The Game of Life

The other night I was at the pub playing the boardgame Life with some college friends. They were having a fine and fanciful time buying fake stocks and navigating their featureless peg-spouses and peg-children around the sinuous track to Retirement Mansion, whereas I began to chafe as the game progressed. The winner in Life is the person who reaches retirement with the most money. Complications such as marriage, children, and homeownership are meaningless chevrons that one accrues along that journey towards "the Big Win."

Perhaps children too young to work, buy property, and make sound fiscal investments enjoy the role-playing of a chance-based capatalistic model, but I found it to be a distasteful metaphor for the de-soulification (yes) of modern America. I drew the "Win the Nobel Peace Prize" card, but it didn't matter to the game's outcome. I feel that we should avoid the quantitative view of success.

Give me money.