MONOPOLY
For our third and final project in our sustainable systems class, we had to design our own version of a monopoly game that instead was based on an issue or an impact on the environment. It had to focus on sustainability, it could be based on a water shortage, solar power, sewage reconstruction yet still function as the monopoly game with some different rules.
In the beginning stages of this project, we replayed monopoly just to get a feel of the game, then focused on what theme we wanted to present in our own version of the game.
For me and my group of four, we easily decided upon the location of our theme, which was the city of Los Angeles. One of my group members is from the city, and she mentioned the problem of water back home (the drought and clean water). We agreed on doing our monopoly theme on a scenario in California facing a severe drought and the city running on a low supply of clean water. Our objective was to build and trade properties like the original game, however we included the feature of being able to build a clean water plant, making the game instead have the competition on who can own the biggest supply of clean water (from how many plants you own)
For our game, we had a guide of what we needed to include:
GAME CONTENT/DESIGN PIECES:
- (9) tokens (player’s pieces)
- (22) colored property groups (cheap to expensive real estate) + their title deed cards
- (2) utility/(4) railroad/ (2) tax fields
- (1) each: Free Parking/Jail/Go fields
- (3) Chance/(3) Community Chest fields
- (16) community chest cards/(16) chance cards
- the center of the board
- Houses/Hotels
Our first step was to decide who was in charge of what. I was in charge of the designing of the game board and cards, and the rest (tokens, houses, card information) was split between my other three peers.
In my design process, I wanted the board to have a very typical “City of Los Angeles” theme, so I designed the title in as the first guide to what the rest of the board was going to look like. We decided on a ‘creative’ title name called ‘City of Angelopoly”, which reflects on the name “The City of Angels”
After making the title, I got a feel for wanting the board to immediately show that the theme was about the water in Los Angeles, so I decided to make the overall color blue, with a cartoon map of the city with different popular sites of the city, such as the Hollywood sign, the Griffith Observatory, etc.
Together we researched and collected a list of the most expensive (Malibu, Beverly Hills) to the least expensive (East LA, Westwood) neighborhoods in Los Angeles to have the same set-up as the regular monopoly would, and decided on the prices depending on the area.
I personally really strived to be creative with the board, for example at the “GO” sign, I created a walk of fame star, or instead of “Free Parking”, I had put a relax at the beach day. We included these so that it could again bring significance of the Los Angeles lifestyle yet tie in with the rules of the game.
For the chance and community chest cards, we followed the guidelines of the original card information, yet related it to our theme and tried to be as informative about the scenario of our game (the water drought/clean water issue) as much as possible.
For the utilities, we used a “clean water works” instead to go with our theme, as well as having ports instead of railroads, which went well with the idea of the city being near the ocean, and the whole theme in general. I also added as much imagery as possible, for I wanted it to be creative and make it easier to visualize what was going on within the game.
Chance cards we made:
Community chest cards:
Utilities/Port cards:
For the property cards, I designed a layout that would be similar to the original game, yet still add an image of a typical palm tree to bring that significance of our theme. We also included the opportunity to build a clean water plant, which is the main goal (to build as many) in our game.
Examples of our property cards:
When everything was formatted and done, I was able to obtain a black piece of cardboard to stick our printed board onto so it could be presented as a sturdy monopoly game. Printing the property and chance/community were easy, however getting the right size for the board took some time, but I managed to print a good size that was large enough to be able to fit in the card placements and get a good size for the text.
When assembling everything, I was very proud and happy with the outcome of our monopoly game. We had our own currency designed and printed out, as well as our tokens curated very well. Our work as a team was very successful and in the end we were able to physically see how everything turned out. I think the only issue we had after classmates tested it out was the prices we decided on were a bit too expensive, and that we should have included a higher starting amount of money for each player in our manual. In the end, I am very proud of the my design for the board and hope to continue making creative projects such as this one.
Photos of our monopoly game:
