"Монополияның алға құрылғысы: Жер иесі ойыны"

Board game, precursor to Monopoly

The Landlord's Game is a board game patented in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie as It is a realty and taxation game intended to educate users about Georgism. It is the inspiration for the 1935 board game Monopoly.

In 1902 to 1903, Magie designed the game and play tested it in Arden, Delaware. The game was created to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood. The Landlord's Game has some similarities to the basic rules of the board game Zohn Ahl, played by the Kiowa Indians of North America. There are hints that suggest Elizabeth Magie might have known Zohn Ahl and incorporated some of the game's ideas. In 1903, Magie filed for a patent on the game Magie and fellow Georgists formed a company, Economic Game Company, in 1906 New York to publish the game. Magie approached Parker Brothers to publish this and one other game in 1909. The other game was accepted while Landlord's was rejected as too complicated. In the United Kingdom The Landlord's Game was first published in 1913 by the Newbie Game Company, formed by a Liberal Committee from the village of Newbie in Dumfries, under the title Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit; despite the title change, it was recognizably the same game. Scott Nearing, socialist professor of economics at Wharton School of Finance from 1906 to 1915, lived in Arden in 1910, where Magie invented the game, learned about the game and taught it to his students. On September 23, 1924, a second patent was issued to Magie for The Landlord's Game. Adgame Company (Inc.) published Landlord's Game and Prosperity under this patent in 1932. Robert Baron had Parker Brothers design its own version, called Fortune, before they began negotiating to purchase Magie's patents, in case the discussion fell apart or she sold to another potential buyer, Dave Knapp, publisher of Finance. Magie held her 1923 patent until 1935, when she sold it to Parker Brothers for $500, 500.0 in 1935 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years. The company had recently started distributing Monopoly, which it had purchased from Charles Darrow who claimed to have invented it.

The game's first patent was the first issued for a game while claiming four features in the application, the most important feature was a continuous path game. At the time, most games had a start and end spot. With the first patent having expired in 1921, Magie applied for another patent with five new claims. The claims of Magie's second patent could not include those of the first (now in the public domain) and leaned more towards the single tax theory of play. One common misconception is that Parker Brothers acquired the rights to Magie's original invention of Monopoly play and the unique design by purchasing the later 1924 patent. Parker Brothers acquired Magie's patent to The Landlord's Game but although both patents had the same name they covered different claims. The substitution or confusion of the early patent for the latter is still commonplace.