In 1904, a woman named Elizabeth Magie created a game called The Landlord’s Game. She wasn’t just looking for entertainment. Magie was an activist. She followed the ideas of Henry George, an economist who believed that land monopolies were the root of inequality.
Her game had a mission: show how landlords and monopolists could exploit others, and why society needed fairer systems. She even filed a patent to spread her idea.
Two Rulebooks, Two Lessons
Magie’s original design was clever. It had two sets of rules.
The “prosperity” rules: Everyone benefited when land created value. The goal was cooperation, not domination.
The “monopoly” rules: One player gobbled up properties, raised rents, and bankrupted everyone else.
She wanted people to try both. One version was meant to feel fair and uplifting. The other — the one we all know today — was supposed to feel unfair, exhausting, and cruel. Her hope? That players would walk away thinking, wow, monopolies really do ruin everything.
The Landlord’s Game spread among left-leaning groups and universities. Over time, people tweaked the design, added street names, and passed it around. Eventually, a man named Charles Darrow stumbled on it. He polished the rules, made it flashier, and pitched it to Parker Brothers in the 1930s.
Parker Brothers bought it. They cut out the cooperative rulebook, kept only the ruthless version, and sold it as Monopoly. Darrow got rich. Magie? She was paid a one-time fee of $500, with no royalties. The game she designed to criticize monopolies became one of capitalism’s biggest money-makers. The irony is hard to miss.
If you’ve ever played Monopoly for more than an hour, you know it usually ends the same way: one person slowly squeezes everyone else dry. The losers are bored and broke long before the winner is crowned.
That’s not bad design — that was the point. Magie wanted players to feel the pain of an unbalanced system. Rising rents. Crushing debt. One winner, many losers. In a way, the game reflects real economics better than most textbooks.
Today, Monopoly is one of the best-selling board games of all time. There are versions for every fandom you can imagine — Star Wars, Pokémon, even Game of Thrones. It’s played in over 100 countries. It has earned billions of dollars.
And yet, the game’s origin story was almost erased. Elizabeth Magie’s name disappeared while Charles Darrow was celebrated as the “inventor.” Only in recent years has her role been rediscovered and honored.
The history of Monopoly isn’t just trivia. It’s a reminder of how ideas can get twisted by the very forces they were meant to fight. Magie built a tool to expose greed. Capitalism turned it into a toy that celebrates greed.
So next time you’re stuck paying rent on Boardwalk and cursing the player across the table, remember: your frustration is exactly what Elizabeth Magie wanted you to feel. The tragedy is that the world embraced the wrong lesson.
