Thank you for sharing this reflection. As a game designer, I have a tortured relationship with Monopoly. You suggest that it was never meant to be a fun game... that's not quite correct. Even Elizabeth Magie's The Landlord's Game (which you link to) was still expected to be fun, and the gruelling nature of Monotony (as I am wont to call it) is more an artefact of the craft of game design still being in its infancy in the early twentieth century than any kind of intent.
These games directly descend from 18th century 'race games' like The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement, that were intended to instruct children in Christian virtue. Over the next century, these were supplanted by games like 1866's The Game of the District Messenger Boy, which instructed children in the virtues of the Protestant work ethic AKA 'capitalism'. The Landlord's Game is unusual precisely because Magie believed that children's natural instinct for fairness would allow them to see how land ownership was unjust if they just experienced it in a game. And then, as you allude to, Parker Brothers took the idea and made a game that was just about indulging in a passion for acquisition.
There is a continuity here, and it proceeds to where we are now. The stock trading game is not so different from these boardgames, for all that it is a real money game, like gambling. Musk has been made a trillionaire not because of AI, which SpaceX only recently absorbed, but because of a metaphysical dream of technology that he has turned into our planet's largest IPO. But as with all such fantasies, it is not based on commercial or technical reality at all. He is selling the idea that mid-twentieth century fantasies about space colonisation will come true. And people are drawn to this phantasmal vision, and so invest in a company that has a terrible financial profile, and whose promise is "we're going to do something great but we don't know what it is yet." I find it fascinating!
Backlash against this generation of AI is driven in part by the hype that has been used to inflate valuations on the three companies attempting to ride this ephemeral bubble to further wealth. It is these companies that like to talk about AI as an existential threat, and the danger to jobs, and so forth. It has been highly effective at papering over the obvious limitation in the robots they are actually offering. There is much more smoke and mirrors here than most people appreciate.
The bubble will burst, probably some time this year, and we will be left with the question we should have been asking in the first place: how can we make convivial AI? How can we make robots that enhance human autonomy and community? I remain optimistic, without any basis at all, that this remains possible. I'll admit, it is not likely to be achieved while 20th century science fiction remains the dominant mythos of our time, but for those of us who follow the paths opened by other stories, nothing prevents us pursuing the good just because others have lost sight of what the good might be.
So then - small point to all that - but the idea that roll and move games were to teach moral and religious lessons goes way back way further because that is what snakes and ladders was for, right?
... although in that case, as with the landlord's game, the lesson was supposed to come from the actual game mechanics and wasn't just a theme.
Great challenge! I had a really good conversation with an expert on 'Gyan Chauper' (one of the many names for the games Snakes and Ladders descends from) at a DIGRA event I was speaking at, and it seems these games are perhaps better understood as a metaphysical meditations on existence.
There's obvious parallels, to be sure, but Mansions of Happiness expressly tells us in its title that it's about inculcating virtue; Gyan Chauper is a religiously motivated game, but its focus is metaphysical rather than moral. Still, you are correct about the line of influence: Europe learned the 'race game' from the Indian subcontinent (and the origins are even older!).
Thanks for the opportunity to mention this! There were many side alleys I wanted to go down, but I thought I'd already rambled enough in that particular comment! 🙂
Thanks, Dougald. I didn't realize how much I needed someone to say something in this moment, and your reflections were perfect. I'm thinking we have to quietly but surely pull on the slender, fragile supports of vertically-arranged mono-polis(es) (?, terrible with Greek...) and see how poly-polis(es) emerge in horizonal, backroads, Illich-y kind of ways.
I haven't thought about Monopoly (the board game) in years....and how I both loved and hated it at the same time as a kid. I would play with my friend, find myself winning, offer an act of charity (breaking the rules) so we could keep playing and it always lead to losing in short order. Losing everything. What a lesson.....! (And yes, as someone in the midst of fighting a hyper-scale data center, there is a unifying recognition at the horror of it all like I've never experienced. There is truly opportunity with this thread.). As always, thank you for your words.
Yes, really interesting about the scaffolding, I've heard some stories recently about shockingly shoddy new builds done on the assumption that when the music stops they will be long gone: that's a klaxon sounding to me that it's all going to go wrong soon.
Thank you for this post and for all your work. I am not sure I quite follow the scaffolding story. What would normally happen to scaffolding that didn’t happen during the end of the bubble?
So normally, they would dismantle it and rebuild it at the next job, but instead the boss told them to just pull the scaffolding structure over and heap earth over it, so they could save a couple of days and get onto the next job sooner. Also suggests the money involved had got so crazy it made sense to buy new scaffolding poles/etc to save a couple of days.
Got it. I guess this also means that the building they’d just built would have a bunch of random scaffolding pieces buried in the dirt around it? It really is an interesting little piece of “efficient” inefficiency.
The thing that sticks with me from this is the thought that the doctors, lawyers and professors should have listened to what their heads were telling them.
In your story of the scaffolding it clearly had no value for the builder. Sadly, the technical scaffolding of our world is worth far too much for its operators to casually bury it and, to push the analogy a little further, what has happened to the mansion that it is built around and that it is supposed to be protecting and providing access to repair its more inaccessible parts?
My fear is not that the scaffolding will be buried but that it will be all that is left.
Thanks, Richard. I should say that the closing metaphor of scaffolding wasn't intended as a riff on the story from the Irish housing boom. But lots to chew on in the way you've run with it.
Dear Dougald,
Thank you for sharing this reflection. As a game designer, I have a tortured relationship with Monopoly. You suggest that it was never meant to be a fun game... that's not quite correct. Even Elizabeth Magie's The Landlord's Game (which you link to) was still expected to be fun, and the gruelling nature of Monotony (as I am wont to call it) is more an artefact of the craft of game design still being in its infancy in the early twentieth century than any kind of intent.
These games directly descend from 18th century 'race games' like The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement, that were intended to instruct children in Christian virtue. Over the next century, these were supplanted by games like 1866's The Game of the District Messenger Boy, which instructed children in the virtues of the Protestant work ethic AKA 'capitalism'. The Landlord's Game is unusual precisely because Magie believed that children's natural instinct for fairness would allow them to see how land ownership was unjust if they just experienced it in a game. And then, as you allude to, Parker Brothers took the idea and made a game that was just about indulging in a passion for acquisition.
There is a continuity here, and it proceeds to where we are now. The stock trading game is not so different from these boardgames, for all that it is a real money game, like gambling. Musk has been made a trillionaire not because of AI, which SpaceX only recently absorbed, but because of a metaphysical dream of technology that he has turned into our planet's largest IPO. But as with all such fantasies, it is not based on commercial or technical reality at all. He is selling the idea that mid-twentieth century fantasies about space colonisation will come true. And people are drawn to this phantasmal vision, and so invest in a company that has a terrible financial profile, and whose promise is "we're going to do something great but we don't know what it is yet." I find it fascinating!
Backlash against this generation of AI is driven in part by the hype that has been used to inflate valuations on the three companies attempting to ride this ephemeral bubble to further wealth. It is these companies that like to talk about AI as an existential threat, and the danger to jobs, and so forth. It has been highly effective at papering over the obvious limitation in the robots they are actually offering. There is much more smoke and mirrors here than most people appreciate.
The bubble will burst, probably some time this year, and we will be left with the question we should have been asking in the first place: how can we make convivial AI? How can we make robots that enhance human autonomy and community? I remain optimistic, without any basis at all, that this remains possible. I'll admit, it is not likely to be achieved while 20th century science fiction remains the dominant mythos of our time, but for those of us who follow the paths opened by other stories, nothing prevents us pursuing the good just because others have lost sight of what the good might be.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
I love your statement: ”nothing prevents us pursuing the good just because others have lost sight of what the good might be.” Will give it wings🪽
So then - small point to all that - but the idea that roll and move games were to teach moral and religious lessons goes way back way further because that is what snakes and ladders was for, right?
... although in that case, as with the landlord's game, the lesson was supposed to come from the actual game mechanics and wasn't just a theme.
Dear Nicholas,
Great challenge! I had a really good conversation with an expert on 'Gyan Chauper' (one of the many names for the games Snakes and Ladders descends from) at a DIGRA event I was speaking at, and it seems these games are perhaps better understood as a metaphysical meditations on existence.
There's obvious parallels, to be sure, but Mansions of Happiness expressly tells us in its title that it's about inculcating virtue; Gyan Chauper is a religiously motivated game, but its focus is metaphysical rather than moral. Still, you are correct about the line of influence: Europe learned the 'race game' from the Indian subcontinent (and the origins are even older!).
Thanks for the opportunity to mention this! There were many side alleys I wanted to go down, but I thought I'd already rambled enough in that particular comment! 🙂
Stay wonderful!
Chris.
Thanks, Dougald. I didn't realize how much I needed someone to say something in this moment, and your reflections were perfect. I'm thinking we have to quietly but surely pull on the slender, fragile supports of vertically-arranged mono-polis(es) (?, terrible with Greek...) and see how poly-polis(es) emerge in horizonal, backroads, Illich-y kind of ways.
I haven't thought about Monopoly (the board game) in years....and how I both loved and hated it at the same time as a kid. I would play with my friend, find myself winning, offer an act of charity (breaking the rules) so we could keep playing and it always lead to losing in short order. Losing everything. What a lesson.....! (And yes, as someone in the midst of fighting a hyper-scale data center, there is a unifying recognition at the horror of it all like I've never experienced. There is truly opportunity with this thread.). As always, thank you for your words.
Yes, really interesting about the scaffolding, I've heard some stories recently about shockingly shoddy new builds done on the assumption that when the music stops they will be long gone: that's a klaxon sounding to me that it's all going to go wrong soon.
Thank you for this post and for all your work. I am not sure I quite follow the scaffolding story. What would normally happen to scaffolding that didn’t happen during the end of the bubble?
So normally, they would dismantle it and rebuild it at the next job, but instead the boss told them to just pull the scaffolding structure over and heap earth over it, so they could save a couple of days and get onto the next job sooner. Also suggests the money involved had got so crazy it made sense to buy new scaffolding poles/etc to save a couple of days.
Got it. I guess this also means that the building they’d just built would have a bunch of random scaffolding pieces buried in the dirt around it? It really is an interesting little piece of “efficient” inefficiency.
Right!
The thing that sticks with me from this is the thought that the doctors, lawyers and professors should have listened to what their heads were telling them.
In your story of the scaffolding it clearly had no value for the builder. Sadly, the technical scaffolding of our world is worth far too much for its operators to casually bury it and, to push the analogy a little further, what has happened to the mansion that it is built around and that it is supposed to be protecting and providing access to repair its more inaccessible parts?
My fear is not that the scaffolding will be buried but that it will be all that is left.
Thanks, Richard. I should say that the closing metaphor of scaffolding wasn't intended as a riff on the story from the Irish housing boom. But lots to chew on in the way you've run with it.