The secret history of Monopoly

The Guardian back in 2015 tells This article is more than 10 years old The secret history of Monopoly: the capitalist board game’s leftwing origins:

In 1903, a leftwing feminist called Lizzy Magie patented the board game that we now know as Monopoly – but she never gets the credit. Now a new book aims to put that right

This excerpt from the book give us the origin story of The Landlord’s Game and its inventor. The game was meant to have an anti-capitalist message.

And, somewhat surprisingly, Lizzie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.

And yes, the later ruleset is the one we know that turned to Monopolu. While being patented in 1903, the person that made the big bucks in the 30s was Charles Darrow who got royalties. When Parker Brother thought to protect from the competition by buying it out, the paid Magie a lump $500, while she was being unaware of the Darrow transaction for Monopoly.

Since then it has been continual erasure of Lizzy Magie.

To be fair, in the 21st century, Monopoly isn’t a good game, even though it’s a franchise that print money for Hasbro¹, a game that most of the time we played with “house rules”. But if you tell someone “I play boardgame”, Monopoly is still often the first one that come to mind for someone not in the even casual hobby of tabletop games.

Also in 2015 ABC had 25 Little-Known Facts About Monopoly, 80 Years Later, but failed to mention Lizzy Magie and the fact Darrow didn’t invent the game.