Sunday, July 06, 2003
Monopoly Indeed: Some of us have heard the story most of our lives; a guy, in and out of work during the early Depression years, invents a board game called Monopoly with the voluminous spare time semi-unemployed knockabouts seem to have (been there, done that). His friends started asking for sets of their own, so he made a few extras; they said he should market it, so he did. Then Parker Brothers bought his patents and kicked in a royalty on every game sold, and they all lived happliy ever after.
That was the official version, winged around for decades by PR flacks, and it's a nice little story on its own, about hard work paying off. The real story, however, is absolutely fascinating, and a bit more nefarious. If you go here, you'll get the full evolution of that rotten little game that takes all night to play, and here you'll find the gamemaker whose ten year court chase over his own Monopalike uncovered all the dark secrets.
