From the Credit Is King department:
When I was a child, I remember playing Monopoly all of the time… By myself… I took on the role of all four players… I was a lonely child. The point is, all of my lonesome hours rolling dice and cutting deals while scrambling around a cardboard square as a car, shoe, iron and cannon helped me to learn how to manage money. Laugh if you want to, but I think playing with fake money teaches children how to manage real currency at a fundamental level.
Now, Parker has released a new version of the Monopoly board game in the UK which uses fake credit cards, complete with electronic card reader, to keep track of a player’s money. The cards even have a VISA logo printed on them. As if pre-paid credit cards weren’t enough to lure today’s youth into the habit of “charging it.” Now you can even charge your fake plastic hotels on fake plastic. I think a better lesson to youth would be to mix credit cards and currency in the Monopoly game play. The credit cards should be charged a percentage of their monetary value each time a player rounds the board while the fake cash could earn interest if a player opts to put it into a savings account where they can’t touch it for a set number of turns. Of course, my game design would teach financial responsibility instead of the ease of spending numeric information for goods. Somehow, I don’t think VISA or Parker wants that.
I wonder what happens when you max out one of these fake credit cards. Do the players begin receiving fake mail offering a low introductory APR on new credit cards with the option of a balance transfer?
(Sky News via Boing Boing)
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