Manga Monopoly is a spin-off of Monopoly with the objective changed from attempting to gain as much capital and take as much from your competitors as you can to instead trying to create the best art with the resources you have available. It’s a game played with 3 – 4 people, who all go around a Monopoly Board, collecting manga panels as they go. Everytime everyone makes a full lap around the board, players use their manga panels to make collages, and then vote on which collage they think is best. People get different points based on whether they got 1st, 2nd, or 3rd which points increasing in the last round. The person with the most points in the last round wins.
Inspiration (In Class & Out)
The broad inspiration for this project was the desire to take something highly commercialized and contextualize it into something more creative and generative. Many DADA movements are concerned with the commercialization of art, and I think of few more obvious games to critique this with than monopoly, a game that in it’s earliest form started out as a critique of capitalism and is now one of the THE MOST commercialized games of all time (we have Breaking Bad Monopoly). So I thought that through appropriation I could shift the focus of the game away from wealth acquisition and thus bring it more in line with its original intent (I know a satire of that kind of wealth acquisition was originally part of the point but world conditions are such that that kind of satire isn’t effective because no one thinks its satire they think its normal). Additionally, I wanted to combine the playfulness often seen in earlier DADA works along with the more overt political messaging seen in later ones, and I believe this project accomplishes both of those goals well. Collages are an accessible form of art as all you need is basic motor skills and an eye for composition (whereas most often forms of art require those two things + way more) and I think they can channel childlike creativity well due to that. The political implications of a game where the purpose is to create from nothing instead of starting off as a millionaire and stealing (AHEM, “renting”) everything in sight feel rather obvious, but to elaborate, I wanted the art to foster collaboration and healthy competition rather than a desire to seek dominance. In this game, you need other players to like your art to win, and I believe making something people like requires on some level an ability to understand and reach out to people (I feel that with all artistic creation in general) and I hope the game inspires those feelings in people instead of making them want to selfishly own and hoard everything for themselves.
The desire to send this mix of political messaging and fostering of childlike playfulness through collage was additionally of course inspired by the Merz art of Hannover Dada, wherein much of the point was recontextualizing “useless” or “boring” objects (junk, everyday objects, found objects) into something else entirely with an entirely new meaning. That was the approach I took to the “materials” of monopoly and manga.
I chose manga panels because I wanted to create a pastiche of many different series and artists, but I also wanted them to be visually cohesive. Manga are all in black and white, and this allows for an easily achieved color palette (as every Mangaka works with the same exact one, unlike comic artists) while still allowing for great contrast in the collages themselves. Additionally, I have a manga wall at home which works for these same reasons, so the idea came naturally.
First Iteration
At first, I was quite rushed, so my starting iteration was rough. Each of the squares where relabeled but with no visuals (just the series title) and I didn’t know what to do with the community chest and chance cards. Voting was simpler as well, with people just voting for their favorite and that getting one point. The in class playtest went well, as detailed below
Pros
- It was fun making collages
- It was fun looking at other peoples colalges
- Getting panels from series people knew made it more gratifying for them
Cons
- Voting being simplified made the votes more boring and not work well with only 3 people
- Many squares there was nothing to do, which slowed the game down
- Players wanted more interaction with eachother
Second Iteration
For the second iteration, I added many visual elements and tried to address player feedback. The game was made more visually interesting by me taking the volume covers of manga and placing them over the monopoly board. That way, each series was recognizable at a glance. To address the problem of community chest spaces and chance spaces having nothing to do AND to address the issue of players wanting more inter player interaction, I added a new set of cards to the game that allowed players to steal, force trades, take more cards, and more. This allowed for more dynamism in the gameplay as the actions of players could affect other player strategies in real time. I changed the voting to allow for points to be allocated based on whether it was 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, and allowed players to pick from the top 3 cards on the pile when choosing their card. Overall, this increase of player agency and visual facelift helped make the game more interesting and I am happy with the result.
Final Playlets Results
Despite having three people, the final playtest was very lucrative. I got to playtest with both a manga fan and a non-manga fan, and seeing them both enjoy and have different takes on the game was both validating and interesting.
The non-manga fan liked the game and took a storytelling approach to her collages, trying to craft funny or interesting mini narratives with her manga pages. This was aided by this player just happening to get a lot of manga pages. From her feedback, I definitely would implement an “Explain” part of the voting phase where each player is required to give some brief intro for their collage.
The manga fan that played also enjoyed the game, and took a more impressionistic approach with their collaging, trying to make something visually appealing and leveraging text less. They suggested even more interaction, with players perhaps gaining physical tools like scissors, glue, or tape to further elevate their collages.
Playtest Collages
Rules
Cards