Monopoly City Streets

Monopoly City Streets logo Monopoly City Streets' logo
Developer(s)	Tribal DDB
Publisher(s)	Hasbro
Release	September 9, 2009
Genre(s)	Strategy MMORTS
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Monopoly City Streets is a live massive multiplayer online(MMOG) browser game using the Monopoly board game on real world streets using Google Maps and OpenStreetMap. The game was developed by Tribal DDB, Hasbro's digital agency, with support from Google. The game was launched on September 9, 2009 and will continue until January 31, 2010.

Objective

Your goal is simple. Become the richest property magnate in the world! Start by buying streets with a given float, build small houses to large skyscrapers, sabotage other players streets as play continues against the rest of the world.

Gameplay

Players start out with 3 million virtual monopoly dollars to purchase properties and buildings. A player's wealth increases daily by receiving rent from the properties and buildings he or she owns. Rent is only paid at 12:00 AM GMT on each day that a player logs in, creating an incentive for daily play. If a player does not log in for two weeks, the bank will repossess all of the player's properties and buildings.

The price of a street is dependent on the length of the street, due to longer streets being able to house more buildings, thus having a greater potential value than a street that can only house a few buildings.

Buying and selling

Players can buy, sell, and negotiate prices between other players. Players have to pay the deed price as a minimum and may only pay 150% of the deed price as a maximum; property may be used in addition as part of a trade. There are no mortgages to raise cash, instead, a property and all it's buildings may be sold to the bank for half the street value and building value.

There are random Monopoly Chance Cards given out to either sabotage other players by building Hazards on their streets, for example, prisons, waste plants; or, bonus buildings; these include Stadiums, parks, schools, water towers and wind farms.

Launch issues

Since its launch on September 9, 2009, the game has had severe web server problems due to the huge number of people trying to access the website and create accounts at once. This has resulted in the site continuing to be temporarily unavailable or sluggish for most visitors.

From the beginning of the game's launch, several problems crippled the game. The lack of adequate server support not withstanding, players also faced the loss of in-game currency as well as access to the roads they purchased. Many players reported losing money in auctions and in attempting to purchase properties and buildings. In addition, a serious flaw existed that allowed new users to register accounts with previously existing names. Those streets that were assigned to that account became inaccessible, both to the previous account holder as well as the new one, but were still visible as being owned by that account name. Other players reported that rent was not being paid and troubles with selling buildings on properties.

Monopoly City Streets reset all game data on Thursday September 17, 2009 8 days after initial launch and should be playable within 24 hours. This will allow people who were unable to access the game when it first started to now have an even chance against those who have been playing for the last 8 days.

After the pre-payday for Sept 21, all the rent for buildings was reset causing many people to lose millions in the game going back to the original rent scheme. All buildings give the same rent no matter what street (or its length) they are placed on. This was seen by players as one of the methods to reduce cheating, but the backlash has only caused those cheating to become more powerful as players dumped their entire game fortunes on a single street to end up getting less rent than they would have prior to converting to a single developed street. Many players are again calling for another reset of the game, and nobody has yet addressed the mid-game change of rules that has generated the backlash at the official blog for the game; nor did anyone warn about the rent change prior to the payday with 4 hours left prior to it that day.

External links

• Monopoly City Streets
• Monopoly City Streets Blog
• Monopoly City Streets Official Twitter Account