The City as Game Board
A GPS adaption brings Monopoly back on the streets in Friedrichshafen
Many location-based games are inspired by existing computer or board games. This kind of adaption works especially well with games like Monopoly that are themed around a city.
The monopoly board shows 40 spaces, 28 of them being properties that players can purchase. These properties are named after real places (mainly streets and stations). In the original version by Charles Darrow it´s places in and around Atlantic City, New Jersey, but it has been adapted to many other cities around the world since. The original German version for example displayed a collection of Berlin-based places with prices corresponding to the actual property values of these adresses.
(map of Berlin streets featured by Monopoly (courtesy of Roland Klose))
From the idea of bringing real places on board games it isn´t far to bringing the game back into the streets. Parker came out with a monopolylive version in London in 2005:
Players start out buying properties and placing apartments and hotels on them, much like the classic game. The twist: Rent payments are determined by the traffic patterns of 18 real cabs, tracked by satellite. Players collect or pay rent depending on where the cabs go, with the high tally winning at the end of each day (Wired). In this version the players are still at home, gathering around a computer instead of a board, while the cab drivers fulfill their duty as game pieces.
(Geopoly - a Geocaching version of Monopoly in Friedrichshafen)
On saturday I started playing a nice adaption by two geocachers who placed Monopoly in the real streets of Friedrichshafen calling it Geopoly. As a player one has to move through the city - so starting at the main station the game made me go to prison and to Riedleparkstrasse (Parkstrasse in the German board game). It was a really nice kind of city tour since I knew I was expecting some sort of prison / rich neighborhood etc. but never had been there. It really felt like walking through the streets of Monopoly.
Unfortunately I was short on batteries so I couldn´t do the full round. But as far as I understood it, it´s not about buying properties but rather about finding the locations (and the caches hidden on these locations). While for most of them there is GPS coordinates, there is others that can only be found after solving a riddle or collecting information during the game. I hope to continue my walk soon...
(Walking through the streets of Monopoly: Riedleparkstrasse)