The new Monopoly game reflects reality in a different way than the original

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The new Monopoly game reflects reality in a different way than the original

Monopoly Cheaters

Hasbro

The newest Monopoly is a welcome addition for cheaters.

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  • A recent study from Hasbro found that nearly half of people cheat while playing Monopoly.
  • Monopoly Cheater's Edition is a new version of the classic board game that rewards players who cheat without getting caught.
  • Some experts say the Cheater's Edition may reflect how society rewards unscrupulous behavior.

Board game cheaters, rejoice!

A new version of the popular game Monopoly is being released and this iteration doesn't just accept cheating, but embraces it. INSIDER previously reported that Monopoly Cheater's Edition will be released in fall 2018.

"A recent study conducted by Hasbro revealed that nearly half of game players attempt to cheat during Monopoly games, so in 2018, we decided it was time to give fans what they've been craving all along - a Monopoly game that actually encourages cheating," Jonathan Berkowitz, senior vice president of Hasbro gaming told INSIDER's Kirsten Acuna.

In addition to Community Chest and Chance cards, the Cheater's Edition will also come with a stack of 15 cheat cards. During any point in the game, five cheat cards will be placed in the middle of the board which players can try to complete at any point of the game.

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If a player succeeds at one of the cheating tasks, they get rewarded. On the flip side, if they get caught, there are consequences. The back of the cheat cards list specific rewards and punishments for each cheat.

Dean Baker, economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Business Insider Monopoly was "always a kind of predatory game where you win by putting your opponents into bankruptcy."

Baker was one of the first economists to notice the housing bubble before the market collapse in 2007. He said that the Cheaters Edition reflected "crimes committed at large banks that failed to be prosecuted (after the Great Recession)."

Monopoly cheating cards

Hasbro

Mary Flanagan, professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth College has written about the intersection of games and other facets of life.

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Flanagan told Business Insider in an e-mail "how amazing that our games so accurately reflect that cheating itself - across many walks of life - has been normalized and even accepted as a sound strategy by society."

When Elizabeth Magie created what would become Monopoly in 1903, ''she created two sets of rules for her game: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents," Mary Pilon wrote in The New York Times. "Her dualistic approach was a teaching tool meant to demonstrate that the first set of rules was morally superior."

Magie "designed the game as a protest against the big monopolists of her time - people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller," Pilon wrote.

In purely poetic fashion, Magie's creation didn't earn her wealth; the idea was taken by Charles Darrow and sold to Parker Brothers who made a fortune off of the game.