The game’s little-known inventor, Elizabeth Magie, would no doubt have made herself go directly to jail if she’d lived to know just how influential today’s twisted version of her game has turned out to be. It’s a maxim that would certainly serve you well in a game of Monopoly, the bestselling board game that has taught generations of children to buy up property, stack it with hotels, and charge fellow players sky-high rents for the privilege of accidentally landing there. Magie’s game became a cornerstone in the education of seven generations of entrepreneurs.‘Buy land – they aren’t making it any more,’ quipped Mark Twain. Rather than encouraging the adoption of the anti-landlord policies of Mr. It is estimated that more than 250 million Monopoly games have been sold and that the game has been played by billions people. The fact that the game underwent over thirty years of market validation and refinement is a key contributing factor to its enduring success and the universal appeal across numerous diverse cultures. Success always has many parents – in the case of Monopoly, Lizzie Magie gave birth to the game, but it was “raised” by a number of socialists, entrepreneurs and game enthusiasts. It’s unclear why there was such a disparity between these deals, especially since The Fascinating Game of Finance, was less similar to Monopoly than The Landlord’s Game. Magie’s relatively meager payout, Parker Brothers paid the owner of another Monopoly precursor, The Fascinating Game of Finance, $10,000 in 1935 (~ $190,000 in 2021). Parker Brothers also agreed to acquire two additional games created by Ms. Magie $500 (it’s unclear when she received this payment, but assuming it was 1936, it would be equivalent to about $9,300 in 2021). Magie not only invented the original precursor to Monopoly, he also learned that she was granted a patent for The Landlord’s Game in 1904.įurthermore, he uncovered the fact that Parker Brothers paid Ms. While gathering research for his legal defense, Mr.
He eventually reached a settlement with Parker Brothers and his game remains available to this day.
Anspach’s case lingered in the courts for about a decade.
Anspach published the Anti-Monopoly game in 1973, which eventually came to the attention of Parker Brothers, who took legal action to remove the game from the market. Like many of history’s female inventors, Lizzie’s contribution to the entrepreneurial landscape was lost to history and probably would have remained so if it weren’t for the detective work of Professor Ralph Anspach. The game eventually made its way to Harvard and then the Midwest, where it eventually “returned” to the Philadelphia area during the early 1930’s.įor those who want to learn more, the 2011 documentary, Under the Boardwalk: The MONOPOLY Story, which is currently available on Prime, which includes an in-depth description of the game’s circuitous path to Mr. The Landlord’s Game became popular with his students, who shared it among their friends. The game was played by like-minded socialists, eventually making its way in 1910 to Scott Nearing, a professor at The Wharton School and Swarthmore College. Her hope was that players would reject the game’s winner-take-all strategy, which results in only one player owning all of the game’s land while everyone else is driven into bankruptcy. The intent of the game was to demonstrate the evils of concentrated landownership. Magie created The Landlord's Game and applied for a patent in 1903. Magie was particularly influenced by Henry George, whose 1879 book, Progress and Poverty, espoused a belief that workers should own what they produce, but that the natural resources and economic rents derived from land should be owned by society as a whole.
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