I was doing some online research about play and playing games. I found a really interesting article on ft.com about the transformative power of board games. There was an interesting line about tracing social change through the games that people play. One of the games it gave an example of is Monopoly. Now I was really interested as my mind was already thinking about Monopoly and making work around it. I was fascinated to read it was invented by a woman in 1903. Elizabeth Magie came up with a game she called “The Landlord’s Game” which criticised the concentration of land in private monopolies. However she was not initially recognised as the creator of the game, that credit went to a man called Charles Darrow , who was taught to play “The Landlords Game” by friends. Back in those days Magie’s hand drawn board game was passed around by friends . Despite Magie patenting the game, it appears Darrow tweaked his version enough and Darrow would later sell his version of the game to Parker Brothers. Anyway it is well worth reading up on this fascinating story and this has only fuelled my Monopoly interest more. Here is some work based on text taken from articles online about Monopoly and the act of playing Monopoly.
sam_bryan.art 