How a Traditional Toymaker Is Going Big on Digital Games

Joe Weisenthal (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios.

Tracy Alloway (0:04)

Podcasts, radio, news. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

Joe, what do you know about Monopoly?

Joe Weisenthal (0:27)

My daughter's really into Monopoly. She's really getting into it.

Tracy Alloway (0:30)

Do you play with her?

Joe Weisenthal (0:31)

I do. And she's really into it, and I think she's developing some good intuitions. I think she could be-

Tracy Alloway (0:38)

About capitalism?

Joe Weisenthal (0:39)

Yeah, and I think she could be a little bit conservative. Sometimes I think she should buy, and she wants to hold on to her cash, and so she foregoes opportunities to get good properties. But I'm excited. She's taken to the game.

Tracy Alloway (0:52)

That's actually impressive impulse control for a little kid. But I do think in Monopoly, the best strategy is just buy everything you land on, pretty much.

Joe Weisenthal (0:59)

That's basically- Are we going to do an episode just on optimal Monopoly strategy? Because I'd be done with that.

Tracy Alloway (1:05)

We should actually. Okay, let me rephrase this. What do you know about Monopoly's history?

Joe Weisenthal (1:10)

Well, what I've heard, and I don't know if this is true, because it seems like it could be an urban legend. I've heard that the game was started by some socialist or something like that who wanted to create a game that would indict capitalism. Monopoly is not considered to be a positive aspect of the market system. We usually are against those. And yet, I don't think many people take that lesson and became massively popular. It's a massively successful business in its own right.

Tracy Alloway (1:39)

This is actually, it's not an urban legend. It's true. So, Monopoly, I was reading a book about this and it's actually really fascinating. But Monopoly comes from The Landlord's Game, which was created in 1903 by a woman named Lizzie Maggie or Maggie, I'm not sure. And she was actually a Quaker. So, sort of, you know, progressive ideals. And it had almost the opposite ethos to the monopoly we know today. And it was supposed to demonstrate that an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where monopolies hold all the wealth. And there was also a version of taxation in the game that was kind of progressive. But then a company called Parker Brothers basically published a version of it in 1935 without the taxation aspect. And then Hasbro bought it in the 1990s. And then that's when we started getting the sort of modern version of monopoly that we all know today.

And I have to say, I was also looking at all the various versions of monopoly that have been published over time. I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, I had the Star Wars version. But if you look at an actual list of all the different monopolies that have come out over the years, it's amazing. So first of all, there's unlicensed versions like Alpacaopoly with alpacas. But there's also a Best Buy version which was licensed. And it looks kind of amazing. I want to play it. It had little store departments instead of properties to buy. There's a David Bowie edition. I don't know if that interests you.

Joe Weisenthal (3:12)

So two things. One other thing I say about sometimes I've taken the kids to Atlantic City. So my kids know, like they've seen, you know, they're like, oh, that's actually a park place. That's actually boardwalk since I know all the properties are streets in Atlantic City. But also they should have a version of Monopoly with a land value tax. And so you get penalized for failing to.

Tracy Alloway (3:33)

Yeah, get it back to its roots.

Joe Weisenthal (3:35)

Also, I think they should have a version where the more you build, the more rents go down. Since in theory, if there are more hotels and houses everywhere, then that should put a depressing anyway.

Tracy Alloway (3:46)

Okay. All right. What I was building up to is that there is also a new version of Monopoly. It is an app, an app version of the game that you can play on your phone or wherever. And it has become so popular that it's grossed more than $3 billion in revenue since launching in April of last year. That's according to Hasbro's latest earnings. And beyond that, it is so popular that, Joe, can you guess what comes next?

Joe Weisenthal (4:14)

No.

Tracy Alloway (4:15)

It's so popular that Hasbro is launching a board game version of Monopoly GO. So a board game version of the app version of the board game.