Play the Game @ ND
Anyone
Four copies of the game are available for checkout from the Hesburgh Library. Visit the Lower Level Circulation Desk.
Request Play Session
Instructors
Arrange a course visit for a play session. I can accommodate classes of at least 50 minutes, and with ~25 or less students.
Give Feedback
Anyone
Share your experience with the game. Suggestions for improving the game's educational value are especially welcome.
Download the Game
Anyone
Download and modify the game for yourself. All materials released under a Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Hearkening back to Lizzie Magie's The Landlord's Game, an ur-design of the game we know today as Monopoly™, the game leverages players' knowledge of Monopoly, complicating its reductive economic model which equates economic success with ‘winning’, depicting it as the survival of the fittest in an otherwise egalitarian setting.
Unlike Monopoly, which assumes a level socio-economic playing field, Landlord more closely reflects actual inequities under the current American economy. Players quickly find that on the gamut of roles from Owner to Manager to Employee to Unemployed, it is increasingly difficult to avoid bankruptcy as the game progresses. In Landlord, this is precisely the point! By adjusting these and other rules to effect real-world economic disparities at the start of the game, Landlord aims to stimulate a frustration so comically absurd that gameplay evolves into a discussion among the players around the systemic inequities of contemporary capitalism.
Many thanks to Dr. Julia Douthwaite, Professor of French, whose 2018 exhibit Money Worries at Notre Dame's Snite Museum was the impetus for the development of this educational game. Nor would this project have been possible without the support and contributions of my colleagues at the Hesburgh Libraries, including Psychology Librarian Cheri Smith, who led the design of the properties schema. My deep thanks as well to the domain experts, below, with whom I worked to develop the learning objectives and game content.
Game Designer
Emerging Technologies Librarian
Hesburgh Libraries
University of Notre Dame
Domain Expert
Assistant Professor, Economics
Business and Economics
St. Mary's College
Domain Expert
Assistant Professor, Economics
Business and Economics
St. Mary's College
Domain Expert
Associate Director
Center for Social Concerns
University of Notre Dame
October 4, 2018
4 copies of The Landlord game have been made available for checkout at the Lower Level Circulation Desk of the Hesburgh Library. Ideal for the flipped classroom, the game affords a fun way to have students explore concepts from socio-economics and poverty studies. Students may check out the game to play in the library in groups and perhaps write up their play experience for class.
May 16, 2018
Presented on The Landlord Game at the innagural Teach, Play, Learn conference on June 22, 2018 at Indiana University South Bend (IUSB).
April 3, 2018
I have been having an amazing time playing The Landlord Game in a number of classes at Notre Dame and St. Mary's, including:
The number of strategies with which the students negotiate the purposefully flexible rules, creating the game as they play, continues to amaze me.
Jan 30, 2018
The Landlord Game may be played as part of the interactive component of the Money Worries exhibit at the University of Notre Dame's Snite Museum (through Mar 25, 2018).
The exhibition aims to disrupt visitors’ received attitudes toward money, wealth, and poverty by examining various forms of antique and modern currency and anachronistic juxtapositions of historical and contemporary depictions in art of financial transactions, allegories, and portraits. Visitors will also have an opportunity to play digital or board games that challenge assumptions of “fairness” both in the artificial environment of the game and in life.
Resources Used by Permission
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