Monopoly DM Edition
Andrew Segrell of Ohio State University created a fabulous “Democracy Matters Monopoly” game. Here’s how he did it: I went to OpenSecrets.org and looked for names that seemed to pop up most often under the largest contributors. I then got a list of all the spaces on the game board and matched up Congressmen to each property. The utilities on the board are OpenSecrets.org and FollowTheMoney.org because I figured those really are utilities of a sort. The game pieces represent six of the top ten largest campaign contributors. So, really, you are the ones buying Congress. The “railroads” each represent a different industry that donates vast amounts of money. For the Chance and Community Chest cards, I renamed them Votes and Earmarks and just changed the wording on the cards to make them more political. The cost/benefit on each card stayed the same so as not to change the balance of the game. The Houses are called “favors” in this game and Hotels are “Political Capital”. I thought those were appropriate. The money is just regular monopoly money I bought online.