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At intOndo we put interiors and vintage furniture in a digital frame which makes decorating easy and fun. In our collection you can find games of all types and from all epoques. Cards, chess tables and sets, table football, collectible dolls and boxed games of all kinds and origin. That's why it came natural to us to tell you the story of one of the most popular board games in the world, one which precisely deals with houses and can turn us all in real estate investors.
We are obviously talking about Monopoly, the game created in 1904 by Lizzie Magie, an American writer, artist and inventor who was deeply convinced that this game could entertain, but also bring an ethical impact on the her contemporaries. The game she invented was called The Landord's game: a square board with nine rectangular spaces on each side, set between corners labeled “Go to Jail” and “Public Park.” Players circled the board buying up railroads, collecting money and paying rent. She made up two sets of rules, “monopolist” and “anti-monopolist,” but her stated goal was to demonstrate the evils of accruing vast sums of wealth at the expense of others. These were the times when wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy people and Magie hoped that the game would stimulate a conversation on social iniquity. She said, "Soon, and I hope very soon, you will realize that many are poor because of the fact that Carnagie and Rockfeller probably have more than they need and do not even know what to do with it."
The game immediately took off on the New York scene and home versions inspired by The Landlord game began to be used at universities and city clubs. But it was after the great Depression that a certain Charles Darrow decided to develop its own version of that game by giving it the name of Monopoly. In 1935 his "invention" was sold to Parker Brothers, who made a fortune out of it without crediting in any way Lizzie Magie.
Since it first entered the market, Monopoly has been translated into 50 languages and marketed in 114 countries. Over the years, more than 1000 versions have been released each one took a different inspiration from the cinema, to TV series, to music and video games. There is even a card version and this year a female version called Ms Monopoly was just released. Here you can choose whether to play under the female genre or male, supposedly making it a more equal game.
We are talking of an evergreen game, not so much because of its characteristic green background, which has never changed through the years, but because from generation to generation it continues to entertain millions of players who challenge each other on properties and "brick" investment.
