Online vote for Monopoly 2.0

27-04-2007

by Maxim Kelly

Vote online or your county may vanish! That's the advice from the makers of the new all-Ireland version of the Monopoly board game.

Games manufacturer Hasbro encountered a problem while designing the latest version of its iconic property tycoon game, Monopoly: it only has space for 22 of the 32 counties on the new all-Ireland board.

To help it decide which counties will make the cut, Hasbro launched an online election on Friday. The 22 counties with the most votes will get onto the new Monopoly board, and those with the highest tallies will nestle smugly in the lucrative Shrewsbury Road and Ailesbury Road spots. Voters can log on to the Monopoly website to cast their county votes.

Anne Dermody is national sales manager for Hasbro. She told ENN the decision to go to for an all-Ireland format was user-generated. "We kept getting complaints from players that there's more to Ireland than Dublin, and we were getting complaints about where certain areas of Dublin itself should be positioned on the board," she said.

All the Dublin estate agents and auctioneers ENN attempted to contact were too busy making pots of money to comment on the 'Monopoly effect' of board games on Celtic Tiger property prices in the capital.

"Sure I can't drive safely through Kimmage or Crumlin now since we bumped them off for Raheny and Rathfarnham," joked Dermody.

Voting closes on 25 May and a running total is kept online. At time of publication, Leitrim, the -- ahem -- least populous county in Ireland, was steaming ahead, closely followed by Roscommon. "Those two counties are neighbours and I'd say people are running across the bridge at Carrick-on-Shannon to vote for each other," said Dermody.

The counties that make it onto the board will be represented by images of their most popular visitor attraction. It's envisaged that the four spaces formerly occupied by Dublin's transport nodes will probably be represented by Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht, while the two utilities spaces may display a North-South motif, but plans are still fluid at Hasbro's HQ in Waterford.

Not surprisingly, County Waterford, which produces 1.5 million Monopoly boards under the Parker brand each year, was in a strong third position at time of publication, and senior management expressed concern that productivity at the plant may be affected by online election fever.

National politicians, county councillors and Monopoly lovers are being urged by Hasbro to rally around their county's cause. "Those who don't vote will find that their county will be left out," said Dermody. "If the residents of Dublin fail to vote it is entirely possible that the country's capital will be left off the board."

Monopoly fanatics in Northern Ireland have two chances to vote. Besides casting an online ballot for one of the Six Counties, Hasbro is also running an internet vote for a UK edition based on the cities of Britain and Northern Ireland. Belfast, Lisburn, Derry, Armagh and Newry are all open for votes.

"This is an opportunity for all the people of Ireland to get together and support their own county," said Dermody. "We've had the success of the all-island rugby team and the hockey team, and the cricket team went out [to the Cricket World Cup] as underdogs and we all got behind them. Now we can be represented on the Monopoly board too."

The new board games are expected to hit the shelves in October before the Christmas peak season for the toy industry.