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Went down a BGG rabbit hole and learned Monopoly was originally rejected for having 68 too many rules
I was killing time on BoardGameGeek last Tuesday and fell into a thread about the original Monopoly patent from 1935. The version Charles Darrow sold to Parker Brothers had around 100 rules, and the company's own reviewers said it was "too complicated" and had too many pieces to ever sell. The number that got me was 68, which is how many rules got cut or merged before it hit shelves. Darrow also didn't invent the game, he lifted the core idea from Elizabeth Magie's The Landlord's Game from 1903, and she got about $500 for it. So the most famous board game in the world exists because someone stripped it down and simplified it. Which makes me wonder, how many great games are sitting in prototype hell right now because they are too complex for a publisher to touch?
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terry_jones11d ago
Too complex for a publisher to touch" cuts both ways, some of those prototypes just aren't good.
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