Quick! How can we brainwash the kids better?

I just finished reading Jill Lepore's article, "The Meaning of Life," in the May 21st New Yorker (sorry, it's not available on the website, for once) about the Game of Life, Nick's favorite board game. I had always enjoyed Life as a child, but when subjected to playing four games of it back to back with my cousin's kids, I came to realize that Nick was correct in hating it. It is horrible and boring and molds kids into money-craving consumers.

At one point, I had selected my house and picked the Tudor (you have to pick randomly from face-down cards). My cousin's daughter ended up picking the Farmhouse and was upset that my house was bigger. After insisting that hers was obviously better because it had more personality, she still disagreed solely because mine was bigger. Ugh. She was later obsessed with making more money than everyone else. This is an 8 year old. Sad, sad times. And yet another reason why I will not be having kids. No matter what you teach them to value, their minds will become polluted with the crap that their friends think.

Anyway, the reason why I'm mentioning this article is for two reasons: one, Hasbro, the company that bought Milton Bradley, is coming out with a new version of Life this summer called the Game of Life: Twists & Turns, and two, the original version of Life seems awesome. Apparently designers have been trying to revamp Life for years to make it not so money-hungry. Good luck. Apparently there isn't just one starting place and there are all sorts of crazy routes you can take, but instead of using paper money, they use a "Life-Visa-brand 'credit card' to insert in the game's electronic Life Pod, which keeps track of Life Points--earn more, spend more!" Uh. Visa claims that they're "not marketing to kids" with the Hasbro-Visa deal. Michael Rolnick, Visa spokesperson: "We are helping to educate kids. It's never too early." Which is nice and all, until you learn that the kids can keep playing the game even if they are in debt. Hasbro Games VP, George Burtch: "If you're bankrupt in Monopoly, you're watching. In this game, you can be hugely in debt, but you're still playing!" Thanks, Visa, for teaching kids early on that they can rack up credit card debt and they will still be able to live their lives as they always have been! Why wait to coerce college kids into debt when you can target 10-year-olds? This is quite nauseating. I would think that a board game company would have more respect for themselves than to exploit children for the benefit of a credit card company. Apparently, I am wrong.

On a less disturbing level (or maybe not), the original version of the Game of Life seems hilariously awesome. Awesome because you can land on suicide and lose the game all together: "Spinning a 2 from the red square between Ruin and Fat Office forces you to land on Suicide and die." I think this is exactly the kind of game kids need to play to learn about life.