Not GTA, not Star Citizen, not any game with actual gameplay, story, or anything like that.
Just a freaking Niantic reskin for freaking Monopoly.
I live in the wrong timeline.
I don’t count marketing as part of a videogame budget.
Monopoly go is a mint card game like, but don’t think a video game version needs to be that heavily marketed. Also I didn’t even know it had a video game adaptation, so where the fuck did that money go?
Edit: I’m wrong on the game. I was thinking of Monopoly deal. I don’t know what go is.
Tbh, marketing is mostly just a scam to funnel money to marketing people.
You are not entirely wrong. It’s a boubble where no person involved benefits from saying “hey, is our budget too big?” It’s basicly given, that any known brand have negative ROI on it’s marketing, but we are all, so brainwashed with need for growrh, that that we know only one solution to decreasing results. Throw more money at it.
There’s a reason many big corporations have pulled out of online advertisment and focus on print/radio/TV/sponsorships instead: The effectiveness of online advertisment can be measured and it sucks royally.
The whole concept of marketing is just a huge game of “the emperor’s new clothes”. Nobody wants to be blamed if they stop doing marketing and it turns out to actually do have an effect, even if everyone secretly knows it’s garbage.
Monopoly, stripped of it’s context as a political statement, is a very mean and cruel work of art.
The story behind it is also quintessential capitalist bullshit
It shows that capitalism will market anything, even critique against capitalism.
It’s the board game equivalent of people buying Che Guevara T-shirts at Primark.
Say the line, Joyce
I’m more of a board game connoisseur and seeing people play monopoly when there is a whole ecosystem of much better designed board games out there that either already have dedicated apps or good online implementations absolutely enrages me :<
Monopoly go is not the same as standard monopoly. It’s actually a good card game in its own right.
Edit: I’m completely wrong
Are you thinking of Monopoly Deal? Monopoly go is the mobile version of Monopoly with microtransactions n shiet.
Oh shit, i totally am. Oops.
So many people think board games are just not something they like. And if you ask them what they played before, it’s always any combination of Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Risk or the Game of Life.
If you look at the list of the top 20 best selling games of all time (https://moneyinc.com/highest-selling-board-games-of-all-time/), all of them are somewhere between terrible, bad and lower end of mediocre.
I mean they’ve got some standouts that I’m still happy to play even to this day. The only ones I hate with a passion are Monopoly and Game of Life :o
Some of them are ok, but none of them would make a list of “best board games”.
What’re some of your favorites?
Personal favorites:
- Spartacus - Perfectly captures the essence of the gratuitous Starz series. You take the role of Domin(us/a) of a Ludus, a school of gladiators, and strive to become the most influential in the city. You do so by bidding against competing players to acquire talented gladiators/slaves/equipment, using them to win gladiatorial combat against others in The Arena, and of course conspiring against your fellow Domini when they’ve overstepped their bounds.
If you do play this game make sure to use “the blue dice variant” for combat which fixes the main flaw with combat. The game length is also very adjustable by changing the amount of influence a player needs to win so you can go for an epic 3-4 hour game or a quick 1-2 hour phone booth knife fight.
I can’t say enough about how much I love this game. It’s always a good and loud time with players constantly interacting in often literally pokey ways :>
- Lords of Waterdeep - A relatively vanilla worker placement game with a pasted on D&D theme but my favorite way to introduce people into the world of hobbyist board games. The game is very well done and so simple to teach so folks can stop learning and get playing fast. Literally have a few workers to place each round on spaces to get the things. Use those things to complete quests to get points. After 8 rounds whomever has the most points wins.
It’s always gone over well with new players and I personally still enjoy the game but with some expansions that add a bit more crunch to things!
- Quest for El Dorado - A deck building race through the jungle that’s incredibly easy to teach and a favorite of younger kids (6+) getting into the hobby. You use various cards you acquire to get through the different terrain types of the jungle before your opponents do or use them to acquire even better cards. The skill in this game comes from being able to survey the path ahead and acquire the right cards to most efficiently get you through your desired path and knowing when it’s time to stop focusing on building your deck and just race.
- Just One - Incredibly approachable even for people that aren’t into hobbyist board games. One person trying to guess the mystery word using one word clues given by the other players (works best with 4+ players). The catch is any duplicated clues are removed so you’ve got to think of clues no one else is likely to use! We often round out our board game nights with this if there’s at least 15 minutes to spare!
Here’s one starting point: https://boardgamegeek.com/hotness
That website (boardgamegeek) has a lot of other resources for finding different types of games that might appeal in different ways.
Wingspan is great.
Commenting to return later
Tom Vassel Reviews Monopoly And It’s Expansions Like The Way A Grizzly Bear Eats A Salmon
review starts at 6:26
…did you start watching the minute they uploaded and post this the minute you were done?
yeah, I love Tom Vassel, the weird dude is a massive figure in modern board gaming and this video is absolutely perfect for this thread, so when I saw it yes… I watched it all the way through and then immediately posted it lol
Seriously, the Dice Tower is probably the most thorough and respected voice in board gaming, most board game fans have different tastes and feelings on games than Tom does, but everyone who is anyone in board gaming pays attention to what Tom Vassel says because he is a giant in the scene and honestly seems to have overall been a really good influence on the industry, at least in the US.
Sometimes I randomly watch this old video Tom Vassel made about why he hates Monopoly so I can rage with him and feel better about the universe.
this reads like an ad for dice tower… which i know they wouldn’t do because they don’t have that kind of audience.
i stick to susd, which means that i never buy any board games because whenever they review one it immediately goes out of stock.
It is an ad for The Dice Tower, they just aren’t paying me to do it lol.
I genuinely love The Dice Tower, Tom Vassel seems like a nut, and in particular I find Zee absolutely hilarious.
shrugs
I am not saying I agree with everything they do, or endorse them or their opinions without question, what I am saying is just fuck yeah, The Dice Tower is great I have watched a ton of their videos over the years on different board games and I am not afraid to fly that freak flag high and proud I guess?
fair.
Apparently it earned this dubious honor purely from marketing… It has a marketing budget of 1 billion dollars. But it’s allegedly made 5 billion, so… guess it was worth it to someone.
I’ve never even heard of it. Is that successful marketing?
If you aren’t the kind of person to blow money on a shitty mobile game, an effective marketing campaign won’t target you.
Well you wouldn’t have spent any money on it and they’re raking in the dough, so yes actually.
Funny, this is the first I’ve heard of it.
inb4 OP is on the marketing team
Me too. My guess is that the marketing was targeted mostly towards kids.
Its marketing is 99% on shitty mobile games that have adds everywhere. If you don’t play shitty mobile games or have a DNS level add block you won’t see it.
Definitely not. Other way around. Millennial/Gen X +
I’m not sure I see that either, those generations know how dangerous and damaging monopoly is. You’re not a monopoly fan and still have friends or family…
We all grew up on monopoly, zero idea where you got that idea.
You can just look at the ads. You do not attract kids with 45 year old Jason mamosa and Chris Pratt. The ads are very tame and to me are clearly aimed ( and targeted) to my aging 40 year old marvel fan ass. Commercials for toddlers and teens just look different. The gameplay is not nearly “attention grabbing” enough to attract young children.
On the experience side, not a single one of my kids or their friends play this. I do know a bunch of parents who play in groups at the daycare asynchronously.
Maybe they pick up a few young people but it seems very clear this is a game targeted directly at the 35+ crowd who grew up with the modern original or whatever you want to call it.
6 consecutive wins, and 1 draw in the latest game against my father in law. We each claim it was a charity call but he’s the sweetest guy in the world so I know I woulda taken him in the end.
My sister’s boy, though, he plays it cold. It’s a nail biter from the first roll if he’s in. We only played once and he stonewalled me so hard we both agree it was pure dumb luck he landed on one of the yellows and I was prepared with my hail-mary setup despite the fact he practically lives at the power station for how often he misses the yellows. Then I turned the screws hard and hit up the chest for a ride to St James for the pain and me hooting like a bastard.
We are a mean bunch. Last family game they all ganged up to knock me out early but I hung on like a cockroach until they got bored and fell to infighting. Soon as they had to start mortgaging their crap to fund the chrome I could breathe. How I crowed when my sister gave up. I try to be a good winner (or loser) but being an absolute dick is important for monopoly so they don’t play that game with me leat I lose next time.
Hate that game. Wanna play?
Seriously, Monopoly is one of the worst games in existence.
But that’s expected, since the game it cloned was actually two games, the one was like the current Monopoly, the other one had a property tax system and that one was so balanced that the game never ended. Both games were not made to be played for fun, but to show how different taxation systems lead to different outcomes. They were serious, non-fun games on purpose.
And all marketing budget at that, we don’t even know what it cost to develop.
Aka money laundering.
Who the fuck audits a “gaming” company??
No one
How do you launder money when none of your revenue is cash?
Most stupid game ever created. Downloaded it and played for 15 minutes then Uninstalled. What a waste of 15 minutes.
Sorry to make this seem even worse, this isn’t even what you think it is. Not a Niantic gps game.
It’s literally like any other mobile board game. You hit the dice roll button and the piece bounces around the board and your cash goes up. That’s about it. It’s interactive because sometimes where you land takes money away from other players (those you have friended or randos)
There is nothing novel here.
source: my children forced me to play with them when it was super trendy. All of their friends (and their friends parents) were playing. So. Many. Popups. It was CONSTANTLY trying to get you to spend. We did not, but know people who poured money in to keep the dice rolling
edit: also thank you for this, I always like my kids to be aware of why they or their friends are doing something. They’re hyper aware of trends and marketing (but also don’t want to be left behind when their friends are doing something new).
Damn, thanks for the insight. I just read the wiki article and the source claiming the marketing budget of that game, because I couldn’t believe it, and the name Niantic was somewhere in there, so I figured Niantic did what Niantic does. Apparently, it’s not even that.
It’s ridiculous, seriously. Monopoly is a horrible game in it self, and I thought everyone and their dog was already sick of it, but I guess I’m just projecting.
Or pumping the equivalent of the GDP of Samoa into the marketing of some stupid mobile game version of this really bad board game really does something.
Literally every big store that sells boardgames constantly have like 10+ different versions of it. I don’t know who the hell all these Monopoly fans are that are apparently not just buying Monopoly, but buying enough different versions to make it viable to keep offering them, but someone is keeping them in business.
I can only assume new parents of young kids just getting something they remember from when they were a kid. But that can only be half the story. I don’t believe that these people are becoming Monopoly collectors buying up every alternate version that comes out.
I got way too many versions of Monopoly gifted over the years and all of them ended up on our local second hand app.
I don’t know why you’d gift anyone Monopoly. I mean, everyone who wanted to have a copy already has one, but apparently people with no creativity still gift them.
Even funnier, I told my kids it was the most expensive video game and they said, “oh because of Chris Pratt?”
Apparently the ads all featured Chris Pratt.
That’s just nuts.
Oh, that’s it? Fuck it, I’m making Monopoly next, I already made Catan. 😂
But see, you forgot to spend a billion dollars marketing it. That was where you messed up.
May I borrow a billion dollars, pretty please? I have this bag of nickels and a rubber ducky for collateral.
This is extra funny because not only is the gameplay shit on purpose, it’s shit on purpose as a criticism of capitalism.
Monopoly is supposed to be frustrating as a reflection of how frustrating life is under capitalism, and here comes capitalism to sell an even more annoying version full of popups and money grabs.
The death of satire is a well with no end.
Why was it so expensive?
Literally all marketing. $1B in marketing.
I honestly feel kind of proud that I’ve never heard of it. Off the grid and shit.
I’m hardly “off the grid”, but I’ve managed to get enough distance between my eyeballs and the fire hose of ads not to see it more than tangentially, while pocking around the Google Play store.
I do pity anyone who doesn’t have the kind of tech-friendly elders willing/able to scrub all the bloatware off their retail devices, though. Had to spent an hour de-contaminating my mom’s new Samsung because of all the random extra adware packed into it. And with newer mainline devices, it feels like a constant struggle. Heaven help anyone on Windows 11.
I’m the one who my friends turn to for tech advice and omg I am so horrified that some of them never installed an adblocker before. Or just leave preinstalled garbage like mcafee around…
A lot of the modern devices make uninstalling a pain in the ass. Especially if its native bloatware that’s been bundled with the OS.
I had to pull up ADB so my samsung would stop recommending me disney plus, a preinstalled app called “AppCloud” has an undismissable notification that offers you sponsored apps.
Ads. $1 Billion marketing budget.
Imagine what a gaming company with a $1billion budget for the game itself (and execs who stay the fuck out of the way instead of repeatedly changing direction…cough…EA…cough) and a marketing budget for whatever they actually spent on the game. We could have had Cyberpunk 4154 with a bit left over.
To be honest, I think there is diminishing returns on more money (look at star citizen for example).
I feel like it would end up a live service game (where the extra money results in content over a long period of time) or just become bloated.
Go on now, git! Didn’t nobody ask you 'bout no logic!
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