经济学人366:众包强手棋 梅菲尔洗牌

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商业报道

Crowdsourcing “Monopoly”

众包“强手棋”

The Mayfair shuffle 1

梅菲尔洗牌

One of the world's largest toymakers tests the wisdom of crowds

世界最大的玩具制造商之一体验众包智慧！

IN 1904 a young American named Elizabeth Magie received a patent for a board game in which players used tokens to move around a four-sided board buying properties, avoiding taxes and jail, and collecting $100 every time they passed the board's starting-point.

1904年，一位名叫Elizabeth Magie的美国青年申请获得了一个桌面游戏的专利。在该游戏中，玩家通过在一个四边的图板上左右移动一指示物赢取钱财。游戏中不仅免税合法，免除牢狱之灾，玩家还可以在每次通过棋盘上的起点时赢得100美元。

强手棋.jpgThree decades later Charles Darrow, a struggling salesman in Pennsylvania, patented a tweaked version of the game as “Monopoly”.

三十年之后，宾夕法尼亚的一位为生活艰苦挣扎的推销员Charles Darrow，申请了该游戏调整后的另一个版本的专利，并命名为“强手棋”。

Now owned by Hasbro, a big toymaker, it has become one of the world's most popular board games, available in dozens of languages and innumerable variations.

如今，该游戏为一个大玩具商Hasbro所有，且成为了世界上最为流行的桌游之一，被翻译成几十种语言且有无数个版本。

Magie was a devotee of Henry George, an economist 3 who believed in common ownership of land.

Magie是坚持土地公有制的经济学家Henry George的推崇者。

Her game was designed to be a “practical demonstration 4 of the present system of land-grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences.”

她的游戏被设计为一个“目前土地掠夺造成的通常结局和后果的实际演示系统”。

And so it has become, though players snatch properties more in zeal 5 than sadness.

尽管玩家在游戏中更多的是热衷于对财富的争抢而并非对土地掠夺问题的忧虑，但该游戏也确实反映了上述土地问题。

In “Monopoly” as in life, it is better to be rich than poor, children gleefully bankrupt their parents and nobody uses a flat iron any more.

无论是在“强手棋”还是在生活中，富有总是比贫穷好，……，并且也没有人再使用扁铁块了。

Board-game makers 2 have had to find their footing in a digital age.

在如今的信息时代，桌游玩具制造商们不得不为自己重新寻找一席之地。

Hasbro's game-and-puzzle sales fell by 4% in 2010—the year the iPad came to market—and 10% in 2011.

在iPad上市的2010年， Hasbro的游戏和拼图的销售额下降了4%，且在2011年下跌了10%。

Since then, however, its game-and-puzzle sales have rebounded 6, rising by 2% in 2012 and 10% in 2013.

而到了2012年和2013年，游戏和拼图的销售额又上涨了2%和10%。

Stephanie Wissink, a youth-market analyst 7 with Piper Jaffray, an investment bank, says that Hasbro has learned to become “co-creative…They're infusing more social-generated content into their marketing 8 and product development.”

青少年市场分析师Stephanie Wissink和投资银行 Piper Jaffray有关负责人表示Hasbro已经学会了集体创造。他们将更多当代社会生成的内容植入于他们的市场营销和产品开发。

Some of that content comes from Facebook.

有些新的元素来自于Facebook。

Last year, “Monopoly” fans voted on Hasbro's Facebook page to jettison 9 the poor old flat iron in favour of a new cat token.

去年，“强手棋”的粉丝在Hasbro的Facebook上投票，要求用新的猫造型令牌代替老式的扁铁块。

“Scrabble” players are voting on which word to add to the new dictionary.

“Scrabble”的玩家则在投票决定将哪一个词语添加到新字典中。

“Monopoly” fans, meanwhile, are voting on which of ten house rules—among them collecting $400 rather than $200 for landing on “Go”, requiring players to make a full circuit of the board before buying property and “Mom always gets out of jail free. Always. No questions asked”—to make official.

同时，“强手棋”的粉丝也在投票决定十条俱乐部补充规则，其中包括玩家在到达“出发”之前需集齐400美元而非200美元，在购买财富之前完成一次完整的桌面巡回，“妈妈总能无条件的出狱”。

The Economist has also asked its readers for new rules, through our website and Facebook page.

本刊也在通过网页和Facebook向读者征求新的规则。

However, we wanted ours to reflect modern business realities.

但是，我希望我们能反映现代商业现实。

Several readers proposed for the bank, inevitably 10 leading to bail-outs by other players when things went south.

几个读者为银行提供了更为有效的建议，自然而然的，当一切都变得顺利时，其他的玩家也将得到纾困。

One suggested that property prices in the London version of the game rise by 25% per turn.

有一位玩家建议在伦敦那一版地游戏中，房地产价格应每一轮上涨25%。

Building in inequality featured in several suggestions, the best being that some pieces begin far ahead of the others, with more money: these effects could be mitigated 11 with cards such as “Art School” and “Finding Myself” that let other players catch up.

针对那些特别的建筑，有数条建议……。这些差距会被一些类似于“Art School”、“Finding Myself”这样给其他玩家时间追赶的卡片减小。