Monopoly Guy doesn't know what's going on!
By Rich Mach
Yesterday, Hasbro introduced its newest Monopoly board game in honor of the franchise’s 75th birthday. Almost every year, it seems that Hasbro releases some new and improved version of the classic game, but this attempt is no simple theme change. Almost everything short of the rules, actually, has changed.
With a new round board, plastic replacements for all the old metal placement pieces, and an electronic banking system, die-hard fans of the traditional Monopoly format are not going to be very pleased. However, is that necessarily a bad thing? The old Monopoly format is one that the last few generations of Americans have grown up with and are attached to, but with credit cards, online banking, and other paper-less methods of money tracking, Hasbro seems to have felt that it was time for a change to the old standard.
One of the great things about a game like Monopoly, in my opinion, is that kids begin to learn something critically important while playing: how to manage and keep track of money. Back when paper was basically the only means of payment, monopoly was great for that. However, in our digital day and age, wouldn’t it be better to teach our children how to manage non-physical money as well? Many people have fallen into trouble because of the inability to handle non-tangible funds and children run risk of growing up and dooming themselves to financial debt because they have never had any experience swiping plastic. After all, pulling out that godly card is so much less painful than handing over half of your wallet on physical cash. It’s real easy to forget when to stop.
The fantastic thing about this new change is that it brings the learning back. I think that those children who play will now begin to realize how quickly invisible numbers on a plastic card can disappear. They’ll learn to hold back, be a little frugal, and resist the urge to slide that card just because they can. Yes, seeing something so loved and nostalgic change so drastically can be unwanted, but sometimes such a sacrifice is needed to usher in important alterations. This new edition could potentially help to ebb the tide of debt that plastic and credit forms of payment are so prone to invite.
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