The Landlord's Game
The first patent drawing for Lizzie Magie's board game, dated January 5, 1904
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| Designer(s) | Elizabeth Magie |
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| Years active | 1888-1939 |
| Genre(s) | property |
| Language(s) | English, German |
| Players | 2-4 |
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The Landlord's Game is a board game patented in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie as U.S. Patent 748,626. It is a realty and taxation game intended to educate users about Georgism. It is the inspiration for the board game Monopoly.
In 1902 to 1903, Magie designed the game and play tested it in Arden, Delaware. The game was created to be a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences". She based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate. Magie also hoped that when played by children the game would provoke their natural suspicion of unfairness, and that they might carry this awareness into adulthood.
In 1903, Magie filed for a patent on the game which was granted in 1904. Magie and other fellow Georgists formed a company, Economic Game Company, in 1906 New York to publish the game. Besides Magie, the incorporators were E. H. Monroe of Chicago and E. G. Lenbusher of New York. Magie approached Parker Brothers to publish this and one other game in 1909, the other game was accepted while Landlord's was rejected as too complicated.
In the United Kingdom it was first published in 1913 by the Newbie Game Company, formed by a Liberal Committee from the village of Newbie in Dumfries, under the title Brer Fox an' Brer Rabbit; although, despite the title change, it was recognizably the same game.Landlord sold well in the Northeast amongst its left-wing intellectuals, while Brer was unsuccessful.
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