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Crowdsourcing “Monopoly”
眾包“強手棋”
The Mayfair shuffle
梅菲爾洗牌
One of the world's largest toymakers tests the wisdom of crowds
世界最大的玩具制造商之一體驗眾包智慧！
IN 1904 a young American named Elizabeth Magie received a patent for a board game in which players used tokens to move around a four-sided board buying properties, avoiding taxes and jail, and collecting $100 every time they passed the board's starting-point.
1904年，一位名叫Elizabeth Magie的美國青年申請獲得了一個桌面游戲的專利。在該游戲中，玩家通過在一個四邊的圖板上左右移動一指示物贏取錢財。游戲中不僅免稅合法，免除牢獄之災，玩家還可以在每次通過棋盤上的起點時贏得100美元。
Three decades later Charles Darrow, a struggling salesman in Pennsylvania, patented a tweaked version of the game as “Monopoly”.
三十年之后，賓夕法尼亞的一位為生活艱苦掙扎的推銷員Charles Darrow，申請了該游戲調整后的另一個版本的專利，并命名為“強手棋”。
Now owned by Hasbro, a big toymaker, it has become one of the world's most popular board games, available in dozens of languages and innumerable variations.
如今，該游戲為一個大玩具商Hasbro所有，且成為了世界上最為流行的桌游之一，被翻譯成幾十種語言且有無數個版本。
Magie was a devotee of Henry George, an economist who believed in common ownership of land.
Magie是堅持土地公有制的經濟學家Henry George的推崇者。
Her game was designed to be a “practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences.”
她的游戲被設計為一個“目前土地掠奪造成的通常結局和后果的實際演示系統”。
And so it has become, though players snatch properties more in zeal than sadness.
盡管玩家在游戲中更多的是熱衷于對財富的爭搶而并非對土地掠奪問題的憂慮，但該游戲也確實反映了上述土地問題。
In “Monopoly” as in life, it is better to be rich than poor, children gleefully bankrupt their parents and nobody uses a flat iron any more.
無論是在“強手棋”還是在生活中，富有總是比貧窮好，……，并且也沒有人再使用扁鐵塊了。
Board-game makers have had to find their footing in a digital age.
在如今的信息時代，桌游玩具制造商們不得不為自己重新尋找一席之地。
Hasbro's game-and-puzzle sales fell by 4% in 2010—the year the iPad came to market—and 10% in 2011.
在iPad上市的2010年， Hasbro的游戲和拼圖的銷售額下降了4%，且在2011年下跌了10%。
Since then, however, its game-and-puzzle sales have rebounded, rising by 2% in 2012 and 10% in 2013.
而到了2012年和2013年，游戲和拼圖的銷售額又上漲了2%和10%。
Stephanie Wissink, a youth-market analyst with Piper Jaffray, an investment bank, says that Hasbro has learned to become “co-creative…They're infusing more social-generated content into their marketing and product development.”
青少年市場分析師Stephanie Wissink和投資銀行 Piper Jaffray有關負責人表示Hasbro已經學會了集體創造。他們將更多當代社會生成的內容植入于他們的市場營銷和產品開發。
Some of that content comes from Facebook.
有些新的元素來自于Facebook。
Last year, “Monopoly” fans voted on Hasbro's Facebook page to jettison the poor old flat iron in favour of a new cat token.
去年，“強手棋”的粉絲在Hasbro的Facebook上投票，要求用新的貓造型令牌代替老式的扁鐵塊。
“Scrabble” players are voting on which word to add to the new dictionary.
“Scrabble”的玩家則在投票決定將哪一個詞語添加到新字典中。
“Monopoly” fans, meanwhile, are voting on which of ten house rules—among them collecting $400 rather than $200 for landing on “Go”, requiring players to make a full circuit of the board before buying property and “Mom always gets out of jail free. Always. No questions asked”—to make official.
同時，“強手棋”的粉絲也在投票決定十條俱樂部補充規則，其中包括玩家在到達“出發”之前需集齊400美元而非200美元，在購買財富之前完成一次完整的桌面巡回，“媽媽總能無條件的出獄”。
The Economist has also asked its readers for new rules, through our website and Facebook page.
本刊也在通過網頁和Facebook向讀者征求新的規則。
However, we wanted ours to reflect modern business realities.
但是，我希望我們能反映現代商業現實。
Several readers proposed for the bank, inevitably leading to bail-outs by other players when things went south.
幾個讀者為銀行提供了更為有效的建議，自然而然的，當一切都變得順利時，其他的玩家也將得到紓困。
One suggested that property prices in the London version of the game rise by 25% per turn.
有一位玩家建議在倫敦那一版地游戲中，房地產價格應每一輪上漲25%。
Building in inequality featured in several suggestions, the best being that some pieces begin far ahead of the others, with more money: these effects could be mitigated with cards such as “Art School” and “Finding Myself” that let other players catch up.
針對那些特別的建筑，有數條建議……。這些差距會被一些類似于“Art School”、“Finding Myself”這樣給其他玩家時間追趕的卡片減小。
