Don't give kids Monopoly! There are much better business games.

As an introduction to business, Monopoly is pretty rank, so let's take a look at some better games.

Monopoly has been the staple go-to game for the best part of a century and became part of Western culture and has come to symbolise capitalism and business.

But that was never its purpose.

The Landlord’s Game (1903) was designed by Elizabeth Magie as a learning tool AGAINST competition over the land market in that it causes competition over a finite resource.

When its later iteration was picked up by George Parker as Monopoly (1933), it was marketed to indulge exactly this fantasy of playing greedy real estate tyrants.

Of course, human nature as it is, it was a huge hit.

To be fair, the game came at a much-needed time to distract us through the wars and recessions of the 20th century. The escapist fantasy of control and money was exactly what people needed, even as we didn’t examine the message too closely.

What was supposed to dissuade us from disaster quickly became a very popular economic game, and its message that ‘This is no way to do business,’ seems to have been forgotten for the thrill of pounding friends into financial dust.

Now in better times, more or less, there are games that offer much more positive experiences, so let’s take a look at each game element, and some games that offer them better.

1.    The goal.

Monopoly at its heart has but one goal: To economically destroy all other players.

If this were a film plot, would this describe a hero? Or a villain?

Sure, yes, games aren’t reality, but that’s the message: destroy competitors. We can say that this is fantasy, that players oughtn't take it seriously, but at what stage have we introduced young players to a positive message about business?

Now take a different game – Settlers of Catan.

In Catan, players all strive to develop a new island into one with cities and settlements, producing raw materials like wheat and ore that players turn into yet more developments.

The one player who builds up ten developments is crowned winner, and it is impossible to destroy any other player’s progress. You just try to build faster than them.

Rather than providing nothing but destruction, Catan players provide buildings, roads and wheat fields for the wellbeing of the island’s inhabitants.

In this way, the winner might have made the biggest contribution to the island and been crowned mayor, but even second and third place players provided a few more settlements to the good people of Catan. I’m sure some happy villagers will put up a statue of you, or name a library after you, and sing a few happy songs in your honour.

You’ve made a bunch of people happy, including others in your industry, and earned a good reputation.

Isn’t that a better reason for starting up a business?

We could also look at Cuba (where you grow sugar and export rum), The Estates (where you build apartment blocks from a hole in the ground) and Chinatown (where you populate New York with small businesses) for better introductions to business. Competitive, not everyone wins, but everyone benefits, and the wealth of the world increases by so many bottles of quality spirits.

In the same way, plenty of businesses don't really know what their aim is, so it's worth asking: If your business were a game, what is its goal?