You could probably guess that the board game, now officially eighty years old, was invented as a critique of capitalism. But it also seems it was actually invented by a woman a good thirty years before the official version was launched in 1935, so that Parker Brothers and the Darrow family have been monopolizing someone's work.
Apparently Monopoly would not make the grade today either. Among board game pros, it would be disqualified because it is discouragingly hard for players to reverse their situation once they begin losing (remember that feeling?) and because most players are eliminated long before the game is over (that, too).
Anyway Mary Pilon has written a book about the whole thing.
