Monopoly Go is the highest-budget video game so far.
Monopoly Go is the highest-budget video game so far.
Not GTA, not Star Citizen, not any game with actual gameplay, story, or anything like that.
Just a freaking Niantic reskin for freaking Monopoly.
I live in the wrong timeline.
My dad (in his 50s) spends a lot of his free time playing it. Like, over an hour every day. It takes the worst and most addictive parts of every brainrot game ever made and rolls them all into one thing. Clearly it's been worth it. 🤦
Never heard of it.
Me neither. It's crazy.
Apparently it earned this dubious honor purely from marketing... It has a marketing budget of 1 billion dollars. But it's allegedly made 5 billion, so... guess it was worth it to someone.
I've never even heard of it. Is that successful marketing?
Well you wouldn't have spent any money on it and they're raking in the dough, so yes actually.
If you aren't the kind of person to blow money on a shitty mobile game, an effective marketing campaign won't target you.
mobile gaming krakens are absolutely insane. they spend more in a day than some people earn in a year. i heard most do it because they cannot control themselves with their money and if they stop the mobile gaming addiction they will move to doing hard drugs
I don't count marketing as part of a videogame budget.
You might not. Finance and wikipedia does.
Monopoly, stripped of it's context as a political statement, is a very mean and cruel work of art.
It shows that capitalism will market anything, even critique against capitalism.
It's the board game equivalent of people buying Che Guevara T-shirts at Primark.
No. Printing out blurbs of communist theory on collectible cards, selling binders for when you complete a 'book'.
Possibly giving them stats so they can fight each other.
The current meta is super pro centralism since the last rules change, and i got some hot boosters this week, so my maoist third worlder deck is probably my strongest right now, but i really prefer my bonnot-kropotkin deck, it's just the cards i need to make it pop off before like turn 10 are too expensive so it's kind of a mess right now.
Say the line, Joyce
The story behind it is also quintessential capitalist bullshit
Sorry to make this seem even worse, this isn't even what you think it is. Not a Niantic gps game.
It's literally like any other mobile board game. You hit the dice roll button and the piece bounces around the board and your cash goes up. That's about it. It's interactive because sometimes where you land takes money away from other players (those you have friended or randos)
There is nothing novel here.
source: my children forced me to play with them when it was super trendy. All of their friends (and their friends parents) were playing. So. Many. Popups. It was CONSTANTLY trying to get you to spend. We did not, but know people who poured money in to keep the dice rolling
edit: also thank you for this, I always like my kids to be aware of why they or their friends are doing something. They're hyper aware of trends and marketing (but also don't want to be left behind when their friends are doing something new).
Damn, thanks for the insight. I just read the wiki article and the source claiming the marketing budget of that game, because I couldn't believe it, and the name Niantic was somewhere in there, so I figured Niantic did what Niantic does. Apparently, it's not even that.
It's ridiculous, seriously. Monopoly is a horrible game in it self, and I thought everyone and their dog was already sick of it, but I guess I'm just projecting.
Or pumping the equivalent of the GDP of Samoa into the marketing of some stupid mobile game version of this really bad board game really does something.
Literally every big store that sells boardgames constantly have like 10+ different versions of it. I don't know who the hell all these Monopoly fans are that are apparently not just buying Monopoly, but buying enough different versions to make it viable to keep offering them, but someone is keeping them in business.
I can only assume new parents of young kids just getting something they remember from when they were a kid. But that can only be half the story. I don't believe that these people are becoming Monopoly collectors buying up every alternate version that comes out.
Monopoly go is a mint card game like, but don't think a video game version needs to be that heavily marketed. Also I didn't even know it had a video game adaptation, so where the fuck did that money go?
Edit: I'm wrong on the game. I was thinking of Monopoly deal. I don't know what go is.
Tbh, marketing is mostly just a scam to funnel money to marketing people.
You are not entirely wrong. It's a boubble where no person involved benefits from saying "hey, is our budget too big?" It's basicly given, that any known brand have negative ROI on it's marketing, but we are all, so brainwashed with need for growrh, that that we know only one solution to decreasing results. Throw more money at it.
looks like monopoly go is a niantic job, so it's probably something like their earlier work pokemon go. but you... catch monopoly men? idk.
oh, maybe you buy up actual streets
And all marketing budget at that, we don't even know what it cost to develop.
This is extra funny because not only is the gameplay shit on purpose, it's shit on purpose as a criticism of capitalism.
Monopoly is supposed to be frustrating as a reflection of how frustrating life is under capitalism, and here comes capitalism to sell an even more annoying version full of popups and money grabs.
The death of satire is a well with no end.
Why was it so expensive?
Ads. $1 Billion marketing budget.
Imagine what a gaming company with a $1billion budget for the game itself (and execs who stay the fuck out of the way instead of repeatedly changing direction...cough...EA.....cough) and a marketing budget for whatever they actually spent on the game. We could have had Cyberpunk 4154 with a bit left over.
Most stupid game ever created. Downloaded it and played for 15 minutes then Uninstalled. What a waste of 15 minutes.
Tom Vassel Reviews Monopoly And It's Expansions Like The Way A Grizzly Bear Eats A Salmon
review starts at 6:26
...did you start watching the minute they uploaded and post this the minute you were done?
yeah, I love Tom Vassel, the weird dude is a massive figure in modern board gaming and this video is absolutely perfect for this thread, so when I saw it yes... I watched it all the way through and then immediately posted it lol
Seriously, the Dice Tower is probably the most thorough and respected voice in board gaming, most board game fans have different tastes and feelings on games than Tom does, but everyone who is anyone in board gaming pays attention to what Tom Vassel says because he is a giant in the scene and honestly seems to have overall been a really good influence on the industry, at least in the US.
Sometimes I randomly watch this old video Tom Vassel made about why he hates Monopoly so I can rage with him and feel better about the universe.