• Our spoiler embargo for the non-DLC content for Pokémon Legends: Z-A is now lifted! Feel free to discuss the game freely across the site without the need of spoiler tabs, and use content from the game within your profiles!

All your Boardwalk are belong to Canada

Status
Not open for further replies.
F

Fig

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
12,778
Reaction score
1,046
So apparently, Hasbro decided an online poll would be a good way to decide which cities would make the cut for their new "World" edition of Monopoly (ie, using world cities rather than Atlantic City streets).

The results started out normal enough - London and Paris in the lead, New York not far behind.

...then things went haywire.

This is the leaderboard as things now stand - voting is not yet over.

http://www.monopolyworldvote.com/en_US/world/leaders

I'm frankly not sure what,s happening here. It could be that Canada is pretty much the only country voting more than casually (but the "Wildcard" section makes it clear Poland at least is getting its votes out), but I doubt that. And that wouldn't explain why Montreal has as many votes as the other two cities combined.

One has to wonder how much the people at Hasbro will respect those results...
 
I can give a simple explanation to this.

YTV, the channel up here which airs Pokemon, has a contest on where you can win a wack load of Hasbro board games. In the commercial, it also says to go to the site and vote for Canada.
 
That may have helped, yes.

But still, there just aren't that many Canadians, and most of them don,t watch YTV.

It also doesn't explain how *Montreal* of all three has so much more votes. Particularly as the people most likely to want Montreal to beat Toronto and Vancouver are the people least likely to watch YTV.

(IE, French-speaking Quebecers)
 
Over half can vaguely function in both language if they have to, but very few of the naturally french ones are going to watch TV in english unless they absolutely have to.

Which, by and large, they don't.
 
One has to wonder how much the people at Hasbro will respect those results...
Click to expand...

I believe, and hope, that any company that uses online polls to make a decision takes the results with a giant grain of salt (or not do them at all). Online polls can get severely out of whack. The Chuck Norris Bridge issue is an example.
 
Riga, the capital of Latvia and the largest city in the Baltic States. They're the sister city of Dallas, Texas. And I'm probably the only person here who would LOVE to go there someday. It IS the Paris of the North, after all.

And I blame the skewed voting on the people in those oddball winning cities having nothing better to do. As we all know, Montreal is renowned for its love of online polls.
 
I think I'll take the regular Paris over the Paris of the North. Also a large city in Dr. Doom's country, apparently . . .
 
GrnMarvl13 said:
Riga, the capital of Latvia and the largest city in the Baltic States. They're the sister city of Dallas, Texas. And I'm probably the only person here who would LOVE to go there someday. It IS the Paris of the North, after all.

And I blame the skewed voting on the people in those oddball winning cities having nothing better to do. As we all know, Montreal is renowned for its love of online polls.
Click to expand...

We know that?
 
They had a similar voting style for a new Australian version of this, I'm pretty sure the 5th most populus state in Australia got their regions as no. 1, so I do believe they would respect the results. Even if they seem really odd.
 
Zeta said:
I think I'll take the regular Paris over the Paris of the North. Also a large city in Dr. Doom's country, apparently . . .
Click to expand...

Why do you think I want to visit? Latvia's so close in name to Latveria that there's gotta be something screwy going on.

Evil Figment said:
We know that?
Click to expand...

Oh, don't act like you don't.
 
Weird little update to this story:

Source.

Monopoly, the iconic game of capitalism, has been drawn into the dispute over Jerusalem.

Hasbro Inc. issued an apology Thursday after an employee, responding to complaints from pro-Palestinian groups, eliminated the word "Israel" after the city in an online contest to select names for a new Monopoly board game: Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition.

The company also pulled all country names from other cities on the site when even more people complained, including the Israeli government, because Jerusalem was listed as the only city without a country.

The Pawtucket-based company is asking people to vote at the Monopoly Web site on which cities will be included in the new edition. Until Tuesday, every city on the site listed a country, including Paris, France; Cairo, Egypt and Jerusalem, Israel.

But an employee based in London decided on her own without consulting senior management to pull "Israel" from Jerusalem after hearing complaints from pro-Palestinian groups and bloggers who argue that the city is not a part of Israel, Hasbro spokesman Wayne Charness said Thursday.

The issue has been a sensitive one for decades: Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem - home to Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites - in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future independent state.

David Saranga, consul for media and public affairs at the Israeli consulate in New York, said Monopoly has a lot of fans in Israel, especially this year with Jerusalem a candidate for a spot on the Monopoly board. But after Israel was removed, he said the consulate started getting calls, first from Israeli fans, then fans elsewhere. He sent Hasbro a letter asking why Jerusalem had been singled out, he said.

"All the other cities had the country attached to their names," Saranga said. "We felt very upset."

Hasbro (HAS) management was alerted to the change Wednesday when its London office saw a spike in traffic on the site and figured out what happened, Charness said. The company then pulled every country name, so Paris and Cairo also are now listed alone, he said.

"It was a bad decision, one that we rectified relatively quickly," he said. "This is a game. We never wanted to enter into any political debate. We apologize to our Monopoly fans."

Saranga said Hasbro responded quickly and professionally. While he wondered whether it was necessary to remove all the country names, he said he was satisfied with Hasbro's response.

Charness added that the game, due out in the fall, was never meant to include countries. The countries were added to the Web site to make it easier to vote.

Voting in the contest ends Feb. 29 for the Top 20 cities and March 9 for two wild card cities nominated by voters. The top vote-getting city will get the prime Boardwalk spot: as of Thursday, it was Istanbul, Turkey.
Click to expand...

Because even Monopoly is not immune to the Palestine/Israel issue.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom