The history of Monopoly is an interesting one. Its origins are mildly controversial, having begun as a folk game that was popular on the East Coast and even connected with the Quaker community. Then it became a bit of a political statement, its “dressing” and its theme becoming something of an ironic commentary on moneygrubbing landlords. Then it was allegedly plagiarized or co-opted by big business. Then it became a cause celebre in the hippie days, the subject of heavily ironic major lawsuits against monopolistic practices. Finally, it became a “skinnable” board game, where you can now get it flavored with everything from your local town’s streets to Scooby Doo.

Now, it’s a game with a credit card instead of cash.

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I’m perpetually astonished by the general ignorance of the phenomenally successful Habbo Hotel in the US. Habbo’s got a real claim to be the biggest MMORPG in the world, with (last I heard) 6 million users in the trailing 30 days — given typical figures for the percentage of a userbase that isn’t as active as that, this may put it above WoW in terms of total users worldwide.

Many seem to dismiss it because “it isn’t a game” — even though it embeds numerous minigames. Many seem to disregard it because its peak concurrency isn’t that high — disregarding industry stats that show that social games tend to have far lower tie ratios than the MMORPGs do.

Now PlayNoEvil brings us word that Habbo Hotel in China will sell real items. Buy virtual flowers, and take receipt of a real bouquet the next day.

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More discussion of the issues surrounding games for change, and the conference of the same name, has surfaced in a MediaRights article. There’s a Flickr photoset too.