Disclaimer: All views/opinions presented here are of my own.

Introduction

Monopoly Go! Is a board game with social casino mechanics that was released on April 11, 2023 and has since then gone on to generate a whopping gross revenue of over 3 Billion USD, setting the record for the fastest mobile game to hit 3 Billion dollars revenue, ever.

For the purpose of better understanding how Monopoly Go! was able to accomplish such feats, the deconstruction is going to be split into 3 parts,

1. Acquiring Players through IP

2. Engaging and Retaining with Social Gameplay

3. Monetizing with Social Casino Mechanics

The Monopoly IP

To understand why Monopoly Go! Was such a huge success, it would help to understand the IP from which the game is derived from, i.e the Monopoly Board game.

With over 275 million copies sold worldwide and the board game at one point (1999) which held the Word Record for being played by most people (500 million). The success and reach of the Monopoly IP plays a big role in how it captures its target audience.

Given that Monopoly was at one of the peaks of its popularity in 1990’s, it is not surprising that over half of the demographic playing Monopoly Go! are older players ranging from 25 all the way till 45+, which constitute the majority.

It also helps that Scopely, the makers of Monopoly Go! Spent more on the marketing budget of the game than the development cost itself.

Source: PocketGamer Article

Despite already having other Monopoly IP based games in the market, none were able to reach the peaks of Monopoly Go! And the answer to why that is can be found by analyzing the gameplay.

Source: Android Play Store

Gameplay

• The core gameplay loop of Monopoly Go! Can be summarized as follows,

Each step of the core loop plays a very specific role to fulfill a unique purpose, which are,

• Rolling Dice – Gameplay Mechanics

• Invade and Steal – Social Mechanics

• Upgrade and Build – Progression Mechanics 

It is also worthy to note that this core-loop has taken notes from two very prominently successful games in the market,

• Board Kings – For Gameplay Mechanics

• Coin Master – For Social and Progression Mechanics

Gameplay

• Players roll dice to progress along a Monopoly board to earn soft currency, build landmarks and progress to new boards. [Similar to Board Kings]

• The game board allows the player multiple ways to earn soft currency based on the tile in which the player’s token lands in.

• Players can multiply the outcome of any dice roll by applying a multiplier.

• Dice rolls are earned every hour similar to the energy mechanic in other games as a means to control sessions.

• Every tile in the board triggers a specific event. With almost every tile affecting soft currency or dice rolls in one way or another.

• However, unlike the original board game, MonopolyGo has been adapted to a single player experience while still preserving the social dynamics that define the Monopoly experience.

• The focus of the outcome of every dice roll is random, variable rewards. Further emphasized with the fanfare akin to social casino games.

Any moment of win is accompanied with the grand fanfare

Social Mechanics

• Monopoly is inherently a social game, with its core essence being rooted in competition between players with a single winner and the occasional co-op for mutual gain.

• It is this social nature of that game that helps it stand out and perform better than the competitors it is inspired from.

• The features in Monopoly Go are designed to be best experienced with family and friends for meaningful engagement that comes from real life connections.

• Monopoly Go! brings players together via these social features,
  • Invasion and Stealing via Railroad Tiles
  • Collecting Rent from Players
  • The Community Chest
  • Social Live Events 
  • Albums
  • Player Customization
  • Friend Recruitment Incentives

Railroad Tiles

• Landing on railroad tiles can trigger one of 2 possible events,

• Heist

• Shutdown

Heist

• When a Heist is triggered, the player is taken to the ‘Vault’ of another player and is given the opportunity to ‘Steal’ their unspent soft currency by playing a mini-game.

• There are 3 possible outcomes for this mini-game. With the biggest outcome rendering the victim ‘Bankrupt’.

The action and feedback loop of a Heist

• The victim of a heist is chosen randomly, often someone from the player’s friends list.

• The Board notification system of the game allows players to keep track of who raided their vaults, and in turn set up future sessions when the attacker is the Heist target for the victim.

• Since the target of a heist is the unspent soft currency of a player with priorities on players with a higher unspent balance, the threat of a heist acts as a great motivator for spending any accumulated currency to minimize losses.

• A Heist can sometimes evolve into a ‘Mega Heist’ during special events where all the prizes earned are multiplied.

Shutdown

• A Shutdown is a direct PvP mechanic.

• This is demonstrated by the what happens during a Shutdown, 

• Downgrade a Landmark by one level, hindering progress of the victim (If they don’t have a Shield)

• Leave the attackers profile picture and Token on the landmark.

• The act of hindering progress and leaving proof of who did it, sets up the victims next session with a motivation and opportunity for ‘revenge’, where they can choose former attackers as targets of their Shutdown.

Attacking other players sets them up to attack your board later

• A player can protect their landmarks from being shut down by collecting Shields, which are rewarded by landing on Shield Tiles on the board.

• Shields being consumed with every single shutdown attempt, give players another reason to return to the game periodically to ensure their boards are always protected from attackers.

Rent Collection

• Property ownership and rent collection is an integral part of Monopoly. And Monopoly Go has a simple but effective take on this aspect of the gameplay.

• Property and Rent collection is tied with the Progression loop of building and upgrading Landmarks.

• Players build and upgrade landmarks to add houses randomly on the board, and when 5 houses are built on a property, it is automatically upgraded to a Hotel.

• A player can collect rent on these properties when,
  • They land on a tile that has any building (House, Hotel) and
  • There is another player’s profile displayed on that tile.

A solo interaction disguised as a social interaction (With emotes as cherry on top)

• The amount of rent collected varies based on the type and number of buildings in that tile.

• The act of “Collecting rent” from another player is purely symbolic and is also communicated to other players in the Board notifications. 

• This approach of disguising a solo interaction as a social interaction within the context of Monopoly makes the game seem more social than it actually is.

Community Chest

• The Community Chest is a feature that is only accessible to players with at least 5 friends, 

• The community chest is filled with currency whenever the player lands on the Community Chest tile.

• Players can open the Community chest and multiply the earnings by playing a Pick and Select mini-game on a 3×3 board. It is an RNG based mini-game where a cell in the grid is automatically chosen to reveal the contents behind the profile, which can be either,

• Currency, Dice Rolls, Sticker Packs or

• Community Chest Key which opens the chest at the current multiplier. 

• The objective is to maximize the reward multiplier before landing on the key that opens the community chest. Though this is almost completely RNG.

Play the minigame to maximize the multiplier and open the Community chest

• However, if any of the players on the board are online, then landing on their profile grants the ‘Active Friend Bonus’ which lets the player manually choose the next tile to reveal, which is a great feature that accomplishes two goals,

• Gives players some sense of control in an otherwise RNG driven game.

• Demonstrate the benefit of having friends online in the same session.

• Players can also choose to gift other players a token reward if they choose.

Social Live Events

• Live Events play an important role in getting players to engage with the core-loop, in the case of Monopoly Go! some events also give players additional opportunities to cooperate and compete with other players.

• Social live events in Monopoly Go! happen at two levels,
  • Recurrent Daily Solo Competitive Events – Eg: Tournaments
  • Less Frequent, Multi-Day Co-op Events – Eg: Aqua Partners, Tycoon Racers

Short Solo competitive event and a Longer 4 player cooperative event

• These type of events cater to two specific social needs/types of players,
  • Solo competitors looking to dominate other players (Tournaments)
  • Co-operation Seekers 

• By lowering the frequency of team events and making them multi-day with dedicated time for team recruitment, it gives players the motivation to rally their friends to participate in a more effective way. 

Albums

• Albums is currently the only long-term engagement feature of Monopoly Go where players collect Stickers to complete Sets and earn rewards

• Stickers are primarily collected from Gacha packs that are earned by participating in the game features and events.

• Albums fulfill a specific role in the game, that is,
  • Appeal to Collectors, who would actively seek out means to complete the sets.
  • A social avenue to complete sticker sets  – Trading stickers

Open packs & Trade with friends to complete sets and eventually the whole album

• Stickers are sorted by rarity ranging between 1 Star and 5 Stars and are tradable between players with the exception of ‘Gold’ stickers that cannot be normally traded.

• Golden stickers are tradable during special live events in addition to being hard to find, making trading almost mandatory to complete sets.

• Collection features are a popularly used feature in Social Casino games, where the target demographic have a strong overlap with players of Monopoly Go. 

• By setting daily limits on sticker trading and creating facebook groups with the sole purpose of trading stickers, Monopoly Go incentivizes players to play daily to be able to trade frequently and interact outside the game in Facebook groups to foster a sense of community amongst players.

Player Customization

• Another way Monopoly Go! Distinguishes itself from its competitors is through its emphasis on player customisation.

• Players can equip their own unique tokens, equip emotes and custom shields which are seen quite prominently and frequently in the entire game such as,
  • Player tokens on landmarks that are shutdown.
  • Emoji reactions for various in-game triggers

• The game has reward systems in place for collecting these items, giving players another avenue for collection and self-expression in the game.

Plenty of Items to Collect

Friend Recruitment Incentives

• Monopoly Go! Incentivizes players to add friends through contacts, invitations and in-game suggestions through in-game encounters like events.

• The game however, has limited avenues for players to communicate and interact with each other in the game, and so utilizes Facebook groups as meeting grounds for players and pushes players to join and invite these groups with rewards.

Engagement and Progression Mechanics

• Progression in Monopoly Go is realized through its metagame where it utilizes base-building and level up mechanics to give players a sense of progression in the game.

Base Building Progression

• Though this base building meta has been used in other games, Monopoly Go adds its own twist to this mechanic through houses and hotels.

Houses and Hotels on the game board

• Similar to other games with a similar meta, the primary form of progression for a player is to build and upgrade every ‘Landmark’ in a board to ‘complete’ it and progress to the next board to repeat the process.

•  However, this is where Monopoly Go! Adds its own twist in how it alters the core gameplay to give a sense of (short) persistence across game boards.

• This is achieved through two ways,

• Rent collection from other players (Already Covered)

• Color Wheel – When all properties within the same color have hotels built on them, the player has the opportunity to spin a color wheel for additional rewards, after which the hotels are cleared from the board and the player can place houses there again.

Build Landmarks to place houses, hotels on the board and spin the color wheel

Level Up Progression

• The base-building meta also ties with the level up progression via the Net Worth system, where players earn a point of net worth with every Landmark built/upgraded and Color wheel spun.

• Leveling up in Monopoly Go accomplishes the following goals,

• Control cadence of feature unlock early game.

• Rewards players with dice rolls and currency as session extenders

• Long term persistent progression that isn’t found in base building by increasing max dice rolls, max rent collected,  dice regeneration rate, max shields etc.

Increasing Net Worth gradually increases your capacity to earn and spend in-game

Engagement Through Events

• All live events in Monopoly Go! are designed to drive progression indirectly by pushing players to engage with the core-game.

• Almost all means of progression in events is done by collecting items by landing on specific tiles and participating with the game features like Daily Logins.

• Events are also designed to work in parallel where players can engage with the core-game to progress in a small term event, which in term drives progression in the long term event resulting in extreme high-low reward moments, and building an addictive feedback loop.

Other Engagement Features

• Besides events, Monopoly Go also utilizes other engagement features like Daily Login Rewards, Daily Missions with weekly streaks etc. all which work in tandem with the events and other features of the game (Albums).

• The game also has dynamic mini-events to extend player sessions through Mega Heists, Cash Boosts, Landmark Rush, Cash Grab events etc.

Features and events all encourage players to play more

Social Casino Mechanics

• Monopoly Go! Extensively utilizes mechanics often seen in Social Casino games to engage and monetize its players.

• Besides borrowing features that are popularly seen in Social Casinos like Collections, Pop-Up live events and Tournaments, the game also borrows some core-mechanics that are more associated with social casino games. 

High Risk-High Reward Playstyle and Variable Outcomes

• Monopoly Go encourages players extensively towards the playstyle of high-risk, high reward through the use of multipliers.

• In slot machines, bet multipliers turn a normal slot spin into a high-risk, high reward anticipation as they multiply the payouts of the machine, along with the added anticipation of a ‘Jackpot’.

• In Monopoly go!, multipliers play a similar role and their effect can be seen throughout the game, like,

• Multiplying heist and shutdown rewards

• Multiplying rewards earned from any/all tiles like Chance tiles.

• Multiplying progression in live events by,

• Allowing players to multiply the spend of  dice rolls to earn event currency.

• Multiply the spend of event currency to progress in the events.

Multipliers affect almost every aspect of core and metagame

• Reward payout moments in Heists and Shutdown are propped up to feel like ‘Jackpots’ to encourage players to maximize earnings by utilizing multipliers.

• The variability of these outcomes is further randomized because of the usage of dice, where a player cannot predict the outcome before they roll.

• The game also has the option to ‘Auto-roll’, another staple seen in Social Casino games and indicative of its true nature.

• The game however has an internal pacing system that controls the rate of dice usage by,

• Increasing or decreasing the max multiplier values dynamically based on the number of dice rolls available. 

• Spawn mini-events where max cap on multipliers is increased allowing players to sink lots of dice rolls very fast.

Monetization and Game Economy

• Monopoly Go! Currently has only currency, Cash and the session currency, Dice and Sticker Packs for Albums

• The game does not utilize any hard currency, all purchases in the game are direct IAP’s.

• In-game offers are often themed based on the current live events and are almost always multi-item bundles.

• The game extensively seems to use other formats of IAPs like chain offers, decoy packs.

Commonly Offered IAP packs in Monopoly Go!

Strengths and Flaws

Strengths

IP-Gameplay match

The Monopoly IP has been adapted to board gameplay where the features in the game emulates the highs and lows of a typical Monopoly board game quite effectively.

Emphasis on Social Gameplay

Monopoly Go goes the extra step when it comes to social play, where the design choices and decisions have made the game feel alive and brimming with activity, while being a single player game at its core.

Has Something for Everyone

Monopoly Go! Has something for every type of player in its features, be it someone who enjoys competition, cooperation, collection or exploration. This is also demonstrated by the type of ads used in UA, where each ad is designed to appeal to a specific player archetype.

Visual Polish

The visual artstyle of the game along with the effects for dice rolls, reward payouts, the 3D environment, the interactive characters on the board make the game visually appealing and difficult to put down.

Flaws

Inheriting Genre-Flaws

By borrowing almost all of its core elements intact from other games in the genre, the game inherits the same flaws in its design such as,

• Unchanged repetitive play throughout the life of the game.

• Limited, exponential economy where any/all future content is scaled based on one currency leading to overinflated prices while rewards don’t scale similarly.

• Additionally, the lack of a hard currency in game could be limiting the monetisation capability of the game with a higher barrier to purchase, new reward and sink potential through vanity items, event progression items etc.

Lacking Long Term Engagement Features

• Currently, all the features and events of the game that actively engage players are short term, spanning from a few hours to a maximum of 4 days.

• Many games utilize features like Battle Passes as means to engage players and release new content over 30 day intervals or more, that gives players a long term purpose to play the game daily, weekly and monthly.

• However, content in Monopoly Go is repetitive and seemingly meaningless as the gameplay remains the same regardless of the board the player is in. And completing X number of the boards changes nothing in terms of the gameplay experience.

• Besides albums, which are mostly a passive feature that rely heavily on RNG, the game lacks any other long-term hooks to keep players engaged. 

• Social Casino games have tried to tackle this issue by giving players incentives based on time spent in game via Loyalty Programs, VIP customer care, Early access to new content and features etc. 

Social but not fully Social (Yet)

• With so much emphasis on the social experience of the game. The game currently does not have any easy ways for players to communicate and interact with each other inside the game.

• A staple social feature seen in almost all social casino games are Clans, which gives players a place in-game to communicate, trade and organize events.

• Clans also open up new avenues for other social features like Clan chests, Clan leaderboards etc.

Pushy Monetization Ruining User Experience

• The game is not shy about shoving back to back offers popups repeatedly to players when they run out of dice which either disrupts players or trains them to ignore the popups.

• The landing screen of the game, where the gameplay happens also ends up being cluttered with icons of IAP’s, events that detract from the experience.

Conclusions

There’s no denying the success of Monopoly Go! Coupled with the great usage of IP in both acquiring users via relentless, high quality, high budget advertising and with how well the core elements of the original Monopoly game to this particular format.

But, having said that it’s also clear where the financial success of this game comes from, It borrows some design principles used by casino games to engage players.

And judging by how Coin Master is still going strong 14 years later, one can only but wonder what the road ahead for Monopoly Go! is going to be like.