What if the game was new right now

The company is running a contest to see what board pieces fit a 21st century game.
By SHARON EBERSON
SCRIPPS HOWARD
If you find the notion of buying Boardwalk for $400 or railroad companies ruling transportation to be ever-so quaint, if not downright dated, get ready to place your vote for "Monopoly: Here and Now."
In this upcoming edition of the popular game, the places on spaces are up to you.
Hasbro is conducting an online poll that marks the first time consumers will have a hand in the board design of Monopoly, in which players get a feel for what it's like to make deals like Donald Trump, acquiring real estate and wealth, while the losers go broke.
The new-wave Monopoly will say goodbye to the Atlantic City streets of the classic game, which has morphed into 200 different editions and sold more than 250 million copies in 80 countries since Parker Brothers, now a division of Hasbro, introduced it in 1935.
For "Here and Now," fans can vote at www.monopoly.com for landmarks from 22 cities, including New York's Times Square, Chicago's Wrigley Field, Honolulu's Waikiki Beach, Beverly Hills' Rodeo Drive and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
Voting will close May 12, with winners to be announced in August and the new game is expected to be in stores in the fall.
Cities were picked for population, popular tourist destinations and "suitability for the game board according to the designers," said Hasbro spokeswoman Pat Riso.
People care
On Monday, the first day of the poll, "votes were coming in at about 1,000 an hour, and that's before the West Coast wakes up," she said. Voters can stake their claim to a favorite once a day.
The city with the most votes will have its landmarks occupy the most prestigious spaces, with the top vote-getter landing on the site now held by the board's most expensive property, Boardwalk.
Tim Walsh, author of "Timeless Toys: Classic Toys and the Playmakers Who Created Them" (Andrews McNeel Publishing, $29.95), sees "Here and Now" through the eyes of a historian, one who doesn't believe Monopoly -- old or new -- would ever make it if it had been released today instead of during the Depression.
"It would fail miserably because it's so complicated and it takes so much time to play," said Walsh, who adds that the long playing time and handling of even fake money were among its attractions back when.
Another thing the original game had was the identifiable markers from Atlantic City, N.J., "which was founded as America's city," Walsh noted. "The fact that this one particular city had a universal feel, and streets named after U.S. states or after seas like Baltic and Mediterranean, gave it a sort of universal appeal."
To up the ante of the updated game's appeal, rents will rise in accordance with recent rates, there will be new game tokens, airports will replace railroads and utilities will change as well. A United Kingdom version of "Here and Now" is already available, with landmarks such as Wembley Arena and Covent Garden and tokens such as cell phones and doubledecker buses.
Hasbro has had national polls for Monopoly before that did not involve the board design. In early 1999, a sack of money became the first token to be added to the game in more than four decades. The money bag won 51 percent of the vote, beating out a biplane, with 29 percent, and a piggy bank, with 20 percent.
No one is knocking the changes -- so long as there's no permanent tampering with the original. As long as that's available, "real fans will not be irked at all, and this is another [edition] for collectors," Walsh said.
Riso said Hasbro has no plans to ditch plain old Monopoly, because "that will never go out of style."
Why, then, the "Here and Now"?
"Because we thought it was time to update the game for the 21st century," she said.