14 DAY TRIAL // Monopoly makers, Parker Games, recently announced a total makeover for the title. In order to keep up with recent economic realities, designers went so far as to add a credit card payment feature. Being the result of a partnership between Visa and Parker Games, mock Visa debt cards are used to digitally store financial data. With the help from an electronic card reading device, the banker can transfer money from player to player according to their earnings and payments. We also see in game advertising, not so much a novelty as regional variations use to have sponsors for each square. Yet players seem to find particularly annoying advertisements that don't necessarily relate to the square and would rather pay more for an add-free version.
"We wanted to design a more relevant version of Monopoly to reflect modern society. As the popularity of plastic cards increases when paying for goods instead of using cash, we wanted to reflect that in the new Monopoly," said Brand Manager Chris Weatherhead.
The card system seems to be somewhat tedious for the casual quality of Monopoly play. In order to give someone money, you must first hand in the card to the banker, type in the amount, then the other player hands in the card to the banker, who in turn types the transferable sum. Not to mention that you can't quickly access your account balance without passing the electronic reader around. Even so, the virtual amount of cash stored by the debt card will be known to other players, thus removing an important strategy aspect of gameplay. Watering down strategy elements and increasing downtime is not a good idea in a casual game style that already depends too much on luck. However, Monopoly still comes with the traditional money bags should this prove to be a problem.