monopoly and board games

for those of you who read the star, you might come across yesterday’s feature on the game of

this brings back memory as i remember long ago i used to enjoy playing monopoly. in fact i grew up playing it. started playing it at age 10. when i was that age, it was just a fun game to me. all i ever thought of was to have ‘houses’ or ‘hotels’ on my properties so that i can tax my fellow gamers. at that time i had not learned yet the ‘strategy’ of buying and selling. it was later on that as i grew up, that i picked up some skills on playing monopoly.

i was first introduced to monopoly by a friend of my brother, a board game enthusiastic. the game set was his. since he was the only child, he had no siblings to play with him, and since he was one of my brother’s best friend, he always came to our house with the monopoly set and played with us.

yes the monopoly set was not mine. as i did not own one (and my parents couldn’t afford to buy me one), i remember at one stage i was so crazy over monopoly that i even made a set of my own (using the original set as sample, not the malaysian set). yes i used cardboad to ‘design’ the playing board and also ‘printed’ out the money by using manila card and colour them differently for each denomination. i was very proud over my own self-made monopoly set and guarded it jealously, letting friends play with only when i was also playing!

monopoly was only one of the many board games i enjoyed playing when i was young. i like to play scrabble too…. but not with my sister, as playing with her, i will always lose! the scrabble set was a prize from my late father to me when i passed my form 3 exam. it was the original set where the letters and the letters holder were made of good strong wood, unlike the scrabble of these days, where they were made of plastic. and like my self-made monopoly set, this scrabble set was my pride too since it was a prize from my late father. right now i do not have the monopoly set anymore but i do have the scrabble set.

this friend of my brother who introduced me to monopoly, also introduced me to many other board games. one game was simply call ‘life’ and as the title suggest, was a game of life, where you travel on the road (the board) with your car, and you’ll run into various situation just as in real life. you will even get married and have children! it was an interesting game, one which get us to interact a lot.

ahh… that’s it… interact. as jeffrey choy, the GM of hasbro malaysia which brings you the malaysian version of monopoly said, board games like monopoly are interactive. when played in a group, it provides opportunity for players to interact as well as observe how others think and analyse. board games have the advantage of helping players develop social and interpersonal skills.

yes indeed. it is sad to see that nowadays children are more interested in computer or video games where they only get to interact with a machine! staring at a machine with no ‘human touch’ all the tume will only turn them into zombie! it’s not that computer/video games are totally bad. they are ok if play in moderation but the thing is to compare with board games, surely it is the board games that will teach the child more than computer/video games.