Hasbro is introducing an online game called Monopoly City Streets based on Google Maps
Hasbro is introducing an online game called Monopoly City Streets based on Google Maps
Google is probably hoping that Apple will launch something big on September 9, 2009 for a simple reasonu2014the search giant doesn't line anybody mentioning its name and the word monopoly in the same breath, especially since it is facing quite some criticism for its Google Books project right now.
Of course, the Monopoly that we are discussing here is the online version of Hasbro's famous board game. The company has now decided to make it a global game that you can play online.
How it works
With Monopoly City Streets the game logic is simple you can purchase anything that you see on Google Maps. In other words, the world itself is your game board.
The official site, monopolycitystreets.com, says that in the game you can own any street in the world, build humble houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent.
But to do this, you have to download Google SketchUp, build a 3D building, and then upload it to the Google 3D Warehouse. The deadline is September 27, 2009 and the winners will be announced in October 2009.
Play on!
To play the game, you purchase streets and build buildings on them. Of course, your competitors are doing the same, so you place hazards for them, and when they do this to you, you have to bulldoze them. This option is made available to you through chance cards, which are randomly made available to people throughout the game.
One cannot say how well this game will succeed, but one thing is certain the people behind the game have done something interesting by taking a game that is over a century old and giving it a new avatar on the Web.
And all those who have played the board version will no doubt be interested in the online version, so the initial excitement is bound to be high. Let's just hope that they can sustain that for a long time, the way the board game has stood the test of time.
QUICK TAKE
>>Hasbro is introducing an online version of Monopoly
>>This is based on Google Maps
>>Interest in this game is bound to be high
Five Fast Facts about Monopoly
>>Monopoly can be traced back to 1904, when Elizabeth J Magie Phillips created a game through which she hoped to be able to explain the single tax theory of Henry George
>>Monopoly is the most commercially-successful board game in United States history, with 485 million players worldwide.
>>Since Charles Darrow patented the game in 1935, approximately 750 million people have played the game, making it the most played commercial board game in the world.
>>The 1999 Guinness Book of Records cited Hasbro's previous statistic of 500 million people having played Monopoly.
>>Games Magazine has inducted Monopoly into its Hall of Fame.
Source: Wikipedia
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