, at least from the past few weeks. Have you? I actually have. At Project Week, there were, I think, two or three groups playing Monopoly, and I did not mention this earlier because it doesn't make sense to say so while we're talking about how to play the game Monopoly, but Monopoly's success also relies on the fact that they have multiple different versions of the game that they play. So in Monopoly, for example, they have Monopoly for Star Wars, Monopoly for Harry Potter, Monopoly for basically any type of pop culture genre which one enjoys. And that's why Monopoly has become so popular across the world, but also at bases as well, because it's able to adopt popular pop culture items that all people find cool and interesting. Do you have any particular version of Monopoly that you like? I like to play the, quote, original version of Monopoly. That's the one with paper money, right? Yeah, and I have this box. It's like a Monopoly box that we play on at my family's house. I think it's one of the older versions of Monopoly. Not a lot of people know this, but Monopoly's actually been a game since the Great Depression, and many American families used to play it because it allowed them to sort of play pretend while they were facing the economic shortcomings that were a result of that era. And so Monopoly's actually been a part of American public life for... Almost 100 years. Yeah, yes. Yeah, I somehow knew that, but do you actually know the origin of the game in general? I've been told that Monopoly was supposed to be some sort of critique of capitalism or whatever, but frankly... That's kind of funny, actually, because if it's a critique of capitalism, then I don't know. It's a critique of capitalism in the sense that, not to get too political here, but it's because you have a couple of players who are buying out all the properties, raising the rent prices, and it's not beneficial to all parties involved. It's particularly a critique if you... And we would know this because many basic students have taken AP Euro and AP World History as a critique of captains of industry, like robber barons, those who possess massive amounts of property and wealth and allocate said wealth for themselves at the expense of the general public. Oh, okay, I see, I see. I don't know, I just thought that game... Initially I thought that game was very pro-capitalist, but I guess it's just an anti-capitalist game? I don't know. I would say so. Even most capitalists, I would say, don't like the idea of monopolies. I mean, there are some that do, but generally capitalism talks about the greatness of free markets, and monopolies are kind of diametrically opposed to such free markets. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But anyway, that was a, I guess, sort of political, social commentary on the origins of monopoly. But at BASIS, I've been playing Monopoly at BASIS for two years now. It's definitely very popular at Project Week, and a lot of people play it there. And so, if I'm remembering correctly, actually, we started playing Monopoly in 8th grade because we had all this time on our hands, and it was Project Week, but also the end of, the pandemic was beginning to wind down, and we then joined full in-person learning in 9th grade, which was quite good. Yeah. And would you like to say anything else about why Monopoly has been so popular in BASIS? I mean, I think that basically covers it. It conduces to pop culture norms, it's a fun thing to play, it's very competitive, and actually, there is one thing. We mentioned earlier how many people enjoy both strategy and luck components of things. Yeah, like with poker. Yeah, Monopoly combines those both as well. As you know, you have to strategize how you're going to buy out these properties in order to make everyone else bankrupt. But it's also very, it matters a lot, the roll of the dice. And so you see that luck aspect there as well. Okay. Would you like to say any comment about the general trends you have been seeing with certain games that are rising in popularity in BASIS? I would say that these games thrive, as we have talked about earlier, best during AP season and final season because a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands. But I would say that may also can be seen when BASIS students are on their own. They may not be at school directly, but they're still in a sort of BASIS bubble of sorts and they're playing games with their friends. Yeah, okay. That's pretty much what I would say as well. Well, that'll be all. I hope you all enjoyed the BOG podcast and have an understanding of board games at BASIS Tucson North. Have a great day and au revoir. Thank you.