The latest bit of casual Star Wars stupidity is the dearth of merchandise featuring the central woman character Rey — in particular, that she’s left out of Hasbro’s Star Wars Monopoly game. I agree that it’s indicative of this damned dumb unthinking sexism, and it’s dismaying every time it happens, but…there are collisions of multiple problems here.
It’s merchandising. Somebody slaps the word “Star Wars” on something, and people rush to buy it? Why? It’s the same terrible game as the version with Atlantic City properties on it, putting a different cosmetic face on it doesn’t make it better.
And that’s the thing. It’s fucking Monopoly, one of the worst board games ever. People who play it are made more awful by the experience; it’s interminable and boring; its moral lessons are contemptible and repugnant. And lately Hasbro has been making a mint by taking the same rules, the same terrible premise, and the same dreary play and remarketing it with different names slapped on the same old wretched properties. Why not dredge up the worst games of the past and put a Star Wars sticker on ’em? Star Wars Snakes and Ladders. Star Wars Tic-Tac-Toe. Star Wars War. Don’t even need to put a moment’s thought into them, keep the same bad mechanics, just add pictures of Star Wars characters (males only, mind you) and make money from the mindless.
You don’t even need to respect your customers. Look at Hasbro’s excuse for not including Rey:
The Star Wars: Monopoly game was released in September, months before the movie’s release,the statement reads.Rey was not included to avoid revealing a key plot line that she takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance.
All right then. It’s settled. Anyone who was concerned that Star Wars Monopoly might include spoilers is not only thick as triple-distilled sewage sludge, Hasbro knows it and is happy to sell you crap. It’s MONOPOLY. You move around a board and buy things. It has nothing to do with the plot of the movie. Traditionally, it was sold with random geegaws as markers, rather than plastic models of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Was anyone worried that the original game would reveal that thimbles were all actually capitalist stooges, or that little dogs had designs on stealing Park Place away from you?
Also, right there in their press release: Rey takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance
? Dude. Spoilers. You just ruined the whole movie for those who haven’t seen it yet by revealing ridiculously broad plot points. All including a Rey figure would have revealed is that there is a woman in the story — which is a little shocking, I know — and that she’s got a lot of credits she’s going to use to buy planets in the galaxy.
Daisy Ridley ought to be honored that Hasbro left a representation of her character out of that steaming pile of shit.
And please…just don’t buy Monopoly anymore. Please.
Um, hello? It’s the resistance, not the rebel alliance! Jeez, get your facts right, Hasbro! #ImportantThings
Also, fun fact that is probably already widely known; not only is monopoly a horrific game with contemptible and repugnant moral lessons, it’s also a twisted mockery of itself – it was apparently originally designed as an anti-capitalist game with the intent of showing exactly how perverse capitalism really is. So that went a bit wrong.
On top of that comes the irony that it is a game idea invented by a woman that was then successfully stolen by a man.
And the “contemptible and repugnant moral lessons” were supposed to be recognized as exactly that.
Yes, Monopoly is a crappy game … a social satire in board game form that people mistake for a real game.
I was ranting about inappropriate branding when the Doctor Who edition came out: a fictional alien notorious for carrying no money and fighting abuses of power gets his name slapped on Monopoly. At least the inevitable Risk version used Daleks.
If the Star Wars version represented only the Empire, First Order, Hutt syndicates, and/or something equally nefarious, then it would almost make sense.
There’s also some buzz right now that the heavy presence of Lex Luthor in new Superman action figure sets might mean that he has a large role in the movie. Interesting how “we can’t make toys because spoilers” seems only to apply to female characters.
@3
Actually, the Republic fits in pretty nicely. They were rather imperialist as well, bringing unwilling planets under their rule. And the Jedi. Actually, the Jedi were the main power in the Republic, helping it spread so they could extort parents from a greater number of planets into giving up their children to the Jedi order.
Hey, I didn’t know Monopoly was intended to be a satire! It was kind of interesting when I was 7, but I find it odd that adults care for it. Another satirical board game I know is ‘A package Has Arrived’ by Ephraim Kishon, where you are supposed to get a package from customs and get sent to collect random bits of paperwork, including a certificate of good conduct from the police and your grandmother’s marriage certificate.
Elimination games almost always suck. There’s usually a sore loser and a sore winner. Even Junior Monopoly is unpleasant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_board_games#Multi-player_elimination_games
Non-elimination games are much more sociable and fun (e.g. Scrabble, Chinese Checkers). Many are like a race to achieve certain goals, and are still fun even when players “lose”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_board_games#Multiplayer_games_without_elimination
My ESL school wants us to teach the kids English board games, and Monopoly is one of them. At my own expense, I bought and had Payday shipped here, which is a much more friendly game with a lot of humour and puns (i.e. not mean spirited, the kids are reading and doing basic math). The kids enjoy it and learn quickly, including the ones with weak English skills. We’re also supposed to use Life, but that is too convoluted for even the oldest kids. I can’t find Careers for sale online or I would use that too.
I’d like to see “Star Wars Life.” Instead of “college versus no college,” let’s rehash “light side versus dark side” for the basqullionth time. And instead of suing another character, we can castigate them for their lack of faith in the Force.
When we were kids, my brother decided the game would be better if he just printed more money. Eventually we decided to throw pieces at the houses and hotels. That was much more fun
Hasbro has had two fan-created Transformers action figures. Both times, fans overwhelming voted for the new character to be female. They got in hot water with their Jurassic World and Avengers toy lines for labeling female dinosaurs male and failing to include the female character who was the actual motorcycle rider in the scene one of their playsets was based on, respectively.
At some point, you’d think that they might actually get the memo that fans want female characters.
And Monopoly is boring.
“And that’s the thing. It’s fucking Monopoly, one of the worst board games ever. People who play it are made more awful by the experience; it’s interminable and boring”
Most people don’t play by the rules. They play with the Free Parking rule (which just serves to extend the game) and most don’t remember to auction off properties that aren’t bought by the person landing on them.
If you actually play by the rules, Monopoly is a one hour game.
Argh, PZ! You should use a spoiler warning too.
I haven’t seen the movie yet and didn’t expect a spoiler in a “Monopoly sucks and sexism is still there” article
The latest bit of casual Star Wars stupidity is the dearth of merchandise featuring the central woman character Rey
In another thread I was going to spew some of my hatred at star wars marketing, when I started to comment that “at least star wars isn’t full of product placement!” …. Then, I realized that it is. It’s just that Disney has vertically integrated their product placement: they own both the property (star wars) so they don’t have to pay themselves anything for product placement, and the products: endless tchotchkes based on star wars. I’m surprised there aren’t nike “star wars” shoes, and maybe a “star wars” car or two.
When I figured that little tidbit out* my hatred for star wars expanded like a sun late in its life-cycle then collapsed into something so dense and hot it warps spacetime around it.
(*I know some of you were doubtless way ahead of me in figuring that out…)
WRT to Monopoly: it needs a new card deck instead of “community chest” called “excuses.” It needs to be full of capitalist tropes excusing inequality. I.e.: “you wouldn’t know how to spend it wisely: take $10 from every player on the board who has less than $1000 in their bank account”
“its moral lessons are contemptible and repugnant”
What? The inventor of The Landlord’s Game, the precursor to Monopoly, designed it as a “practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences”. I think Monopoly fulfills that goal very well.
I actually rather like Monopoly. It’s pretty much entirely based on luck, so when I inevitably lose it’s not because I’ve made a mistake or done something wrong, just because things didn’t turn out my way. It’s also got that nostalgia vibe that I appreciate, with its colourful 20s style board (London, clearly) and old-fashioned playing pieces.
So no, no we can’t all agree. Deep rifts here too!
538 and a lot of folks agree:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-worst-board-games-ever-invented/
Funny Monopoly thing: one of my dad’s colleagues in the 70s was old-line French nobility. His blood was so blue that he’d look like a leaking smurf. He lived in run-down elegance in the chateau at the top of the village (the only signs of the revolution was that the sans-culottes chiselled the family coat of arms off the arch over the doorway just to show the family who was boss..) (when that was over, the family knew, too…) Anyhow … we used to play games some evenings and one night it was Monopoly. This friend of ours didn’t do very well, and when he finally hit a triple hotel and was bankrupted, he raised an eyebrow and said, “alors, je vous doix” (I owe you) and kept playing as if nothing had happened. We let him. He simply had no idea how the game worked.
Sheesh! Did Professor CrankyPants get out of the wrong side of his bed today?
Well, the last time I played Monopoly was way before most video games existed, and probably before I went to high school, so I might well find it boring now, but I have memories of playing it often and enjoying it. As for its moral lessons, I learned that a couple of lucky rolls of the dice are all that really separate the very rich from the very poor, and that someone who can corner the market in a necessity can make life very difficult for many other people. I also learned both what it felt like to steamroll all the other players AND what it felt like to be one of the ones under the steamroller. If PZ thinks having that knowledge ipso facto made me more awful, does he also think studying nuclear physics makes one more likely to become a nuclear terrorist?
@left0ver1under, 7
I was about to argue with you that I’m aware of some elimination games which are beautiful, but it turns out that they’re non-elimination games. Apparently I misunderstood what the term actually means.
Still, even though my original point is objectively wrong, I’m going to bring them up anyway… just because I want to evangelise about games! Carcassonne, Boss Monster, Fluxx, and the XCom board game are all awesome. This war-on-christmas period, I played Monty Python Fluxx with my brother… singing Python songs in terrible French accents in order to draw and play more cards is surprisingly fun. We followed that up with XCom, where we discovered that Elerium research is cursed – CURSED, I SAY!! It was fun. We only witnessed the extinction of humanity twice.
…did they seriously pretend that it’s a spoiler that the girl who looks exactly like Luke Skywalker winds up fighting the character that looks exactly like Darth Vader?
Who the hell didn’t know that’s what would happen after like any of the first few trailers?
I attempted to play Monopoly only once in my life. We were in college, and we were drinking and having fun with another couple. The guys decided that it would be fun to teach the ladies to play Monopoly as we drank.
I still associate playing Monopoly with drinking wayyy too much. I don’t remember a thing about how to play the game.
The toy business is ruthlessly segregated by sex. Walk down the toy aisles at any WalMart or ToysRUs and you will see.
Board games are usually above that, they’re actually shelved in a separate area most of the time. But apparently someone at Hasbro decided Star Wars Monopoly should be a boys’ toy.
Huh. I didn’t realize Monopoly was intended as satire. Just like Archie Bunker on “All in the Family.”
I wonder if American capitalism itself was originally set up as satire, but then some jerks started playing for real?
I agree Monopoly is a bad game based on bad values. I think your telepathic powers of knowing what motivated the omission of Rey may have let you down. Given the minor role she played in the early trailers when the game was being developed, it is at least plausible that the developers didn’t know she was a major character. It also strikes me that even, or especially, a sexist developer would have welcomed the opportunity to add an attractive female figurine to the game.
Rey is also missing from the action figure set:
http://legionofleia.com/2015/11/wheresrey-hasbro-target-are-we-really-going-to-start-star-wars-this-way/
From my experience, people tend to spend a good fifteen minutes arguing over who gets the car. You play for about ninety minutes and then everyone loses interest.
I’d rather play Star Wars Catan.
I like monopoly. I play by modified rules that make the game a little more challenging and a bit more even. I think it teaches people how to negotiate and make deals. It’s goal is no different than any other game, each person tries to win. I don’t see how it’s any worse than other competition. Games like sorry, risk, just about any card game and even checkers and chess are about beating your opponent mercilessly. Actually, monopoly is a great way to explain why we need anti-trust laws and why being cut-throat really is a bad way to go through life. Games are only as bad as their players.
I think it’s certainly sexist that Rey was left out of the game. The fact that she”takes on Kylo-Ren” isn’t a spoiler, it’s the premise of the movie. The real spoiler of the new movie is the original Star Wars movie, because this one is almost a complete rehash of the original.
***SPOILER***
Including a complete remake of the Death Star and Luke’s and Obi Wan’s experiences in the Death Star. I mean this move had almost no originality to it at all.
Same as all the other Star Wars then.
Oh, how clever; just like my sarcasm.
I’ll second the person who said that Monopoly moves a lot faster if you actually follow the rules on auctioning off properties that go unbought by the person landing on them. Same if you add trading properties. When I played Monopoly with my cousins, we’d rarely have a game go longer than an hour because of that.
Of course, as far as such games go, Monopoly isn’t the most fun of that type of game. I’ve found Acquire and Ticket to Ride a lot more fun to play than Monopoly.
You are so naive PZ…
Star Wars Snake and Ladders: http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTI4MFg5NjA=/z/xK0AAOSwd0BV3~eC/$_75.JPG
Star Wars Tic Tac Toe: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/89/f0/d3/89f0d3371e9be498fcf7c9a7460ae76c.jpg (One of the many)
Also, can someone explain me this trend of removing female action figures?
The Avengers action-figure set was missing Black Widow and the Guardians of the Galaxy one was missing Gamora.
I just can’t understand the reasoning (or lack thereof) of hiding the female characters, characters that are displayed left and right in the movie ads.
Even in the most sexist mentality I can imagine, it doesn’t make any sense.
Marcus @ 14:
Heh. I was in town today, and I was surprised to see piles of oranges at the market, but happy, ’cause I love me some oranges. I came home with tangerines instead, because the bags of oranges had…Star Wars labels. Yep.
F.O.:
Sure: girls play with dolls, but boys play with action figures.
Monopoly is (relatively) short and (relatively) tolerable if played by the real rules.
Also, don’t let the IP branding turn you off from all games. Star Wars Risk is quite a good game. (It’s not really Risk at all, but rather reimplements “Queen’s Gambit”, which was a surprisingly excellent game based on the horrible prequels.)
Regarding satirical games, I recall playing this in the 1980s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_%28card_game%29
Hasbro produces the female-empowering My Little Pony, and they released a beautiful pony version of Monopoly. But they didn’t include the simple rule to fix much of it: a time limit. 90 minutes max recommended.
Marcus Ranum
well that fellow may not know how the rules were written but he seems to understand how “the game” is played alright.
uncle frogy
F.O. @35:
Basically, toy manufacturers have had a long bias against making figures for female characters due to the perception that they won’t sell as well as male figures, because only boys play with action figures and they think that girls have cooties. Despite there being major outcries every time they fail to release a figure for a major female character in the licensed toy line for a movie.
@40
OMG, there was a My Little Pony version of Monopoly!?
*checks out images*
Hrmmm… not sure I want to pay to get the whole board game, but sure do want a closer look of those cute tokens…
The problem goes much deeper. Each actor gets a royalty for every item that depicts their face. It is only a tiny fraction of a cent, but as fast as these items are flying off shelves, all of the actors are set to collect a very, very fat bonus.
Except for one. Any guesses as to which?
This all comes down to just an extreme example of a woman doing much more work, only to get paid much less.
@microraptor #42: Ok, so they think it wouldn’t sell. I guess it makes sense, in the wrong way. Thanks.
@John Morales, 39
So… what you’re saying is that the only winning move is not to play?
@John Morales, #39
Rereleased via kickstarter. I should get my copy this year. Does really show the futility of nuclear war. But there’s just something appealing about a game where you get to ask “Do you have change for 25 million people?”
Athywren – This Thing Is Just A Thing (#21) –
It’s not an obvious term. Most think it refers to eliminating pieces from the game, not people.
Where’s the fun in being forced out of play and only getting to watch? Games should involve everyone until the end. They’re the most fun when everyone is involved, even those who finish “last”.
F.O. @45:
To give you an idea of just how bad it is with Hasbro, the character of Arcee was created for the 1986 Transformers animated movie. Other characters who were introduced in the movie, like Hot Rod, Galvatron, or even Gnaw the Sharkticon (who wasn’t even a named character) got action figures in less than a year of the movie’s release.
The first time Hasbro released an Arcee figure that was accurate to her G1 appearance was in 2014 (there were other figures named Arcee that were released before then, but they represented different characters).
No, we can not all agree that Monopoly sucks. I don’t agree that it is the worst board game ever created.
@microraptor #49: 1986… I was 5, I had a few Transformer toys, I can see myself not wanting to own a female character because eeeew first and foremost, but also for fear to suffer backlash from my peers.
Kind of sad. I can’t believe that they are still doing it, even for main characters, 30 years later. =\
Oh, fuckin’ Monotony.
Monopoly, Risk, and Scrabble have all been pretty much “banned” by my family.
Monopoly because it takes forever, and Dad always wins.
Risk because it takes forever, and Dad always wins.
Scrabble because nobody wants to play with either Dad or me, because Dad. Always. Wins. (And they have limited me to English words only.)
“Slug-Bug*” was also banned, because of some brutal back-seat brawls.
*I did eventually learn of a point-based version of the game. VW beetle, any color, 1 point; red beetle, 5 points; black beetle, 10 points; multicolored/psychedelic beetle, instant win; first player to 21 points (or other agreed-upon number) wins; points are reset to 0 (zero) when any other player spots and “calls” a police car. Deliberately driving past the police station or a VW dealership is considered cheating. Additional House Rules may apply.
Yes, even played by the correct rules, Monopoly is a dull and mediocre game at best. But Star Wars Monopoly seems positively brilliant next to the game someone gave my son for his fourth birthday last month. A game they correctly guessed he’d love, because it features the Avengers (just Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Hulk, of course, though I’ve made sure the boy at least has a proper appreciation of Black Widow despite her absence from any marketing).
The game is Ludo. Fucking Ludo. An objectively depressingly awful game.
My friends and I tweaked the rules of Monopoly a bit to make it a more interesting game – we play as usual until one player starts to monopolise and knock players out, at that point, the weakest players start to form collectives whereby all players in the collective are exempt from each other’s hotel bills, properties are traded to maximise the collective’s chances, etc. The game then begins to become a team game, with the capitalists vs the collectivists.
Whether the capitalist wins depends heavily on when the collectives are formed. If one joins too early they might throw away their chance to be the overall winner, form too late and the capitalists will have built up too much of an advantage.
Marcus Hill (#53)
My dad’s side of the family plays a version of that game called Wahoo which is actually a lot of fun. Of course, we play it with 3 dice and modified rules that include backward 3’s. Sometimes we play a triple decker version that involves jumping up levels either by getting your marbles home on the lower level or by rolling a 2.
Agree that even played with the ‘proper’ rules (which I have, unfortunately many times) Monopoly is boring. You can always tell when a game has no shred of creativity or originality left, and that’s when they begin to pump out licenced versions of it. No-one at Hasbro is thinking ‘oh, these rules we’ve got would make an interesting way to interact with the Star Wars franchise’, they’re purely about selling this repackaged crap to people who think identifying with a Star Wars brand is key to their personality.
I mean, obviously, yes, any games company exists to make money. But look how Fantasy Flight Games dealt with the hugely successful X Wing miniatures game; they took rules originally used in Wings of War, a 20th century bi-plane dogfighting game, and converted them to create a really nice little space game that’s thematic, quick, and fun. An interesting lineage for the game considering where Lucas drew his inspiration from for the original films, and completely fitting for what they were trying to do.
In addition, there’s a host of suggestions for better games than Monopoly, but two of the more commonly selected ones are Pandemic (a co-op board game that has a great virus-movie theme) and Ticket to Ride (a competitive family board game that’s quicker, easier, and way more fun).
@left0ver1under #48
It depends on the environment and the players.
When you are at something like a ‘games day’ where there are a lot of games being played, elimination games make for more fun. Instead of having to keep playing a game where all you can do is choose between trying to come in second-last or trying to pick which of the front-runners wins you get to go off and play something else.
Some players also prefer to not have to keep playing when it has become hopeless for them., even if all they can do is kibitz or grab a snack/bathroom break while waiting on the game to end.
Agreed. If the game has more than two players, and I’m sure I won’t win, it’s nice to have some mechanism in that sort of game which lets me (or forces me to) resign early and gracefully. Then my loss doesn’t mean the others must have stopped playing (on the dubious principle that “we must all keep having ‘fun’ until we’re completely defeated”). They can continue playing to determine which of them will be the winner. If the game is interesting enough and doesn’t drag on too long, being a spectator can be enjoyable too. But Monopoly isn’t very interesting to watch.
However, in some situations (it’s been years since I’ve even thought about it) Monopoly gives early losers a lot of control over who the winner will be. I guess it’s appropriate for a game that’s criticizing monopolization, but it’s not fun for the runners-up to see the scales tip suddenly and drastically in someone else’s favor, because of how the early losers decided to lose or because of a single roll of the dice. Of course, you could invent some more rules, to ensure things like bankruptcy maintain a fairly level playing field for everybody. Perhaps you could set a maximum value for any transaction (maybe adjusting the supposed value of mortgaged properties as well), with the rest going back into the bank or freed onto the board. Or as voidhawk suggested, you could acknowledge that there is a meta-game being played at the same time, like it or not, and regulate what kind of teamwork is allowable in it. But if you’re going to alter the economy of the game like this, it may not end quickly with a clear winner, which isn’t much fun; and that would defeat the purpose of criticizing the real-world economic system it’s supposed to represent.
WMDKitty — Survivor (#52) –
Have you ever tried Scrabble handicapping?
http://nsw.scrabble.org.au/chs.html
http://www.wolfberg.net/scrabble/lexington/ratings/
I’m a native English speaker with a college education and play scrabble against 8-14 year old children who are learning English. The games are fair – sometimes they win, sometimes I do – because I take a huge handicap that varies by the kid’s ability (e.g. a 55% handicap means if I score 100 points, I get credit for only 45).
Most handicapping systems balance out play over time based on previous games. I estimate a percentage for myself based on the kids’ skills. I teach them, so I know how capable they are and the size of their vocabularies. Yes, I sometimes tank games to let them win (^_^) though not with the more advanced students.
*** spoiler alert***
Did Star Wars Monopoly include a Luke Skywalker character?
For people who play Monopoly, a better game is “Shang hi traders.”
Monopoly has its major flaws, but it is good at teaching a variety of mathematical ideas including probability, matrix math, eigenvalues, and Markov chain theory.
david (#61): Maybe so, but there are better (and more fun) games that are equally good at these things.
@28
SO much this! Settlers of Catan is one of the best board games I’ve ever played and I’d certainly buy a SW version. Thing is, what would the four colors be? Red for First Order, White for the New Republic, Orange for the Rebellion and Blue for the Jedi? Should there a Knights of Ren color? Would the pieces that represent the villages and cities be different for each set? Who would represent the thieves?
ah, I wonder…