A century after Lizzie Magie, her players would still rather be Rockefeller than reformers.
This newsletter could easily have been two or three times longer, the subject is that vast. Talking about one of the world’s most popular games for more than a century isn’t just about an economic phenomenon driven by a publisher wringing every last drop out of its licence. It’s a full map of our history. It’s social behaviour you find in every market. It’s game theory, from Zermelo onwards, with a generous side of chaos.
I could also have covered the techniques for winning, built on mathematical calculations and some fascinating probabilities (that could be a second episode, since it’s already written 😅). But today, above all, I wanted to understand where the game came from, and how its rules were bent, for economic reasons by its publishers, and for even more surprising reasons by its players.
So today, we head back to 1903 to talk about Monopoly. For once, it shouldn’t land me a lawsuit.