Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Game of Life

Milton Bradley's board game LIFE was introduced in 1860, 150 years ago. In 1960 the game was redesigned to look like the one that most of us grew up playing and over the years subtle changes have been made to account for inflation and changes in society.

One part of the game that hasn’t changed is how the winner is determined. Ultimately each player reaches a bold red square identified as the Day of Reckoning (I’d forgotten that part). At the Day of Reckoning players count up their assets to determine whether they are Millionaires, Millionaire Tycoons or Bankrupt. According to the official rules:

The player with the most money WINS THE GAME!

We wonder why we are so obsessed with accumulating wealth. Perhaps because for 150 years we’ve been playing the game of Life by Milton Bradley’s rules.

If you were writing the rules, who wins the game of life?

No comments:

Post a Comment