Today, the game Monopoly is available in 50 versions on the Hasbro website, including themed iterations featuring Barbie and Marvel characters, versions for kids as young as four years old, and even a “cheater’s edition.” In addition to the many variations on the traditional board game, Monopoly GO! has become a worldwide phenomenon, downloaded more than 150 million times in its first year after launching in April 2023. According to creator company, Scopely, one benefit of the mobile platform is “world-building,” inviting players to “own and grab opportunities. ... Roll the dice and make your way to own it all.”

In his acclaimed book, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet, John Green examines the complex history of the classic board game. Green writes, “There are many problems with Monopoly, but maybe the reason the game has persisted for so long … is that its problems are our problems.” Its problems are our problems. What exactly does Green mean?

To unravel this mystery, I retraced a fascinating historical thread in the evolution of the game and will consider some implications for how we might do business today.

Without question, the history of this famous pastime is complicated, as is well told by Mary Pilon in her 2015 book, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal behind the World’s Favorite Board Game. Contrary to how Hasbro (the company that acquired the game’s original owner, Parker Brothers, in 1991) tells the story, Monopoly was not invented by the unemployed Philadelphia businessman Charles Darrow in the early 1930s at the height of the Great Depression. Rather, the starring character of the story is Elizabeth (Lizzie) Magie.