Even video games often come in bite-size pieces, like the popular Angry Birds. Rivals like Mattel are doing the same with games like Apples to Apples. To that end, Hasbro is shortening and simplifying many of its popular games, changing the formats of Scrabble and Cranium so they can be played in five-minute spurts. Players also hold their hands over decals to buy or sell properties, insert “bank cards” into slots to check their accounts, and send a plastic car moving around a track to win money or other advantages (only when the tower instructs them to, of course). To move forward on the new Monopoly board, players cover their game piece with their hands, and the tower announces how many spaces the player can move. Its executives say this age group, accustomed to video games, wants a fast-paced game that requires using their hands. Hasbro is aiming at luring 8- to 12-year-olds back to these board games. “With this computer, I’m wondering what’s left for the player to decide - is it they just keep pushing buttons and wait for someone to win?” “It seems that there’s a computer that makes most of the decisions for you - it changes a lot of the rules, it removes a lot of the skill,” said Ken Koury, a competitive Monopoly player and coach who informally settles rule disputes for others. “How do we give them the video game and the board game with the social experience? That’s where Monopoly Live came in,” said Jane Ritson-Parsons, global brand leader for Monopoly.īut for families used to arguing over Monopoly’s rules, players who slip a $100 bill under the board for later use and friends who gleefully demand rent from one another, it may not be so easy to adapt to a computer’s presence on the board. Hasbro hopes that the computerized Monopoly will appeal to a generation raised on video games amid a tough market for traditional board games, a category where sales declined 9 percent in 2010, according to the market research firm NPD Group. The all-knowing tower even watches over advancing the proper number of spaces. But in the center, instead of dice and Chance and Community Chest cards, an infrared tower with a speaker issues instructions, keeps track of money and makes sure that players adhere to the rules. It is the classic Monopoly board on the outside, with the familiar railroads like the B.& O. Hasbro showed a preview of the new version, called Monopoly Live, at this week’s Toy Fair in New York. In the new version of Monopoly, the game’s classic pastel-colored bills and the designated Banker have been banished, along with other old-fashioned elements, in favor of a computer that runs the game. You can still collect $200 when you pass “Go,” but not in piles of play money.
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