Monopoly released on Steam with no online play.

[frobalt]

So, I randomly decided to search Steam to see if Monopoly was on it (Random mood, don't ask) and I found that it had. I then noticed that it had only been released on the 30th November of this year.

In the description though, it states that multiplayer is hotseat only and in the side bar mentions it is only local play. On the forums for it, I've seen people mention that when the game was originally released it was marketed as multiplayer in the side bar and didn't warn that multiplayer was hotseat only.

Now, I'm quite curious as to peoples' thoughts on this one.

Personally, I find it stupid that a board game can be released digitally without any sort of online multiplayer in this day and age.


I've also heard that the AI isn't so good either, so in some ways you might as well just shell out on the actual board game itself.

 

[Folji]

For some reason, I can't really see the family cramped together in front of the computer to play Monopoly becoming that much of a replacement for the real game. Not playing it on the living room TV, either. There's no way to grab the game and flip it over, scattering houses and hotels to the four winds!

 

[mad825]

You know what, if it had multiplayer I would have brought it...

 

[Rawne1980]

The one thing that Monopoly really needs is more than one player.

Kinda defeats the purpose if you play with yourself (you know what I meant, clean your minds out, dirty people).

 

[poiuppx]

When I saw that under the game, I thought for a moment that it was a joke. I then proceeded to think it isn't destined for much in the way of profits with that handicap. I continue to think this, and likely always will, long after it is destined for 80%+ off sales in a desperate attempt to make back production costs.

Sad thing is, I might've been down for a copy with online multiplayer. Most of my friends live at least an hour away, if not more, and having that as a low brain power option for casual gaming for us would have been nice.

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

Obviously this was the best decision. Have you ever played monopoly with people? It sucks, they always buy up all the good property and still from the bank. Monopoly was the reason for about 87% of my fights with my brother. That game gets brutal after 3 hours.

 

[Klumpfot]

Obviously this was the best decision. Have you ever played monopoly with people? It sucks, they always buy up all the good property and still from the bank. Monopoly was the reason for about 87% of my fights with my brother. That game gets brutal after 3 hours.

It's great, though! If you're the winning one, you could get people to do awful things to get out of paying large sums of money. Like swallowing a tablespoon of tabasco, or doing a handstand against the wall while singing the national anthem in falsetto. Those were the days...

OT: That does indeed seem very stupid. And it also seems like they're losing out on quite a bit of dough by not putting more effort into it.

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

Obviously this was the best decision. Have you ever played monopoly with people? It sucks, they always buy up all the good property and still from the bank. Monopoly was the reason for about 87% of my fights with my brother. That game gets brutal after 3 hours.

It's great, though! If you're the winning one, you could get people to do awful things to get out of paying large sums of money. Like swallowing a tablespoon of tabasco, or doing a handstand against the wall while singing the national anthem in falsetto. Those were the days...

I tried that ended up in a fist fight over who should eat the tobasco. My brother after I offered him 2000 dollars to do it, or me after he realized he was 60 pounds heavier and a foot taller and could shove the bottle down my throat.

 

[Signa]

A random memory came to the front of my mind from reading this. When I was a kid, I had a copy of Monopoly for the Commodore 64. One day when I was playing it with my friend, we got to mid-game and I decided I was bored of the game, so I pressed quit. The game then totaled up our values, and I was thrilled to see I won. My friend had a way of dealing with my ADD behavior like that. He asked if I wanted to play again, and I agreed. He let me go first, and I bought the first property I landed on. He then proceeded to quit as I had and then proudly declared himself the winner, because he still had the most value.

OT: I don't know what to think about this. For one, I wouldn't want to be tied to an online game while playing Monopoly, but I sure as hell would like it even less to be hot-seating it.

 

[Olas]

I don't find the idea of local only multiplayer strange at all.

What I do find strange is someone making a videogame version of monopoly, or any board game for that manner. Does it have like cool animations or anything to give it an edge over table the version that's already existed for close to a century?

 

[Creator002]

If it was multiplayer, I would have bought it as soon as I knew about it. A game like that, which relies on multiple players, should have online in this day and age though.

 

[Yopaz]

So basically they released a board game on a platform that's less convenient than having the actual board game, taking away the ability to cheat or improvise rules in order to make it more fun and not using that ONE advantage a PC release got over the cardboard version.

I have a hard time thinking people will gather around a computer sharing a chair or passing a keyboard, mouse or laptop around them when the board offers so much more. They should at least have local multiplayer, that way they could make 4 people buy a separate game and earn some from that at least.

 

[J.McMillen]

You guys seem to be forgetting that Steam is working on that whole "Big Picture" project to allow it to better function on TV's using controllers instead of a mouse and keyboard. Monopoly should work well on a large TV where everyone either has their own controller or even passes one around. If Steam starts making good inroads into this gaming model, more single screen multi-player games will be in our future.

 

[Padwolf]

I saw it the other day on there too, I thought it was odd it had no multiplayer. It seems so useless, people won't really want to gather round the computer all cramped rather than chill out around a board. Besides, the boards are better, you can see and feel the amount of wealth you have! But I suppose that since it can be so long a game, the chose not to put a multiplayer in.

Besides, other than Mario Party, Monopoly ruins families and friendships! D:

 

[Auron]

I'd figure it would be most interesting for friends who live afar, pretty disappointing. Though the big picture thing makes a lot of sense I suppose.

 

[porous_shield]

I don't think I'd like to play a board game hot seat or online multiplayer. It's just not the same atmosphere when you're not sitting in the room playing the game with friends. Even with voice chat or even video chat the experience would just seem so sterile.

I've always had good experience playing Monopoply but I can see why it could be a destroyer of friendships.

 

[Bertylicious]

Hot-seating is the shit for some people. It is literally the main enchilada.

Imagine a couple, if you will, sitting on the couch, drinking wine and discussing their day while passing a laptop back and forth whilst watching television.

That is the thing with hot-seating; you do it whilst you are doing other things, preferably other things with the person you're playing with. So the couple could play some DEFCON, breaking now and then for sad sexy times, then play monopoly with breaks for angry sexy times.

 

[frobalt]

Hot-seating is the shit for some people. It is literally the main enchilada.

Imagine a couple, if you will, sitting on the couch, drinking wine and discussing their day while passing a laptop back and forth whilst watching television.

That is the thing with hot-seating; you do it whilst you are doing other things, preferably other things with the person you're playing with. So the couple could play some DEFCON, breaking now and then for sad sexy times, then play monopoly with breaks for angry sexy times.

The hot-seating itself isn't the bad thing. The bad thing is the lack of online multiplayer. Having both should be easily doable really.

As we've seen from this thread, there are a few people that just flat out won't buy it due to the lack of multiplayer, and I doubt that's uncommon.

If the game was 1/4 of the price it is now (At the very least) I might actually buy it, but since it's £6.99, I can't justify buying it without the ability to play online.

But it does kinda bring up a point about making board games digital. Having digital versions of games usually played physically isn't a bad idea: Stuff like 'Settlers of Catan', 'Risk', 'Munchkins' etc could work quite well as a digital game. I wonder how well a game would sell if it was a compilation of games like this, with certain games being including in the initial download and others being added via DLC.

 

[josemlopes]

I somehow think this is relavent: