Monopoly City Streets Starts Today

Adding to the 9/9/09 buzz , Hasbro is launching Monopoly City Streets Wednesday morning. This version of the Monopoly game is online, live and uses Google Maps as the game board. (The game went live at 8 a.m. EDT, but the site was initially timing out. The latest on the game can be found here .)

To play, users log on to Monopolycitystreets.com where they receive $3 million in digital Monopoly money. Then they can search for streets worldwide. A Google map of the location pops up and, if the location has not been purchased, users can buy it and start building. The value of property will differ depending on the location: Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., the address of the the White House, costs $2 million. The Daily Mail explains that users will then automatically collect rent on properties daily: from $50,000 for a house to $100 million for a skyscraper.

Monopolycitystreets.com , the official site, explains "The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence. Own any street in the world. Build humble houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent."

One tactic players can use in the game is to buy a location adjacent to others and lower the property values by building eyesores such as garbage dumps. This will reduce the value of the rival’s real estate holdings.

Boston.com reports that some valuable Boston properties were snapped up during a recent trial of the game. The city's Boylston Street was taken over by a player in Great Britain who used the nickname "GoHasbroJoe" and has earned a net worth of $4.6 billion make-believe dollars.

Other reviewers were less than enthusiastic. Wired's GeekDad described how he bought as much as he could, ran out of money and still did not understand the goal of the game. He wrote, "It’s not much of a game and the play is not particularly interesting. Although, it’s kind of cool to own part of downtown Boston." He did add that the game may improve when more people start playing it.

The game is free to play and will be available through the end of January. It is being launched along with a new physical board game, Monopoly City , that is a fresh take on the traditional game.

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