Out with the old board games, in with the new hotness

polygon.com:

You are an upstanding member of modern gaming society. How do I know this? Well, I heard through the grapevine that you doted on your grandmother recently, celebrating her foray into smartphone gaming. It was very kind of you. Also, I was lurking just around the corner when you chatted up the neighborhood kids about their village in Minecraft. Later, I checked the security footage and yeah, that was you who turned off motion smoothing at the corner pub, wasn’t it? I appreciate you. But tell me: When are you going to take care of yourself?

More specifically: When are you going to spruce up your aging board game collection?

Now, don’t get defensive. I’m not here for the hard sell on the wider world of hobby board gaming. You can keep Othello, all right? It’s not really hurting anyone. All I’m saying is that you’re taking up valuable room in your living space with some woefully out-of-date board games, and it’s time for an intervention.

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The worst part of Monopoly — aside from the fact that it was originally intended to be an indictment of capitalism, not a celebration — is that there can be long swaths of time where you are prevented from actually participating in the game. Go to jail and stay there, basically, unless you have the right card or the dice come up in your favor. Sitting four people around a table, only to banish one of them to the corner of the board indefinitely, is a really bad way to spend your time. Stop it, and try Machi Koro 2 instead.

Machi Koro 2 is a city-building game. Players purchase businesses — in the form of cards — and