![]() In this latter case, there is a natural tendency for much if not most of the play to take place above the board in the form of transactions and agreements with other players. Johan Huizinga, in his classic 1938 study Homo Ludens, defines play as either a contest for something, as in the play of a game, or a representation of something, as in the performance of a play. Although abstract games are still produced, they are a minority taste modern board games are mostly thematic, overtly representational, even theatrical. ![]() They are published and subject to trade protection such as copyright. Modern board games, in contrast, arise not through evolution but by a known originator’s act of invention, a one-off product of “intelligent design” in a relatively brief period of time. A significant consequence of this is that many have a strong intellectual content and play often takes place in silence. In character they tend to be essentially abstract, not necessarily because they are non-representational (chess remains recognizably a battle between two armies of differentiated participants), but in that the essence of play centers on exploiting geometric or positional relationships between the pieces on a board. In brief, they are folk games, analogous to folk songs and folk dances, having evolved by a process of anonymous communal creativity, inherently bequeathing their ownership to the public domain. Myth and legend notwithstanding, they acknowledge no inventor but grow by a process of communal modification and development. Traditional board games like chess, checkers and backgammon are centuries if not millennia old. Furthermore, Monopoly is practically unique among modern board games in having a substantial history to trace. History may not be everyone’s favorite subject, but the history of a game exerts a particular kind of fascination, and one of so popular an American cultural icon as Monopoly can hardly fail to draw crowds. Orbanes Monopoly: The World’s Most Famous Game-And How It Got That Way (Da Capo Press, 2006), 288 pp., $26.
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