Since its introduction to the market in 1935, over 250 million Monopoly games have been sold, and the game has been played by more than 1 billion people worldwide. One of the most popular board games in history, Monopoly was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1998.
Wow that is more than I would have guessed.
But it also makes sense; Monopoly is one of the most iconic board games in the entire world. Even those who haven't played it have likely seen it played or referenced countless times within the cultural zeitgeist. Who remembers the McDonalds Monopoly promotional game? I actually watched a documentary on that a few years back... apparently there was a massive scandal in which mafia insiders were stealing the jackpot winnings. Shocking I know.
Monopoly memes are iconic as well because they mirror real life and the follies of capitalism itself. How many of us in crypto have seen this one as it pertains to central banking? Used to be you couldn't print gold or silver out of thin air. Now we don't even have to print paper. Everything is digital. Billions are created with the click of the button. And people are willing to work their entire lives to chase it, or even kill for it. The future is a weird place.
But rather than make this post political I just wanted to jot down an adaptation idea for Monopoly on the blockchain. What is the point of putting a classic board game on the blockchain? Ah well there can only be two possible reasons.
1) Money
Being able to play a classic game on a blockchain in theory allows players to bet on the outcome whereas they wouldn't be able to do that anywhere else because of pesky gambling laws.
2) Trust issues
Somewhat connected to the betting aspect would be this idea of trust and making sure nobody can cheat. If someone cheats at a game that doesn't have a prize it's obviously not as big of a deal as there being a financial incentive on the line.
So what does Monopoly on Hive look like?
Well I mean it doesn't actually have to be on Hive. Looking at VSC and what's trying to be achieved there... clearly a multi-chain solution would be much more ideal because then anyone on any blockchain can play the game using keys they already control (or at least wallets and applications they've already downloaded and understand). For the most part any cryptographic key is going to work so that players can prove they did this or that action; without anyone being able to fake the transaction or claim it didn't happen. If someone has a copy: it happened, and if they don't it didn't.
Turn based games take too long
A game of Monopoly takes hours to complete. If the maximum 8 players are in the game it could take 4-5 hours to finish a single game which is pretty tedious. Even a normal 4 player game is going to take like 3 hours. That's a pretty huge time commitment that doesn't need to exist.
This is an annoyance I've verbalized on several occasions, and I feel as though Monopoly is the best adaptation possible for a proof-of-concept in which every player takes their turn at the same time. All of a sudden games can go from hours and hours to 20 or 30 minutes (plus you could add more players but complete the game in similar timeframes). The reason why I believe this so strongly is that Monopoly already has a mechanic that hardly ever gets used that inherently settles "mutual exclusion" disputes.
WTF is mutual exclusion?
This is actually a term I learned in college during a more advanced level computer science operating systems class. It basically means that things absolutely cannot happen at the same time. There needs to be an order-of-operations. Within the context of operating systems this issue comes up a lot. A CPU can technically only do one task at a time, but an operating system might have hundreds of threads open that all need a little bit of the CPUs time. Without mutual exclusion mechanics in place bad things can happen (like 1 + 1 = 3).
Within the context of a board game in which everyone is taking their turn at the same time... how do we resolve disputes? There needs to be some kind of order of operations. The interesting thing with Monopoly is that there are no disputes because of the auction mechanic.
Auctions
In Monopoly two+ players are allowed to occupy the same space, so there is no conflict if this happens. However, if a property is for sale and two people land on it this does become a conflict because this is not something that can happen in the normal turn-based version. Luckily the normal version already has an auction mechanic where if a player doesn't buy a property it goes to auction and other players can buy it.
This auctioneering ability can be applied to the conflict resolution described above: two players land on a property for sale and it goes into auction mode for those 2 players. Whoever bids the most cash gets the property. This actually makes the game even more fair because landing on a property right after someone purchased it is really annoying in Monopoly (especially right at the beginning) and this feature eliminates that annoyance.
What about games that don't have good conflict resolution?
While Settlers of Catan has only sold 40 million copies (compared to 250M) it is still a wildly popular board game. However, this is an example of a situation where players absolutely can not exist within the same space on the playing field.
Other forms of conflict resolution.
The most basic one would be another roll to see who "wins" the conflict, but this is super random and could make the outcomes of games really annoying with a bad UX. I think how I would actually handle this would be similar to how poker does it. If you go to a casino, players are not allowed to deal. Only the dealer can shuffle and deal but there is a dealer-button which signifies positioning during the round. This button signifies the player is the virtual dealer.
The same type of positioning resolution in poker could be used in board game adaptations like this where everyone moves at the same time to speed it up. Whoever is closest to the "button" technically moves last during a conflict, and the button moves around the table clockwise once every turn so that the same players don't always have first-move advantage (somewhat ironic because in poker moving first is anything but an advantage).
Handling cheating
The easiest way to cheat in a free-for-all where all players are supposed to do what's in their own best interest is basic collusion. This happens in poker a lot where people working together will trap others into a pot. There are "collusion detection" algorithms and such to help catch these cheaters, and the advantage they can gain isn't too extreme. Two or more players in the game helping each other out and then secretly splitting the winnings would certainly be the most common form of cheating in a game of Monopoly, but how well would that tactic actually work? There are ways to mitigate such things but that's a complicated topic for another post.
Conclusion
I believe the digital adaptations of board games aren't very well done because they simply clone the game 1:1 without utilizing all the resources that computers have to offer. There's a reason why turn based board games are the way they are. Trying to do too many things at once exponentially increases complexity and the chance of human error. There is no human error when the game exists in software form. The banker isn't going to make a mistake. The die isn't going to be cocked. Inherently this means that digital games can have a lot more going on and it's not a big deal. Computers can handle it just fine and never make a mistake.
It's unfortunate crypto doesn't have more social betting games yet even after existing for so long. What better place to make such things than a blockchain that prides itself on social media? One day!