Nov 042008
 

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McD’s is doing their Monopoly game again—you collect your little game pieces, and if you manage to score one of the rare ones you win some money. The game pieces also have codes on them; you enter the code online and “play” a web version, nominally to increase you chances of winning.

I figure if we’re going to McDonald’s anyway, we might as well collect the things. My youngest son is in charge of that, because he loves collecting and sorting things. I believe he can tell you, without looking, which pieces we have and which ones we’re lacking.

This morning I went to the McD website to enter the game piece codes—again, might as well since I’ve got ’em. And I observed an interesting thing:

McD monopoly board

My little dog started out on Pacific Avenue, nine spaces away from the Go corner.

I rolled an eight, which should have landed him on Boardwalk.

The game moved him nine spaces to land him on Go.

Humph, I say.

I suspected the web version of the game was crooked, or a lot more people would be winning. With an honest pair of dice you can only go around that board so many times before you’ve landed on all the squares. Now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

“You should report that!” declared my son.

“How would I prove it?” I doubt my screenshot would provide court evidence. I doubt we’ll even stop going to McD’s, since we weren’t going there any more or less for the game pieces. But just for the record, their web game is rigged.

 Posted by at 10:11 am

  One Response to “Hey… McDonald’s Is Cheating!”

  1. The issue isn’t that the game is rigged. Just look at the odds of winning and you’ll know that you’re looking at a Monopoly-themed slot machine, not anything to do with Monopoly the game.

    The issue is that they rigged it the wrong way. They should have just shown you a 9 on the dice and you’d have been happy. With the number of moves you’ll ever play of this game, you won’t see enough rolls to prove whether the dice are honest or not.

    Showing you a 9 and moving you 8 squares isn’t evidence of cheating, it’s evidence that their Flash developers may not be IQ competitive with their sandwiches.

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