MMO: Monopoly City Streets

Today I spent some time playing with the newest variation of the traditional Monopoly game. Monopoly City Streets is a Web-based multi-player version of the game which uses real street names from Google Maps. So far I’ve been able to avoid ‘social’ games such as Farmville and Maffia Wars on Facebook, but I was really intrigued by the idea of Monopoly City Streets. What’s interesting to me is that the game includes real-life data from Google Maps. This makes the game much more attractive as people can relate to the game better. The concept of the game is simple: each player buys streets, puts real-estate on his/her streets and receives rent each day. Players can also sabotage each other, for example by destroying buildings. After signing up for the game (which is free), I found that I was not the only one interested. Many of the streets in my neighbourhood and in the place were my parents live, were already taken. It looks like the game is a big success for its developer, Hasbro.

Unfortunately, the game will end next week on December 9. The developers state on their blog that “[the] objective was to design and deliver a free game that would be a fun, interactive, promotional introduction to our new board game, MONOPOLY City.” (Monopoly City is just a new version of their traditional board game.) The success of their ‘promotion’ came completely unexpected. It would be interesting to see how serious Hasbro will get into this on-line gaming market now that so many people have expressed interest.

Another game being brought on-line is Civilization Network which is expected to come out next year. Technically, Civilization IV already had an option to play over the Internet, but Civilization Network is very different from this, because it uses real-life data and is Web based. For Monopoly City Streets, the real-life data comes in the form of a map with street names from Google Maps; For Civilization Network, the real-life data is the social network from Facebook. Civilization Network will be built on the Facebook platform so you can play with or against your (real-life) friends on Facebook. I’ve personally been a big fan of the Civilization games and I can’t wait for Civilization Network to come out.

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