Chairman of the board game
Monopoly aficionado Phil Orbanes has built a career around the Parker Brothers classic
LOUCESTER -- At their last place in Amesbury, Phil and Anna Orbanes had a nice view of the Merrimack River. They sometimes talked about building a retirement home on the ocean, but that was a faraway dream.
Then they got wind of a Gloucester waterfront property featuring a unique, newly renovated modern house with a spectacular view of the harbor.
"It had so many of the features in a home we'd build," said Phil Orbanes. Impulsively, they bought it.
"If I've learned anything," he said, standing in his spacious new living room, it's that "if an opportunity comes along, you'll always regret it if you turn it down."
That's a lesson Orbanes, now 59, took to heart at the age of 8, when he played his first game of Monopoly. He held his own against his aunts and uncles. The experience was memorable -- it was the first time he felt privy to the mysterious world of adults. He may remember it even more clearly because he would go on to build an entire career around the game.
From an executive position with Salem's Parker Brothers, makers of Monopoly since 1935, Orbanes became chief judge at the US and world Monopoly championships in 1979. Today his specialty games company, Winning Moves Games in Danvers , is the maker of Monopoly: The Mega Edition, which features more properties, faster play, and other embellishments to the classic version.
He's also the author of "Monopoly: The World's Most Famous Game & How It Got That Way" (Da Capo, $27.50), a new book that traces the game's 100-year history against the peaks and valleys of America's 20th-century economy.
Monopoly, Orbanes explains, has its origins in a homemade board game called the Landlord's Game, created by an activist named Elizabeth Magie Phillips as a method of teaching students the "single tax" theory of economics, which called for an end to all taxes except those on land owners. After she acquired a patent for the game in 1904, it passed through many refinements as enthusiastic players made their own versions.
It wasn't until an entrepreneur named Charles Darrow stylized the board in the 1930s, giving Monopoly its familiar symbols and color schemes, that Parker Brothers agreed to publish it. The timing was key, according to Orbanes.
"It was the Depression, and I think that was essential to the success," he said. "This was a time when money was a dream. There was the thrill of handling it vicariously."
On a recent weekday afternoon, Orbanes and his wife sat down with a visitor for a friendly roll of the dice in their museum-quality basement game room, where historic, hand-lettered Monopoly boards hang on freshly painted sky-blue walls. Tearing open a bag of tokens from a brand-new set, Phil Orbanes chose the horse. Anna chose the wheelbarrow.
The psychology of Monopoly begins with the tokens, he said: "It's a meaty topic. The Scottie, the top hat and the race car are all universally popular. Some people like the humble tokens -- the thimble, the shoe. Maybe they don't want to be noticed."
After an auspicious beginning -- five properties acquired on the first turn, thanks to back-to-back doubles and the Mega Edition's increased bankroll ($2,500 per player) -- the visitor settled back and watched helplessly as his hosts amassed monopolies, then built formidable rows of properties, needling each other all the while. Phil , continually counting his money and assessing his mortgages, bought more buildings on almost every turn.
"I'm hoping I have enough money to bedazzle you with skyscrapers," he said, referring to the Mega Edition's upgrade to new heights in property development, with astronomical rents guaranteed to crush the hapless soul who lands on one.
It wasn't a skyscraper that finished off this reporter but an old-fashioned one-two punch: First St. James Place, on which Phil had built four houses for a $750 rent payment, followed closely by a bankroll- breaking visit to Pacific Avenue, where Anna owned two houses.
"Is that any way to treat a guest?" Phil Orbanes asked, pouring on the sympathy. Naturally, he went on to win.
Oddly, the game that has taught several generations of Americans the pleasures of ruthless capitalism has served for decades as the most popular loss leader in the toy and games category, luring in customers with underpricing. If Monopoly costs less than $10 at Wal-Mart, Orbanes said -- quite a bargain, considering it was about $3 in the destitute 1930s -- it sets a troublesome standard for the rest of the board-game business.
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"The aim is to overcome the price dilemma with the standard version," he said. "Maybe I'm too rooted in principle, but it seems to me if something is desired by the consumer, the worst you can do is give it away."
With Winning Moves busy producing specialty versions of Pay Day, Rubik's Cube, and other classic games, Orbanes said he has less time these days for casual rounds of Monopoly . When the staff plays, he said, "They take a great sense of delight in clobbering me, so this is actually remedial for me."
Sons Philip and Julian -- the former a vice president at Winning Moves, the latter a video-game programmer -- were "vicious" with their father playing Monopoly growing up, said Anna. The Orbanes' s house was, of course, always well-stocked with the latest games.
"The kids were popular in the neighborhood," she said.
Her husband said his life in the gaming industry has given him just as much satisfaction as he imagined as a boy.
"There's a real sense of pride," he said. "If I do my job well, I'm going to make people happy."
