Not GTA, not Star Citizen, not any game with actual gameplay, story, or anything like that.
Just a freaking Niantic reskin for freaking Monopoly.
I live in the wrong timeline.
Apparently it earned this dubious honor purely from marketing… It has a marketing budget of 1 billion dollars. But it’s allegedly made 5 billion, so… guess it was worth it to someone.
Funny, this is the first I’ve heard of it.
Me too. My guess is that the marketing was targeted mostly towards kids.
Its marketing is 99% on shitty mobile games that have adds everywhere. If you don’t play shitty mobile games or have a DNS level add block you won’t see it.
Also on Grindr. Every other ad.
inb4 OP is on the marketing team
I’ve never even heard of it. Is that successful marketing?
Well you wouldn’t have spent any money on it and they’re raking in the dough, so yes actually.
If you aren’t the kind of person to blow money on a shitty mobile game, an effective marketing campaign won’t target you.
mobile gaming krakens are absolutely insane. they spend more in a day than some people earn in a year. i heard most do it because they cannot control themselves with their money and if they stop the mobile gaming addiction they will move to doing hard drugs
Sorry to make this seem even worse, this isn’t even what you think it is. Not a Niantic gps game.
It’s literally like any other mobile board game. You hit the dice roll button and the piece bounces around the board and your cash goes up. That’s about it. It’s interactive because sometimes where you land takes money away from other players (those you have friended or randos)
There is nothing novel here.
source: my children forced me to play with them when it was super trendy. All of their friends (and their friends parents) were playing. So. Many. Popups. It was CONSTANTLY trying to get you to spend. We did not, but know people who poured money in to keep the dice rolling
edit: also thank you for this, I always like my kids to be aware of why they or their friends are doing something. They’re hyper aware of trends and marketing (but also don’t want to be left behind when their friends are doing something new).
Damn, thanks for the insight. I just read the wiki article and the source claiming the marketing budget of that game, because I couldn’t believe it, and the name Niantic was somewhere in there, so I figured Niantic did what Niantic does. Apparently, it’s not even that.
It’s ridiculous, seriously. Monopoly is a horrible game in it self, and I thought everyone and their dog was already sick of it, but I guess I’m just projecting.
Or pumping the equivalent of the GDP of Samoa into the marketing of some stupid mobile game version of this really bad board game really does something.
Even funnier, I told my kids it was the most expensive video game and they said, “oh because of Chris Pratt?”
Apparently the ads all featured Chris Pratt.
That’s just nuts.
Literally every big store that sells boardgames constantly have like 10+ different versions of it. I don’t know who the hell all these Monopoly fans are that are apparently not just buying Monopoly, but buying enough different versions to make it viable to keep offering them, but someone is keeping them in business.
I can only assume new parents of young kids just getting something they remember from when they were a kid. But that can only be half the story. I don’t believe that these people are becoming Monopoly collectors buying up every alternate version that comes out.
I got way too many versions of Monopoly gifted over the years and all of them ended up on our local second hand app.
I don’t know why you’d gift anyone Monopoly. I mean, everyone who wanted to have a copy already has one, but apparently people with no creativity still gift them.
And all marketing budget at that, we don’t even know what it cost to develop.
500 cans of red bull
Monopoly, stripped of it’s context as a political statement, is a very mean and cruel work of art.
It shows that capitalism will market anything, even critique against capitalism.
It’s the board game equivalent of people buying Che Guevara T-shirts at Primark.
Say the line, Joyce
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You don’t want any of that. Sure communist M:TG looks powerful, but capitalism M:TG has access to all the money buys power cards like the Power9 and all the dual lands and the broken shit that is too expensive to play with.
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The story behind it is also quintessential capitalist bullshit
This is extra funny because not only is the gameplay shit on purpose, it’s shit on purpose as a criticism of capitalism.
Monopoly is supposed to be frustrating as a reflection of how frustrating life is under capitalism, and here comes capitalism to sell an even more annoying version full of popups and money grabs.
The death of satire is a well with no end.
Never heard of it.
Me neither. It’s crazy.
I don’t count marketing as part of a videogame budget.
You might not. Finance and wikipedia does.
Why was it so expensive?
Literally all marketing. $1B in marketing.
I honestly feel kind of proud that I’ve never heard of it. Off the grid and shit.
I’m hardly “off the grid”, but I’ve managed to get enough distance between my eyeballs and the fire hose of ads not to see it more than tangentially, while pocking around the Google Play store.
I do pity anyone who doesn’t have the kind of tech-friendly elders willing/able to scrub all the bloatware off their retail devices, though. Had to spent an hour de-contaminating my mom’s new Samsung because of all the random extra adware packed into it. And with newer mainline devices, it feels like a constant struggle. Heaven help anyone on Windows 11.
I’m the one who my friends turn to for tech advice and omg I am so horrified that some of them never installed an adblocker before. Or just leave preinstalled garbage like mcafee around…
A lot of the modern devices make uninstalling a pain in the ass. Especially if its native bloatware that’s been bundled with the OS.
I had to pull up ADB so my samsung would stop recommending me disney plus, a preinstalled app called “AppCloud” has an undismissable notification that offers you sponsored apps.
Ads. $1 Billion marketing budget.
Imagine what a gaming company with a $1billion budget for the game itself (and execs who stay the fuck out of the way instead of repeatedly changing direction…cough…EA…cough) and a marketing budget for whatever they actually spent on the game. We could have had Cyberpunk 4154 with a bit left over.
To be honest, I think there is diminishing returns on more money (look at star citizen for example).
I feel like it would end up a live service game (where the extra money results in content over a long period of time) or just become bloated.
Go on now, git! Didn’t nobody ask you 'bout no logic!
i think it depends on how you go about it, like imagine if you just went back in time and bought the Fallout rights from bethesda and told obsidian entertainment that they can stop crunching and just keep working on the game as long as they want, and then when they feel finished they get a nice bonus (so they don’t feel like they have to keep drawing development out to keep the salary) and after that you just sponsor modders until your money runs out.
Monopoly go is a mint card game like, but don’t think a video game version needs to be that heavily marketed. Also I didn’t even know it had a video game adaptation, so where the fuck did that money go?
Edit: I’m wrong on the game. I was thinking of Monopoly deal. I don’t know what go is.
Tbh, marketing is mostly just a scam to funnel money to marketing people.
You are not entirely wrong. It’s a boubble where no person involved benefits from saying “hey, is our budget too big?” It’s basicly given, that any known brand have negative ROI on it’s marketing, but we are all, so brainwashed with need for growrh, that that we know only one solution to decreasing results. Throw more money at it.
There’s a reason many big corporations have pulled out of online advertisment and focus on print/radio/TV/sponsorships instead: The effectiveness of online advertisment can be measured and it sucks royally.
The whole concept of marketing is just a huge game of “the emperor’s new clothes”. Nobody wants to be blamed if they stop doing marketing and it turns out to actually do have an effect, even if everyone secretly knows it’s garbage.
Yes! And we have examples natural experiments where becouse of the error advertise didn’t launch in some regions… And nothing happened. And no one inside the industry is even talking like this. Bubble will burst on day and it will take entire free internet with it.
But measuring online is not that accurate as everyone portrait it to be. Long story short if you show ads to people waithing for the waiter in the restaurant than you can report that it had amazing “buying dinner conversion rate”. We are getting better and that, and tools are getting better at forcing you to do it or obscure that you do it in the first place… And it’s still expensive as hell.
You are right with that, but there’s actually a reason why companies book adspace on searches for their own product name (e.g. Lenovo booking ad space on searches for “Lenovo”), and imho it’s even worse.
That way they want to stop competitors (e.g. HP) from booking the adspace, which would lead to HP being the first hit on a search for Lenovo.
That’s pretty much digital racketeering. “That’s a nice website you have there. It would be a right shame if something would happen to the traffic going there.”
The branded searched keyword are the tip of the iceberg. Every campaign auto-optimize toward people in late stage of their purche yourney. For people wha already made.the dexision, but are not ready to purchase yet. But branded keywarods are a good example. While this is most common explanation given by the agencies - agencies LOVE the branded keywords - it’s not supported buy any acctually reaserch. When one is done, almost without fail, it shows that branded ads for competitors doesn’t work. Who intentionally clicks on HP ads while they intentionally searched for lenovo specifically? Users are very good at ignoring those and clicking on the next one. Organic or paid. All clicks are basicly exidental and are trash. This is a “cheap” defense from non-existing threat. You compeat alomost exclusively with your own organic.
There is even a study of a company who merged with his own competitor. Both brands existed perarelly for a while, so they choose to test those assubtions. Conclusion: waste of money. But agencies will die on the hill of branded.keywords every time.
Oh totally, you are right with every word you say.
They are just playing with fear to justify their existence.
looks like monopoly go is a niantic job, so it’s probably something like their earlier work pokemon go. but you… catch monopoly men? idk.
oh, maybe you buy up actual streets
Most stupid game ever created. Downloaded it and played for 15 minutes then Uninstalled. What a waste of 15 minutes.
My dad (in his 50s) spends a lot of his free time playing it. Like, over an hour every day. It takes the worst and most addictive parts of every brainrot game ever made and rolls them all into one thing. Clearly it’s been worth it. 🤦
Tom Vassel Reviews Monopoly And It’s Expansions Like The Way A Grizzly Bear Eats A Salmon
review starts at 6:26
…did you start watching the minute they uploaded and post this the minute you were done?
yeah, I love Tom Vassel, the weird dude is a massive figure in modern board gaming and this video is absolutely perfect for this thread, so when I saw it yes… I watched it all the way through and then immediately posted it lol
Seriously, the Dice Tower is probably the most thorough and respected voice in board gaming, most board game fans have different tastes and feelings on games than Tom does, but everyone who is anyone in board gaming pays attention to what Tom Vassel says because he is a giant in the scene and honestly seems to have overall been a really good influence on the industry, at least in the US.
Sometimes I randomly watch this old video Tom Vassel made about why he hates Monopoly so I can rage with him and feel better about the universe.
this reads like an ad for dice tower… which i know they wouldn’t do because they don’t have that kind of audience.
i stick to susd, which means that i never buy any board games because whenever they review one it immediately goes out of stock.
It is an ad for The Dice Tower, they just aren’t paying me to do it lol.
I genuinely love The Dice Tower, Tom Vassel seems like a nut, and in particular I find Zee absolutely hilarious.
shrugs
I am not saying I agree with everything they do, or endorse them or their opinions without question, what I am saying is just fuck yeah, The Dice Tower is great I have watched a ton of their videos over the years on different board games and I am not afraid to fly that freak flag high and proud I guess?
fair.
