Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Allaway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe why Isenthal.
Speaker 2: Joe, what do you know about Monopoly?
Speaker 3: My daughter's really into Monopoly. She's really getting into it.
Speaker 2: Do you play with her?
Speaker 3: I do, And she's really into it, And I think
Speaker 3: she's developing some good intuitions. I think she's about capitalism, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think she could be like a little bit conservative,
Speaker 3: Like sometimes I think she should buy and she wants
Speaker 3: to like hold on to her cash, and so she
Speaker 3: like foregoes opportunities to get good properties. But I'm excited
Speaker 3: she's taken to the game.
Speaker 2: That's actually impressive impulse control for a little kid. But
Speaker 2: I do think a monopoly that best strategy is just
Speaker 2: buy everything you land on.
Speaker 3: Pretty basically, Are we going to do an episode just
Speaker 3: on an optimal monopoly strategy? Because I'd be done with that.
Speaker 2: We should actually, Okay, let me rephrase this. What do
Speaker 2: you know about Monopoly's history?
Speaker 3: Well, what I've heard, and I don't know if this
Speaker 3: is true, because it seems like it could be an
Speaker 3: urban legend. I've heard that the game was like started
Speaker 3: by some socialist or something like that who wanted to,
Speaker 3: you know, create a game that would indict capitalism. Monopoly
Speaker 3: is not considered to be a positive aspect of the
Speaker 3: market system. We usually are against those and yet I
Speaker 3: don't think many people take that lesson and became massively popular.
Speaker 3: It's a massively successful business in its own right.
Speaker 2: This is actually it's not an urban legend. It's true.
Speaker 2: So monopoly. I was reading a book about this and
Speaker 2: it's actually really fascinating. But Monopoly comes from the Landlord's Game,
Speaker 2: which was created in nineteen o three by a woman
Speaker 2: named Lizzie Maggie or Maggie, I'm not sure. And she
Speaker 2: was actually a Quaker, so sort of you know, progressive ideals,
Speaker 2: and it had almost the opposite ethos to the monopoly
Speaker 2: we know today, and it was supposed to demonstrate that
Speaker 2: an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where
Speaker 2: monopolies hold all the wealth. And there was also a
Speaker 2: version of taxation in the game that was kind of progressive.
Speaker 2: But then a company called Parker Brothers basically published a
Speaker 2: version of it in nineteen thirty five without the taxation aspect,
Speaker 2: and then Hasbro bought it in the nineteen nineties, and
Speaker 2: then that's when we started getting the sort of modern
Speaker 2: version of Monopoly that we all know today. And I
Speaker 2: have to say I was also looking at all the
Speaker 2: various versions of Monopoly that have been published over time.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, I had
Speaker 2: the Star Wars version. But if you look at an
Speaker 2: actual list of all the different monopolies that have come
Speaker 2: out over the years, it's amazing. So first of all,
Speaker 2: there's unlicensed versions like Alpakaopoly with our pakas, but there's
Speaker 2: also a Best Buy version which was licensed and it
Speaker 2: looks kind of amazing. I want to play it. It
Speaker 2: had little store departments instead of property used to buy.
Speaker 2: There's a David Bowie addition. I don't know if that
Speaker 2: interests you.
Speaker 3: So two things. One other thing I say about sometimes
Speaker 3: I've taken the kids to Atlantic City, so my kids know,
Speaker 3: like they've seen you know, they're like, oh, that's actually
Speaker 3: park place, that's actually boardwalk, since I know all the
Speaker 3: properties are streets in Atlantic City. But also they should
Speaker 3: have a version of Monopoly with a land value text.
Speaker 2: And so you get penalized for failing to get it
Speaker 2: back to its roots.
Speaker 3: Also, I think they should have a version where the
Speaker 3: more you build, the more rents go down.
Speaker 4: It's a theory.
Speaker 3: If there are more hotels and houses everywhere, then they
Speaker 3: should put it depressing anyway.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, what I was building up to is
Speaker 2: that there is also a new version of Monopoly. It
Speaker 2: is an app, an app version of the game that
Speaker 2: you can play on your phone or wherever, and it
Speaker 2: has become so popular that it's grossed more than three
Speaker 2: billion dollars in revenue since launching in April of last year.
Speaker 2: That's according to Hasbro's latest earnings. And beyond that, it
Speaker 2: is so popular that Joe, can you guess what comes next? No,
Speaker 2: it's so popular that Hasbro is launching a board game
Speaker 2: version of Monopoly. Goes so, a board game version of
Speaker 2: the app version of the board game.
Speaker 3: I love that. That's so great. Yes, that's great.
Speaker 2: Okay, we've come full circle. Anyway. The reason we were
Speaker 2: talking about Monopoly is because today we do, in fact
Speaker 2: have the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking
Speaker 2: to Chris Cox, the CEO of Hasbro, and we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking to him about the development of Monopoly
Speaker 2: over the years, but also all of their other games,
Speaker 2: including Magic the Gathering, Joe, you remember we did that
Speaker 2: episode with Richard Garfield and all the other sort of
Speaker 2: digital things they have in the works right now, and
Speaker 2: just get to handle on what a traditional toymaker is
Speaker 2: actually doing in games. So I'm very excited. Yeah, Chris,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on all.
Speaker 4: Thoughts, Gracie, Joe, thanks so much for having me and
Speaker 4: for being huge Monopoly fans.
Speaker 3: You're welcome, You're welcome.
Speaker 2: I got to say, I am very interested in the
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead Opoly, where you go on tour with the
Speaker 2: Dead presumably forever, and you travel from gig to gig
Speaker 2: trying to get rich by purchasing album recordings. That sounds fun. Okay, okay, Chris,
Speaker 2: you have a gaming background. I think you were at
Speaker 2: Wizards of the Coast, Is that right?
Speaker 4: Yep. I've been in the games industry since nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 4: or in and out of it. I started at Microsoft
Speaker 4: in their PC games division, and after about three or
Speaker 4: four months there, I was transferred into a secret project
Speaker 4: code named Xbox, and then ever since then, I've been
Speaker 4: in and out of games, working on video games, physical games,
Speaker 4: games for kids, games for adults. And most recently at
Speaker 4: Wizards of the Coast, which I helmed prior to becoming
Speaker 4: CEO of Hasbro about two years ago.
Speaker 3: Are you a game lover?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe it's obvious, but, like, you know, if
Speaker 3: you find someone who has had a twenty plus year
Speaker 3: in gaming, is there a pretty good chance that they themselves,
Speaker 3: as part of their hobbies and identities, are just really
Speaker 3: into games.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I would challenge you to find a game that
Speaker 4: I wouldn't enjoy playing. I'm a gaming omnivore. I've been
Speaker 4: playing games since. Probably the earliest game I can remember
Speaker 4: playing is Candyland, which also is a Hasburg game. I
Speaker 4: think I remember playing that when I was four with
Speaker 4: my mom, and I've been playing some version of Wizards
Speaker 4: of the Coast game since I was ten years old.
Speaker 4: I started playing Dungeons and Dragons at my best friend
Speaker 4: Hans Schroeder's house in Cincinnati, Ohio. I remember seeing like
Speaker 4: these little metal figurines in his older brother's room that
Speaker 4: were wizards and dragons that had these like cool jewels
Speaker 4: built into them, and I was like, Hey, what's that.
Speaker 4: Then they showed me a twenty sided dice and I
Speaker 4: was absolutely hooked. Started playing Magic when I was in college.
Speaker 4: All of our Avalon Hills strategy games I geeked out too,
Speaker 4: and I have a pretty rich collection of very old
Speaker 4: PC games dating back to my first like EPSOM twenty
Speaker 4: six hundred from like the early nineteen eighties and my
Speaker 4: original Mac one twenty eight bit PC.
Speaker 2: So Hasbro just released Earnings, and a lot of the discussion,
Speaker 2: a lot of the questions from analysts was all about
Speaker 2: the gaming strategy. Talk to us about what the opportunity
Speaker 2: in games actually is for Hasbro. Why does this seem
Speaker 2: to be an area of focus for you right now?
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's a couple of different things. First off,
Speaker 4: it's a very large business either both physical games as
Speaker 4: well as digital games. So inside of physical games, we
Speaker 4: invented the role playing game, We invented the trading card game, Magic,
Speaker 4: the Gathering. We were one of the earliest pioneers on
Speaker 4: mass produced board games. Milton Bradley started his eponymous board
Speaker 4: game company back in the late or the early eighteen sixties,
Speaker 4: right around the Lincoln inauguration. The Parker Brothers started their
Speaker 4: game company back I think in like the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 4: and so we've been a part of games basically as
Speaker 4: far back as you can really track them. So they're
Speaker 4: a huge part of our culture, they're a huge part
Speaker 4: of our business, they're a huge part of the identity
Speaker 4: of the company. And basically everyone plays games. It's a
Speaker 4: massive market. You know, if you go across the US,
Speaker 4: a Hasbro game is in better than nine out of
Speaker 4: ten households across the US. Games like Monopoly, Clue, Candyland,
Speaker 4: they basically have ubiquity in terms of brand awareness. And
Speaker 4: you know, as many people as play physical games, a
Speaker 4: number of people who played digital games Dwarfs even that,
Speaker 4: you know, take Wizards of the Coast, Wizards of the Coast.
Speaker 4: Game games are mag at the gathering in D and
Speaker 4: D and they're primarily sold through you know, around eight
Speaker 4: to ten thousand mom and pop style hobby stores around
Speaker 4: the world. About seventy million people play those kinds of
Speaker 4: games and shop at those kinds of stores. They primarily
Speaker 4: sell strategy games, trading card games, role playing games, and
Speaker 4: kind of like crunchier board games. The number of people
Speaker 4: who play those types of games on their PC, phone
Speaker 4: or a console is ten to twelve XA around the world.
Speaker 4: It's like seven hundred million to eight hundred million play
Speaker 4: those kinds of games, So I mean that's a pretty
Speaker 4: healthy hunk of the world's population. It's growing. The games
Speaker 4: industry has been growing at kind of call it a
Speaker 4: five to eight percent clip for basically as long as
Speaker 4: tracking goes back, go back to the nineties, and it
Speaker 4: just continues to expand in terms of the number of
Speaker 4: people who play games, where they play games, how they
Speaker 4: play games, and the technological innovation that fuels it. So
Speaker 4: Pasbro's all in and I'm a big advocate for it
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: So Tracy mentioned Monopoly Go, the mobile game and three
Speaker 3: billion in revenue since it's launched in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: First of all, like, I haven't played it. What is
Speaker 3: the game Monopoly Go? Because I take it it's distinct.
Speaker 3: But then like, what is the business model of Monopoly Go?
Speaker 3: How does it make money?
Speaker 4: Well? I think how it engages people and the business
Speaker 4: model go hand in hand. Yeah, And Monopoly Go effectively
Speaker 4: takes the essence of the board game, the essence of
Speaker 4: the fun of the board game, which is deal making
Speaker 4: and lighthearted, stabbing your friends in the back, yes, and
Speaker 4: gamifies it on a phone. You basically go around boards,
Speaker 4: around the world collecting properties, you collect cash, you collect,
Speaker 4: fun digital items, you collect kind of power ups and dice,
Speaker 4: and then you're able to raid your friends and kind
Speaker 4: of like through a series of minigames, either you know,
Speaker 4: set them back a little bit, challenge them to some
Speaker 4: fun kind of minigames or adventures, and it creates that
Speaker 4: kind of dynamic that you see around the board when
Speaker 4: you're playing with your family or with your friends, where
Speaker 4: someone's trying to slip one hundred from out of the bank,
Speaker 4: or someone's trying to slip park Place out of the
Speaker 4: slots and the board even though it hasn't been built,
Speaker 4: or they're pushing like a little extra house onto a
Speaker 4: row of three houses and hoping that you don't notice.
Speaker 4: And it's that kind of fun kind of mischief that
Speaker 4: I think makes the game great to play in person,
Speaker 4: and that scope ly our partner who's made the game
Speaker 4: has done a fantastic job capturing the essence of and
Speaker 4: I think it's what really has driven the popularity of it.
Speaker 4: The business model just kind of carries on that fun.
Speaker 4: The more that you play, the more friends that you
Speaker 4: connect and can play with and kind of create that fun,
Speaker 4: loving mischief with the more fun the game is, the
Speaker 4: more engaging the game is, and just the more opportunities
Speaker 4: there are for you to extend the play. And really
Speaker 4: the kind of the way that the game makes money
Speaker 4: is this concept of earning dice and buying extra dice
Speaker 4: because the dice give you the ability to make extra
Speaker 4: moves and extra turns. You don't have to pay a
Speaker 4: cent to play the game, and you can have a
Speaker 4: lot of fun playing the game for free. But if
Speaker 4: you feel a little bit of an extra challenge, or
Speaker 4: you want to get a couple steps ahead of your
Speaker 4: friend who lives across the country, or you want to
Speaker 4: be the first to be able to raid the board
Speaker 4: in Sydney out of your friend group, you might be
Speaker 4: incentivized to pay a dollar or two to get some
Speaker 4: extra dice and just get the jump on your quote
Speaker 4: unquote competition.
Speaker 2: Wow, it sounds like capitalism on steroids. Like say what
Speaker 2: you will about the original monopoly, but it respected property rights.
Speaker 2: You couldn't like steal property. Is there anything surprising that
Speaker 2: you've learned from the Monopoly Go experience. I was reading
Speaker 2: through the earnings transcript, for instance, and there was a
Speaker 2: lot of discussion about seasonality and you weren't quite sure
Speaker 2: what the seasonality was with something like Monopoly Go. Talk
Speaker 2: to us about how that sort of business aspect of
Speaker 2: it all is unfolding.
Speaker 4: Well, Monopoly Goo is the most successful mobile game outside
Speaker 4: of China in history, So it's really an unprecedented scale
Speaker 4: of game and scale of building its engagement and building
Speaker 4: its audience. So when you have an end of one,
Speaker 4: there aren't a lot of other games that you can
Speaker 4: go compare against and say, oh, it's going to behave
Speaker 4: like X, or it's going to behave like Why. There's
Speaker 4: some games that are closed on go, you know, Candy Crush,
Speaker 4: Clash of Clans, these kind of more casual to mid
Speaker 4: core games that have a very compelling social engagement loop
Speaker 4: associated with them, and several of those, particularly some of
Speaker 4: the more casual versions of those, like some of the
Speaker 4: Match three games like a Candy Crush, do exhibit a
Speaker 4: degree of seasonality. POKEMONO, particularly in its early days, certainly did,
Speaker 4: particularly when it was all about going outside and kind
Speaker 4: of experiencing locales. It was a little bit more weather
Speaker 4: based back then, so there is a degree of that,
Speaker 4: But you know, we're kind of learning as we go
Speaker 4: and we're learning with scope ly as we go. The
Speaker 4: good news there is scope Lee's arguably one of the
Speaker 4: biggest and best mobile games publishers in the world. They
Speaker 4: have a lot of experience with a lot of other
Speaker 4: games that are similar in audience type and engagement loops
Speaker 4: as a game like Monopoly Go, so we're able to
Speaker 4: leverage those. But you know, a game like Scrabble with
Speaker 4: Buddies or Yatzie with Buddies. There's still successful games, but
Speaker 4: they're ten x smaller than Monopoly Go. So just given
Speaker 4: that scale in size and audience reach, there's gonna be
Speaker 4: nuances that you're gonna discover for the first time simply
Speaker 4: by being a pioneer.
Speaker 3: There is this phenomenon that people in the mobile gaming
Speaker 3: industry you talk about. I think they call it like
Speaker 3: the sharkfin effect, which is like a game will get
Speaker 3: really popular and then it'll fade very fast. And I
Speaker 3: think there was that. You know, Flappy Birds was one,
Speaker 3: and I remember like people like played that like crazy
Speaker 3: for a little while and then it like disappeared. I
Speaker 3: got into this game, Elto's Adventure. I heard people talk
Speaker 3: about that. I forgot about it. There are a few
Speaker 3: others this seems to be a recurring thing. Can you
Speaker 3: describe why that happens? Why you see certain games exploded
Speaker 3: popularity and then a year later they go like what
Speaker 3: is the sort of impulse that that happens? And then like,
Speaker 3: how do you think about avoiding that risk? So that okay,
Speaker 3: this everyone's playing Monopoly, go and then next year they're
Speaker 3: moving on to something else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is probably a better question for the team
Speaker 4: at scopely since they're the experts. But I'll give you
Speaker 4: my two cents. So a lot of games have a
Speaker 4: very fun kind of initial loop and they're very engaging
Speaker 4: for a call it a half hour, an hour and
Speaker 4: maybe aswards of ten to twenty hours, so you know,
Speaker 4: they kind of almost operate, particularly in the mobile space.
Speaker 4: Is the equivalent of like a fidget spinner. It's something
Speaker 4: to kind of keep your fingers busy. It helps to
Speaker 4: occupy the time while you're on the subway or just
Speaker 4: in a waiting room.
Speaker 3: I got really Game eight for that reason. Actually is
Speaker 3: another one anyway, Sorry, keep going.
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, they don't really
Speaker 4: change up the game dynamic that much, or they don't
Speaker 4: really drive kind of like additional loops that engage you
Speaker 4: in new or different ways or different challenges. So a
Speaker 4: lot of the games that have that quote unquote shark
Speaker 4: thin effect, something that's really fun and really compelling, and
Speaker 4: they keep people for call it three days or seven days.
Speaker 4: But then they tend to tail off, you know. The
Speaker 4: games that tend to be enduring, that tend to do
Speaker 4: very very well. They tend to be games that they
Speaker 4: have not just an initial loop, but they have multiple
Speaker 4: loops and multiple layers the deeper you get into Itnopoly
Speaker 4: Go is an example of that. Other games that have
Speaker 4: been super successful of that are games like Clash of
Speaker 4: Clans or Candy Crush Saga. And what they tend to
Speaker 4: do is the complexity of the game builds over time.
Speaker 4: The amount of things that you can do, the amount
Speaker 4: of minigames that you can do, gets bigger and bigger,
Speaker 4: but at a manageable pace. And they add in a
Speaker 4: social component to it so that it's not just you
Speaker 4: playing the game, but you feel like you're playing the
Speaker 4: game with a large circle of your friends and associates,
Speaker 4: which also makes it even more fun because the challenges
Speaker 4: just aren't you as a single play the challenges are
Speaker 4: with you as a group of people, and so obviously
Speaker 4: it's more fun to play with multiple people and creating
Speaker 4: social dynamics and kind of raiding each other or ribbing
Speaker 4: each other or having like some fun loving mischief with
Speaker 4: each other. That makes the game endure. So the games
Speaker 4: that like do achieve hyper scale, like a monopoly go,
Speaker 4: they tend to maintain that hyper scale for a very
Speaker 4: long time. If you go back and look at just
Speaker 4: in the US, the top twenty games in the US today,
Speaker 4: half of them have been in the market for over
Speaker 4: five years, and several of them have been in the
Speaker 4: market for you know, upwards of eight to ten years.
Speaker 4: And you know, sure they have a big year one,
Speaker 4: they have a big year two, and then they start
Speaker 4: to taper a bit after that, but they maintain at
Speaker 4: a very very healthy rate.
Speaker 2: So this might sound like a weird question, but how
Speaker 2: do you know when a game is a hit? And
Speaker 2: how do you sort of judge the success of a game.
Speaker 2: Is it purely by the amount of dollars that it
Speaker 2: brings in, or is it virality or bringing people into
Speaker 2: like the Hasbro network. How do you judge success here?
Speaker 4: Well, I think it depends on the game. So when
Speaker 4: you're looking at a mobile game or what we call
Speaker 4: games as a service, which usually are games that are
Speaker 4: either free to acquire upfront or cost very little upfront,
Speaker 4: but you tend to make money off of based off
Speaker 4: of how frequently and long people play because there's just
Speaker 4: engagement loops that engage them and give them opportunities to
Speaker 4: power things up or customize the game. You tend to
Speaker 4: look at the retention rates on those games, and so
Speaker 4: usually you look at a D one, a D three,
Speaker 4: a D seven, and a D thirty retention rate on
Speaker 4: those games, and you're going to want to see games.
Speaker 4: It will vary based off of the genre, but you're
Speaker 4: typically going to want to see a D one retention
Speaker 4: rate access of forty percent, ideally in excess to fifty percent.
Speaker 4: You're going to want to see a D seven retention
Speaker 4: rate meaning how many people who started a week ago
Speaker 4: are still playing after seven days in excess of call
Speaker 4: it twenty to thirty percent, and then you're going to
Speaker 4: ideally want to see a D thirty retention rate in
Speaker 4: the ten to fifteen percent range. If you have a
Speaker 4: game that's retaining users like that and engaging players at
Speaker 4: a pretty snappy clip, you probably have the makings of
Speaker 4: a really, really good and long lasting business. So an
Speaker 4: example of a game that Hasbro does that has retention
Speaker 4: rates like that would be mag at the Gathering Arena.
Speaker 4: It's a free version of our most popular brand, Match
Speaker 4: at the Gathering, which is a billion dollar plus trading
Speaker 4: card game. It actually invented the trading card genre, and
Speaker 4: it has retention rates that are astronomical. They're at the
Speaker 4: high end of all those balns that I talked about,
Speaker 4: And you know, we actually measured loyalty and a game
Speaker 4: like Arena in months and years as opposed to days.
Speaker 4: Like many mobile games like a Flappy Bird for instance,
Speaker 4: as good as it is, that tends to have a
Speaker 4: high churn rate. And so generally speaking, the longer you're
Speaker 4: able to engage people and the more fun they're going
Speaker 4: to have, the more opportunities you have to be able
Speaker 4: to make a fair profit off of the game. And
Speaker 4: then there's premium games, which have kind of a different model.
Speaker 4: A premium game is kind of what we all might
Speaker 4: remember from, you know, when we were kids buying games
Speaker 4: for a Nintendo or buying games for a PlayStation or
Speaker 4: an Xbox. You pay fifty dollars sixty dollars sometimes upwards
Speaker 4: of seventy dollars up front. You typically get almost all
Speaker 4: the value from that initial purchase. Maybe you sell downloadable content,
Speaker 4: maybe there's a subscription that you can join, but most
Speaker 4: typically you get the value up front. And what you
Speaker 4: try to do there is you try to give a
Speaker 4: very high end kind of blockbuster entertainment experience in exchange
Speaker 4: for that high upfront cost. And you know, ideally you
Speaker 4: want to maintain people for the twenty to one hundred
Speaker 4: hours of gameplay, but it's not as important. What's important
Speaker 4: is that they have a really fun first five to
Speaker 4: ten hours and feel satisfied by the game, whereas in mobile,
Speaker 4: really the first five to ten hours is just the
Speaker 4: beginning of the engagement loop. You want to see players
Speaker 4: hang around for ideally weeks, if not months and years
Speaker 4: and really kind of make it a part of their
Speaker 4: daily routine.
Speaker 3: So Tracy mentioned in the beginning that the surreality of
Speaker 3: the fact that there's now a physical version of the
Speaker 3: mobile game, of the physical version of Monopoly, obviously it's tweaked.
Speaker 3: You know, something that people talk about in culture generally,
Speaker 3: and I often wonder if it's sort of wish casting
Speaker 3: and not really a real thing. It's like, oh, people
Speaker 3: wanting to like return to the analog, and there are
Speaker 3: always people like oh, I think people are going to
Speaker 3: want to read physical papers and nice heavy stock physical
Speaker 3: magazines and maybe be on their phones a little bit less.
Speaker 3: And again I always wonder if it's wishful thinking. But
Speaker 3: in the game realm specifically, is this a real phenomenon
Speaker 3: where you see people wanting to have that sort of tactile,
Speaker 3: physical experience that they previously had on games, or is
Speaker 3: this just a distinct opportunity specifically associated with the success
Speaker 3: of Monopoly Go.
Speaker 4: I think it's very real phenomena, and I think it's
Speaker 4: been what's powering the physical games portfolio for US and
Speaker 4: other companies for the last decade plus, and I think
Speaker 4: it's going to power it for the certainly the foreseeable future.
Speaker 4: People hunger for authentic connection, and a game gives people
Speaker 4: kind of an easy rule book for creating authentic connection.
Speaker 4: It's an easy way for families to get together and
Speaker 4: spend some quality time at a table, phones down and
Speaker 4: people engaged on the totem that is the game. It's
Speaker 4: a great way to find an excuse to get together
Speaker 4: with friends on a regular basis to go through an
Speaker 4: adventure together like we do with Dungeons and Dragons. It's
Speaker 4: a fantastic way for you know, people who are new
Speaker 4: to a city and want to plug in with people
Speaker 4: who have shared interests, like we see with Magic the
Speaker 4: Gathering and the network of stores that we call the
Speaker 4: Wizard's Play Network who put on over a million play
Speaker 4: events per year across those stores, that people can come
Speaker 4: in and find a friend who loves the game and
Speaker 4: has a similar passion to them. And you know, I
Speaker 4: don't see that ebbing, if anything, I see that hunger
Speaker 4: for physical connection and that desire to kind of create
Speaker 4: a shared story through the adventure that a game provides.
Speaker 4: As only growing it to be more and more important
Speaker 4: to people as we digitize more and more.
Speaker 2: Since you brought up Magic the Gathering, one thing I've
Speaker 2: been wondering is how do you balance the sort of
Speaker 2: original attraction of the game with the expansion and the
Speaker 2: need to you know, basically roll out new products and
Speaker 2: get people buying new cards. And one of the things
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about, you know, call me a Magic
Speaker 2: the Gathering purist, but you've been doing a lot of
Speaker 2: collaborations with TV shows, and I think you just announced
Speaker 2: something with the Marvel universe, and I personally find some
Speaker 2: of these tie ins kind of weird. Like I can't
Speaker 2: imagine playing cards and being like I attack with Rick
Speaker 2: from The Walking Dead and then I block with iron
Speaker 2: Man or something like that.
Speaker 3: How do you.
Speaker 2: Balance the originality of the experience or the initial attraction
Speaker 2: to the game with some of this like new licensing
Speaker 2: driven growth.
Speaker 4: I think what's great about this podcast, Tracy, is what
Speaker 4: you find weird. I find amazing. You know, as a player,
Speaker 4: you know, hey, sign me up for Rick battling iron
Speaker 4: Man set against a bunch of space marines from Warhammer
Speaker 4: forty K. That sounds like a really fun gaming time
Speaker 4: to me. And I think that's the magic of what
Speaker 4: we've been doing with Magic for the last five years.
Speaker 4: We don't want to just be trapped in amber. We
Speaker 4: don't want the game to just be the same thing
Speaker 4: that it's been for the last thirty years. We want
Speaker 4: it to change and we want it to evolve, but
Speaker 4: we also want it to be fully backwards compatible and
Speaker 4: continuously offering flavors that bring in more and more people
Speaker 4: to the table and just make the community richer and
Speaker 4: more vibrant. Now you know. The downside to it is
Speaker 4: there are some people who are traditionalists. There are some
Speaker 4: people who are completionists, and they don't necessarily like the changes,
Speaker 4: but that tends to be the significant minority. There's way, way,
Speaker 4: way more people who want to weigh into what, in
Speaker 4: my opinion, is one of the best games ever invented
Speaker 4: to play with ips that they love, with cards that
Speaker 4: are instantly familiar to them, and we found what we
Speaker 4: call Universes Beyond, which are these tie ins we do
Speaker 4: with other brands to be by far the most successful
Speaker 4: new player introduction that we've ever done in physical cards.
Speaker 3: Well, say, can you explain that last part further? What's
Speaker 3: the new move that has been so successful.
Speaker 4: It's called the Universes Beyond, which is our invitation of
Speaker 4: other brands to come into our play platform and be
Speaker 4: able to experience the magic of magic. It's not an
Speaker 4: original strategy. It's actually a very time test strategy. You know,
Speaker 4: you look at games like Fortnite, they do constant seasons
Speaker 4: with outside ip that really spices up the game and
Speaker 4: invites new people in. Lego has been doing it for forever,
Speaker 4: you know, they started with Star Wars and have expanded
Speaker 4: to you know, they do Transformers now, they do Pepa Pig, now,
Speaker 4: they do D and D now. It just makes the
Speaker 4: play system a richer playground for people to be able
Speaker 4: to experience. Now, we still have all the traditional elves
Speaker 4: and dragons and heroes and lore from Magic, and we
Speaker 4: always have sets for those, and we always make sure
Speaker 4: all the cards inside of Magic, and I think at
Speaker 4: this point we're getting close to between twenty to twenty
Speaker 4: five thousand unique cards that exist in the Magic Universe.
Speaker 4: All of those cards are fully compatible with each other.
Speaker 4: You can buy a pack of cards from nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 4: and I wouldn't recommend cracking them open because they're very
Speaker 4: valuable if you buy them, But you could and you
Speaker 4: could play with the pack of cards that you bought
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty three and they would be fully compatible
Speaker 4: with each other. And you know, I think enriching that
Speaker 4: play system with a lot of fantastic brands that have
Speaker 4: very vibrant fan communities just makes Magic more magical to play. Joe.
Speaker 2: After we recorded that episode with Richard Garfield, I went
Speaker 2: off to look to see if I could find my
Speaker 2: old Magic the gathering cards. These would have been from
Speaker 2: like nineteen ninety four, ninety five, and I can't find
Speaker 2: them anywhere. And I'm so sad because not only do
Speaker 2: I think they are worth like a decent amount of
Speaker 2: money nowadays, but I would actually like to see them again.
Speaker 2: And I have this vision in my mind of exactly
Speaker 2: where they are. They were in an after eight mint container. Oh,
Speaker 2: and I recall seeing it somewhere like in the past
Speaker 2: twenty years. But I'll find it.
Speaker 4: You'll find it.
Speaker 3: I know I have old baseball cards and a record
Speaker 3: collection somewhere, and I have no idea where there's. You know,
Speaker 3: something I'm interested in speaking of, like culture, is the
Speaker 3: sort of like intergenerational cultural transmission. And you know, when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, I listened to the same music
Speaker 3: as my parents because they would put on music and
Speaker 3: I was in the room, and so that's what I
Speaker 3: heard and that's what I got into. And to some extent,
Speaker 3: that doesn't happen the same way with music anymore, because
Speaker 3: my kids might be on headphones or I might be
Speaker 3: on headphones. So when I'm listening to music, it's not
Speaker 3: just sort of blasting throughout the living room or wherever
Speaker 3: it is you know, when you think about like these
Speaker 3: like games like these like backwards compatible games like you know,
Speaker 3: like Magic and so forth, I'm curious, like how you
Speaker 3: see that playing out in the game space. Games getting
Speaker 3: passed on. Parents play with their kids. Obviously I played
Speaker 3: Monopoly with my daughter. I think we also play like
Speaker 3: and ladders and stuff like that. But then there is
Speaker 3: this element that they have all the avenues of finding games,
Speaker 3: whether it's online or on a phone, that are not
Speaker 3: you know, something I would have played. And I'm sort
Speaker 3: of curious about the phenomenon of like passing down games
Speaker 3: and how you think about the durability of brands in
Speaker 3: this aspect.
Speaker 4: I think it's the primary way people learn about a
Speaker 4: new game is through their parents playing around family board
Speaker 4: game night, you know, whether that's a Friday or Thursday
Speaker 4: or pick your boys and experiencing the joy and you know,
Speaker 4: passing on like a treasured memory from your childhood to
Speaker 4: your kids. I know my son loves D and D.
Speaker 4: He loves Magic. He got that from me. The favorite
Speaker 4: game our family plays is Monopoly. You know, we try
Speaker 4: playing well, we play it less because my wife dislikes
Speaker 4: how much we cheat. But the kids in chip ceo.
Speaker 3: Wait do you it's admitting that cheer? Wait do you
Speaker 3: play that? If you land on free parking you get
Speaker 3: cash in the middle or like, where do you stand on?
Speaker 4: That is often unnecessary for my kids and I because
Speaker 4: we seem to always have a magical font of cash.
Speaker 4: Our favorite version is the cheaters edition. We actually came
Speaker 4: out with a version of Monopoly which was focused on
Speaker 4: things that you needed to cheat on, tasks you needed
Speaker 4: to do, and basically, like we know, the game of
Speaker 4: Monopoly is done at our house when my wife flips
Speaker 4: the board, usually around turn four or five. Game. But
Speaker 4: it's fun. And you know, my kids love Monopoly. Now
Speaker 4: my son loves magic and D and D. And you
Speaker 4: do it with video games as well. Like to me,
Speaker 4: games are such powerful ip you know, they might not
Speaker 4: create like these cultural moments that a big Hollywood movie does, right,
Speaker 4: but they create millions upon millions of very powerful personal moments.
Speaker 4: And that's why brands like Monopoly can translate so well
Speaker 4: from a board game to a multi billion dollar mobile
Speaker 4: game back to a board game again, because people have
Speaker 4: such intimate experience with them that has this deep personal
Speaker 4: connection usually resulting from you know, a very fond memory
Speaker 4: of siblings against siblings, friends with friends or parents and
Speaker 4: kids circling around a table.
Speaker 3: You mentioned cultural moment. You know, I'm curious. Like last year,
Speaker 3: I guess, uh, Mattel had that huge hit with the
Speaker 3: Barbie movie. I know you have all this ip. Are
Speaker 3: you doing anything similar in terms of sort of like
Speaker 3: big like adult oriented movies around some of the brands
Speaker 3: that you have within the broader Hasbro world?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, for sure. I think it last count Transformers
Speaker 4: as a five billion dollar plus box office franchise. I
Speaker 4: think it's in the top ten box office franchises of
Speaker 4: all time. We have a new movie coming out in
Speaker 4: September called Transformers One. It's the origin story of Optimus
Speaker 4: Prime and Megatron back when they were friends as young
Speaker 4: cogless robots on Cybertron and how the clash between them
Speaker 4: and the Autobots and Decepticons emerged. Directed by Josh Cooley,
Speaker 4: who I think did Toy Story three or Toy Story four.
Speaker 4: And it's been getting really good feedback from things like
Speaker 4: San Diego Comic Con. Fans are excited for it, and
Speaker 4: we hope families will enjoy it too. And then we
Speaker 4: have at last count I think we have thirty five
Speaker 4: entertainment projects in development. You know, you brought up the
Speaker 4: Barbie movie. Barbie herself is the executive producer of our
Speaker 4: Monopoly movie with Lionsgate. We have a Clue movie.
Speaker 3: And executive producer, yeah.
Speaker 4: Margot Robbie's Lucky count.
Speaker 2: The Doll.
Speaker 4: Okay, we did release a version of Barbie Monopoly last
Speaker 4: year and it was one of the most successful Monopoly
Speaker 4: versions from last year. So there's a lot of tie ins.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean we have a ton of content
Speaker 4: coming out. You know, Transformers is probably the movie that
Speaker 4: the toy industry kind of holds up as like great
Speaker 4: synergies between selling product and creating a great story. You know,
Speaker 4: last year with Transformers Rise of the Beast, we had
Speaker 4: a ninety percent uplift in point of sale over like
Speaker 4: the twelve weeks of the movie, and I think we
Speaker 4: did something like thirty or forty percent pos point of
Speaker 4: sale uplift during the whole year from that movie. So,
Speaker 4: you know, Transformers movies aren't just fun. They sell a
Speaker 4: lot of toys.
Speaker 3: By the way, Tracy, I see has Bro has the
Speaker 3: ipated Gem, which I think could be a huge hit.
Speaker 2: Wait, is this the old the old one from the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, people will love a gym movie. Yeah. So
Speaker 3: I'm just saying I'm giving a free idea here.
Speaker 2: Think there was a contempt I wanted to talk about AI,
Speaker 2: and there's sort of two different paths we could go
Speaker 2: down here, because number one, I know you're experimenting with
Speaker 2: some AI based products, so like an AI driven Ouiji board,
Speaker 2: which sounds kind of fun. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 2: has Bro has got to be one of the biggest
Speaker 2: commissioners of like science fiction and fantasy art in the world,
Speaker 2: and I know there's a lot of discussion nowadays about
Speaker 2: how much of that is going to end up being
Speaker 2: AI generated. And I believe you had a big round
Speaker 2: of layoffs announced last year and they're probably still ongoing.
Speaker 2: A lot of those were in the art department. So
Speaker 2: can you talk to us about the impact of AI
Speaker 2: on your business, both in terms of new products and
Speaker 2: then also I guess how it would affect the art
Speaker 2: of a lot of your games.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Sure. Actually, just to correct it upfront, we are
Speaker 4: going through a series of layoffs as part of restructuring
Speaker 4: our toy and commercial organizations. But that's not affecting Wizards
Speaker 4: of the Coast. They had some modest impacts, but that
Speaker 4: was actually mostly kind of the back office related roles.
Speaker 4: We really prize design talent, art talent, and generally creativity.
Speaker 4: It's what fuels our brands. We prize it both internally
Speaker 4: in terms of the employees we have and the great
Speaker 4: talent that we're able to attract to the company. And
Speaker 4: we really prize it in terms of you know, really
Speaker 4: the Triple A top shelf artists that we work with
Speaker 4: both to help us drive concept art and new product development,
Speaker 4: as well as all the art commissioning we do for
Speaker 4: the thousands of new magic cards and D and D
Speaker 4: books and imagery that we do every year. You know,
Speaker 4: I would say for AI, AI is a big topic,
Speaker 4: like we could probably do like three or four podcasts
Speaker 4: on that and its impacts on any given industry. I
Speaker 4: suppose I'll start with the headline color Meia and AII optimist.
Speaker 4: In terms of coming from the industry of play, it's
Speaker 4: an incredibly playful, very high impact set of technologies that
Speaker 4: really can light up the average player, the average fans.
Speaker 4: Creativity really creates and enables amazing user generated content. And
Speaker 4: as someone who builds games that really rely on storytelling,
Speaker 4: that relies on an end user's creativity and people collaborating
Speaker 4: around a table. I think there's really exciting possibilities for it.
Speaker 4: You know. That said, we're in a lot of undiscovered
Speaker 4: country as it relates to AI, and we have to
Speaker 4: deploy it very, very responsibly and at a measured pace
Speaker 4: because we got to make sure that creatives are paid
Speaker 4: for their work. You know, we're a company that values creativity,
Speaker 4: and therefore we value creatives. So we're thinking through, how
Speaker 4: do we do this way that's ethical, that's responsible, that
Speaker 4: gives voice actors, gives actors, gives artists, gives writers their
Speaker 4: fair shake inside of it. And you know, I think
Speaker 4: it's going to take us a little bit of time
Speaker 4: and the industry as a whole to figure it out.
Speaker 4: But I'm pleased with how we're going about it. I'm
Speaker 4: sure there'll be instances where you know, we have to
Speaker 4: police things carefully. You know, you'll see AI pop up
Speaker 4: in art now and then that's not something that we're
Speaker 4: doing by design. It's something that just happens when you
Speaker 4: work with hundreds of different artists who have different kind
Speaker 4: of motivations and different kind of thoughts on things. Generally speaking,
Speaker 4: in our finished products, everything will be human created and
Speaker 4: human finished. However, when we think about AI enabled tools
Speaker 4: that kind of bring fun to life and it enables
Speaker 4: users to be able to create things, sure, I think
Speaker 4: we will use our art, we will use ORIP, and
Speaker 4: we will try to use that to create ethically trained
Speaker 4: art and ethically trained AI tools that kind of bring
Speaker 4: imaginations to life. You know, if I just look at
Speaker 4: like my own D and D groups, and I play
Speaker 4: in three different D and D groups, nice, I can't
Speaker 4: tell you a single person around the table who doesn't
Speaker 4: use AI in some way, shape or form to help
Speaker 4: either craft their character, help inspire an adventure, bring imagery
Speaker 4: and audio to life. And so you know, if that's
Speaker 4: just my little kind of ballpark of twenty or thirty
Speaker 4: players that I play with on the regular, I'm sure
Speaker 4: that's happening across the vast tens of millions of people
Speaker 4: who play the game. And so when your users are
Speaker 4: telling you that they're using a tool and that they're
Speaker 4: valuing it, I think you have to take notice and
Speaker 4: you have to figure out how to harness it.
Speaker 2: Oh this reminds me, actually, I remember hearing about the
Speaker 2: Open gaming license controversy for Dungeons and Dragons, and there
Speaker 2: was a lot of debate and a lot of outrage
Speaker 2: initially about some of the changes you were proposing. But
Speaker 2: since we're on the topic of you know, user generated
Speaker 2: content and Dungeons and Dragons is famous for the amount
Speaker 2: of participation that gamers actually have, and that talked to
Speaker 2: us about how that controversy, like, what were the lessons
Speaker 2: learned from that and how did it all end, because
Speaker 2: I think it's been resolved somewhat at this point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that was about a year and a
Speaker 4: half ago, and that was a serious case of foot
Speaker 4: and mouth disease. From our perspective, we did it wrong
Speaker 4: and we apologized and I think we quickly made amends.
Speaker 4: I think where we were coming from on that whole
Speaker 4: thing and the Open Game License, for people who don't
Speaker 4: know it, was something that was established about twenty ish
Speaker 4: years ago that basically opens up the rule set and
Speaker 4: some of the core content for Dungeons and Dragons to
Speaker 4: create a lingu of frame, a rule set and set
Speaker 4: of content for people to be able to play tabletop
Speaker 4: role playing games. So what we were trying to do is.
Speaker 4: We were trying to evolve it because a document that
Speaker 4: was created in two thousand and two didn't foresee the
Speaker 4: rise of video games, it didn't foresee the rise of
Speaker 4: AI tools, it didn't foresee even things like content streaming.
Speaker 4: So our goal there was to try to protect an
Speaker 4: end user's ability to be able to make content and
Speaker 4: have fun, and a creator's ability to create content and
Speaker 4: be able to make a living off of it, while
Speaker 4: preventing kind of like a quick serve restaurant from using
Speaker 4: the D and D brand to sell tacos, or a
Speaker 4: big video game company to be able to create a
Speaker 4: video game using the IP in a way that wasn't
Speaker 4: fair to us as the kind of quote unquote brand owners,
Speaker 4: or maybe do something that we didn't necessarily like with
Speaker 4: the brand, or had content that was inappropriate, which happens
Speaker 4: when you have tons of millions of users making content.
Speaker 4: I think we found a fair and equitable solution to it.
Speaker 4: You know, if anything, we embraced open source even more.
Speaker 4: We also are opening up our own distribution platforms like
Speaker 4: D and D Beyond to you know, create marketplaces where
Speaker 4: more and more creators and more and more users can
Speaker 4: be able to share their content and hopefully, you know,
Speaker 4: make a nice living off of their content. I think
Speaker 4: you're going to see more and more from that from
Speaker 4: us in terms of how we expand that marketplace opportunity
Speaker 4: and how we think about new ways that they can
Speaker 4: create content, for instance, on something we're calling a virtual tabletop,
Speaker 4: which is an Unreal Engine five powered kind of like sandbox,
Speaker 4: where you can build full three D models of like
Speaker 4: miniatures and buildings and special effects. And you know, I
Speaker 4: think that'll be a wonderful opportunity for people and really
Speaker 4: leverage kind of the legacy of the OGL in a
Speaker 4: positive and new way.
Speaker 2: Oh that sounds really fun. What are your favorite games
Speaker 2: to play? Give us some recommendations, and they don't all
Speaker 2: have to be from the Hawsbro universe, but you know,
Speaker 2: having spoken to you, it sounds like a lot of them.
Speaker 4: Are fortunately, many, many, many of them are well. Certainly,
Speaker 4: if you're into role playing games and you haven't played
Speaker 4: Balder's Gate three, that's a seminal role playing game. It
Speaker 4: won I think it swept all of the major Game
Speaker 4: of the Year awards. It swept all of the major
Speaker 4: role playing Game of the Year awards, and it's just
Speaker 4: a fabulous game from our partners with Larry, and I
Speaker 4: think they hit a home run on that. I obviously
Speaker 4: think Monopoly Go is a lot of fun, and there's
Speaker 4: several hundred million people who agree with me, so I
Speaker 4: think if you're looking for something to tick some time
Speaker 4: away on your subway commute, that one's a lot of
Speaker 4: fun as well. I'm kind of a hardcore, crunchy gamer,
Speaker 4: I think you can tell based on my answers and
Speaker 4: a little bit nerdy, but actually my favorite game is Scrabble,
Speaker 4: so I really enjoy playing that. And I suppose if
Speaker 4: I was going to pick a competitors game, what's a
Speaker 4: fun game that I play with my family from a competitor,
Speaker 4: so I will pick two. If you're a little nerdy
Speaker 4: and want a fun kind of D and D light experience,
Speaker 4: Munchkin is probably one of my family's favorite games that
Speaker 4: has a very Monopoly esque kind of vibe to it,
Speaker 4: where you're in coopetition trying to be the first tiny
Speaker 4: creature to complete a dungeon and power yourselves up, and
Speaker 4: then of course ultimately the other players who've been helping
Speaker 4: you stabs you in the back at the end to
Speaker 4: prevent you from Being First, and then another family favorite,
Speaker 4: this one I think is from Asmodi out of Europe
Speaker 4: is Ticket to Ride. That's just a really fun kind
Speaker 4: of travel themed game where you become kind of a
Speaker 4: railroad tycoon. So that's a fun one too.
Speaker 2: Oh, both of these sound amazing. Sorry, I'm looking them
Speaker 2: up as you speak. That sounds great, okay, Chris Cox,
Speaker 2: the CEO of hasan Bro, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: coming on of those.
Speaker 4: Hey, thank you so much for having me, Joe.
Speaker 2: I thought that was a fun conversation. I just like
Speaker 2: talking about games.
Speaker 3: Really, Tracy, are you ever going to invite me to
Speaker 3: one of your game made ups out up in Connecticut?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I would love you to come play board games, Joe.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah, okay, I'll come out. What game are we
Speaker 3: going to play?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: You know, this isn't really a board game per se,
Speaker 2: but I would love to play Avalon with you. I
Speaker 2: think you'd be good at it. Okay, this is the
Speaker 2: one where you basically lie to your friends and annoy
Speaker 2: everyone that you know.
Speaker 3: I'm done with that. So, in all seriousness, it is
Speaker 3: interesting to think about game. You know, people are always
Speaker 3: talking about, Oh, we want like real world connection. If
Speaker 3: it's like oh third Spaces and all this stuff. It
Speaker 3: is interesting to think like games are a little little
Speaker 3: bit unique in that respect in which there is this
Speaker 3: sort of like in person put down the phone community event,
Speaker 3: Like there's you know, people play games on their phone,
Speaker 3: people play them on their computers. But there is something
Speaker 3: like powerful about a board game from a sort of
Speaker 3: social perspective. Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And I have to say board game cafes, of
Speaker 2: which there seem to be there are more of those
Speaker 2: in New York than there used to be. Those are fantastic,
Speaker 2: like spaces just to socialize. I love going to those.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I thought was really interesting was
Speaker 2: the discussion about AI generated Arn't and the sort of
Speaker 2: balancing act there also kind of funny to discuss that
Speaker 2: in the context of the Dungeons and Dragons licensing controversy.
Speaker 3: Also, I thought it was interesting and I was a
Speaker 3: little bit had my mind blown that when Chris was
Speaker 3: talking about his own gaming community and coming up with
Speaker 3: the stories that every single one of them is using
Speaker 3: AI for that purpose. Yeah, which, I you know, you
Speaker 3: figure out some people when they're like developing a story
Speaker 3: or going to use it. But the fact that's like
Speaker 3: one hundred percent of his community is doing that is
Speaker 3: pretty powerful.
Speaker 2: Well, and also like how do businesses even start to
Speaker 2: take that into account? And Chris mentioned this, but the
Speaker 2: idea that like, Okay, you're working with hundreds, if not thousands,
Speaker 2: of different artists, some of them might be using AI, right,
Speaker 2: you know, you can ask them maybe to sign a
Speaker 2: disclosure or something like that, But it seems like you're
Speaker 2: never going to be able to like police it entirely
Speaker 2: because people are using it as a tool.
Speaker 3: By the way, can I just say, like, I feel
Speaker 3: if the CEO of Hasbro plays Monopoly on cheat mode
Speaker 3: where he's like adding in a little Lextra house to
Speaker 3: a property surreptitiously, or taking one hundred dollars from the
Speaker 3: bank or doing the free parking stuff, I feel like
Speaker 3: that's a license for all of us to cheat.
Speaker 2: Or should buy the actual Monopoly Cheaters edition, which sounds
Speaker 2: kind of fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's more fun if you're not supposed to
Speaker 3: cheat and you actually do it, right. But I was
Speaker 3: I was actually kind of flabbergasted. I thought he would
Speaker 3: be a very like strict, you know, by the book
Speaker 3: type when it came to gameplay.
Speaker 2: Maybe this is the way to play it, to just
Speaker 2: make it as chaotic as possible. I mean, it sounds
Speaker 2: like that's what Monopoly Go is doing.
Speaker 3: And it sounds like that's really a big part of
Speaker 3: the fun for people.
Speaker 1: Cush.
Speaker 2: There's a Chance edition of Monopoly as well. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 2: just flicking through all the different Monopoly editions again. The
Speaker 2: Monopoly Chance game is the high stakes card flipping version
Speaker 2: of the Monopoly game, and it only takes twenty minutes
Speaker 2: to play.
Speaker 3: That would be nice because I would play more Monopoly.
Speaker 2: If it didn't take like two hours.
Speaker 3: The thing. It's a pretty big time investment in game
Speaker 3: of Monopoly.
Speaker 2: I need to tell you about the time I was
Speaker 2: in Guatemala and I got caught up in a game
Speaker 2: of risk that went on, I kid you not for
Speaker 2: twelve hours all night.
Speaker 3: I'm not forward to hearing this story.
Speaker 2: I was trying to extricate myself for hours by losing
Speaker 2: and it didn't work, and for various reasons, I couldn't
Speaker 2: just walk away from the table anyway. Story for another day.
Speaker 2: Shall we leave it there.
Speaker 3: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of Odd Thlots podcast. I'm
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 3: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol
Speaker 3: Bennett at Dashbott and Kelbrooks at Kelbrooks. Thank you to
Speaker 3: our producer Moses Ondam. For more Oddlaws content, go to
Speaker 3: Bloomberg dot com slash odlots, where you have transcripts, a blog,
Speaker 3: and a newsletter and you can chat about all of
Speaker 3: these topics with fellow listeners twenty four to seven in
Speaker 3: the discord discord dot gg slash odlots. I am certain
Speaker 3: that there are many games players in there for sure.
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