The Eternal Question - Monopoly v. Risk

Over the course of Pixels to Polys young life, Pat, Anthony and I have gradually differentiated our writing styles to fill cozy little niches. Pat writes with a broad, thorough, analytical style. He’s our house investigator, and somehow manages to cover all bases when writing. I like to think of Pat as cross between Sherlock Holmes and Aristotle. Anthony’s voice is completely different, writing with a more light-hearted, witty style. His posts are always humorously insightful, and I like to think of him as Holistered-up version of Mark Twain.

With these crucial roles already taken, I find myself increasingly playing the attack dog. It’s fun to beat something into the ground, and I kinda like being the instigator, the polemicist, the asshole. It is with this in mind that I dedicate this post to Pat. I made some posts taking jabs at Anthony previously and now its Pats turn. You may have thought this post was about which is better, Monopoly or Risk? Nope. In my eyes they’re both equally terrible wastes of time; a statement that I hope will wake my friend the sleeping giant. The goal of this post is simple, figure which is worse, Risk or Monopoly, all the while, pointing out why I hate both of them. In doing this, I hope to brutally assault Pat’s childhood to the point where legal authorities will bar me from going within 500 feet of a school. Here is my Eternal Question:

Monopoly
Monopoly is one of those games you must own to prove that you’re not a communist. Sure, we all hate Monopoly and the time raping it doles out whenever some foolish person suggests playing it, but to not own it is to reject the idea of capitalism and be anti-American. Every American household has at least one monopoly board, but no one ever plays it, we keep it in our closets collecting dust until someone calls us a pinko. Think I’m being a little over dramatic? Take a look at McDonalds. Nothing’s more American than sloppy grease burgers made with Grade D meat, and you know what, even McDonalds promotes Monopoly with its yearly contest. If I pull another Park Place tag off thing of fries I swear someone’s going in the deep fryer…

For some reason, everyone has this delusional love of Monopoly that prevents them from seeing it for what it really is: a shitty board game that takes and eternity to play. You say Monopoly and everyone gets a twinkle-eyed with thoughts of owning Boardwalk, or propping up motels, or the Monopoly Man’s sweet mustache. These people think that they’re Warren Buffet because they get to play banker. Idiots! Someone who plays Monopoly has more in common with a black-eyed housewife in an abusive marriage: your success at Monopoly says nothing about your skills with money, it merely shows that you will repeatedly allow yourself to brutalized in hopes of happiness. But you can’t say this out loud oh no, people attempt to argue with you on how it’s a great game and how misguided you are. Seriously, when did criticizing Monopoly become such a faux pas? It’s like calling Gandhi a douche bag; even if you make great points, everyone’s still going to hate you for it. Wake up people! If you like Monopoly, you’re probably suffering from amnesia.

Monopoly is one of those games that everyone loves until they actually play again. People somehow fail to remember fighting over the shoe piece, arguing about property deals, and the eight hours of back and forth play between the remaining two players…a game of Monopoly could potentially go on forever if people didn’t lose patience and quit. Do yourself a favor, put this game away and don’t take it out ever again. Your friends and family will thank you…as they don’t appreciate you throwing the board at them.

Risk

Just to be clear, I fucking hate Risk. Nothing good has ever come from a game of Risk…which is quite a bold statement considering I can find positive aspects of cancer. There are essentially three types of people in this world: people who passionately love Risk (people with no sense of fun or time), people who play risk cause everyone else is partaking (spineless jellyfishes), and people who don’t like Risk (people with a foresight). The Risk lovers out there are essentially the Judas Cow’s of the world, cleverly able to convince their peers to surrender their night for marathon of tedium, frustration, and agony. Yes…Risk is as enjoyable as getting hacked apart for meat.

Without question, Risk is a theatrically brutal waste of an evening. A single game of Risk somehow manages to seamlessly to combine boredom and drama in an unparalleled manner; the closest comparison one could make would be to watch Michal Clayton three times in a row. Just like Monopoly, everyone begins by bitching about pieces, this time, it’s about colors. Risk turns normal, intelligent people into temperamental six year olds arguing about crayons. As if having a black army as opposed to a yellow army will do a lick of difference when suffering through this gluttonous time devourer. Once people finally shut the hell about colors, there’s the allocation process: a nauseating 15 minute endeavor where the world becomes world populated various plastic armies. If there has ever been a clear indication at how bad this game is, the fact that it takes at least 20 minutes to setup is it.

…But this 20 minute snoozefest is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the game. Sure it’s moderately entertaining to roll die and attack your friend’s armies, but what about 45 minutes of nothingness where you have to wait for everyone else to take their turns. During this time, you can: cook dinner, change the oil in your car, have sex with one of the other player’s girlfriends, finish your homework, drive to the store and get snacks, and most fortunately, find something more fun to do for the rest of the evening. Risk is a lot like doing laundry, you’re chained down from doing something more entertaining by a task that in reality, demands five minutes of your time. The only difference is that when laundry’s done, you got a basket full of fresh smelling clothes. When Risk is done, you have no friends, no patience, and a wasted evening.

Its up to you, which is worse, Monopoly or Risk

-Matt