Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie entered the world of “Monopoly GO!” last week with the launch of the hit Scopely mobile game’s “The Simpsons” integration. The in-game event marks the biggest collaboration for “Monopoly Go!” so far — following tie-ins with Marvel, Star Wars and Harry Potter — and the most grownup.
“There’s some stuff out there we wanted to do in content but we couldn’t because we wanted the game to be rated a certain age rating,” Scopely senior vice president of publishing Eric Wood told Variety. “Things like butt cracks — that’s a pretty common thing in the world of ‘The Simpsons.’ But then you look at some of the regional rules by some of the regional regulators, and you’re actually now going to be classified as a whatever, 21-and-above game. And we don’t want that, so we had to make some decisions on some content. Like Duff beer, beer references, which makes sense. Alcohol, you don’t want to have that. So there’s a few things that we could have done, but the game would have been rated a different level, and we wanted to make sure that the game was accessible to as many people as possible. So we had to ride that line and be true to ‘The Simpsons,’ but not cross the line.”
But “The Simpsons” fans needn’t worry, because the 20th Television-produced show’s animators and producers packed as much of Springfield into “Monopoly GO!” as the game’s rating would allow.
“We wanted to really fill in the world with Springfield,” “The Simpsons” co-executive producer Loni Steele Sosthand, who is on her sixth season of writing for the show, said. “So as many characters as we could put in, within different aspects of the game, from the stickers to the minigames to just the board. We were even telling little stories between the boards, which I think they haven’t done before. So there’s a lot of story in the game that really blends well with ‘The Simpsons,’ and was fun to do.”
From June 3 through July 29, players (aka “Tycoons”) can build, explore and progress through iconic locations from “The Simpsons,” including the Nuclear Power Plant, Krustyland and beyond, mashed up with Mr. Monopoly, Scottie and the world of “Monopoly GO!”
Sosthand set up the story in a “Simpsons” mini episode that revealed the in-universe reason why the iconic yellow family is wrapped up in the world of “Monopoly GO!” to begin with. In the episode, a chance encounter in Springfield reignites an old grudge dating back to Mr. Monopoly (voiced by Will Ferrell) and Mr. Burns’ (Harry Shearer) college days at Yale over a stolen top hat.
“There was a natural fit for Mr. Monopoly with Mr. Burns. Their tycoon, our tycoon,” Sosthand said. “It’s a mini episode, so you only have a few minutes to tell a story, but given that they were such a natural fit, you could kind of imply a bigger history between the two of them, and that was fun to imagine.”
The mini episode was a first for a “Monopoly GO!” campaign, which usually launches a new season with just a trailer. But the Scopely team says working with “The Simpsons” pushed the brand’s creativity in terms of what the scale of an in-game event should be.
“If you look at the episode we did, we created a storyline that didn’t exist around Mr. Monopoly and what he did with Burns,” Wood said. “And some brands, they would say, ‘That’s never existed. So you can’t go do that.’ I think that’s a perfect example of them being very open.”
The unique nature of this particular in-game event will continue throughout the crossover as narrative-driven “Episodes,” which will feature original “Simpsons”-inspired storylines, play out in “Monopoly Go!” every two weeks.
Per Scopely, “From Homer-triggered nuclear meltdowns to a disappearance inside Krustyland, each Episode plays out across interconnected seasonal boards, collectible Episode Sticker Sets, themed mini-games and short animated sequences that carry players from one adventure to the next.”
Of course, the actual gameplay has been converted to “The Simpsons” standards as well, including the digital game board.
“I think the environment art and the buildings, as they get repaired and scaled, is a real standout for how fantastical they get,” said John Drake, Disney’s vice president of business development and licensing. “Instead of setting baseline Springfield Elementary or baseline Moe’s or 742 Evergreen Terrace [the fictional address of the Simpsons family] as the first stage, and just upgrading them from there, they almost set them as the middle of the five stages. So there’s this really fun thing where you get to see a dilapidated tiny one door shack for Moe’s Bar all the way up to a palatial imaginative Moe’s where there’s a rooftop garden with a giant neon sign, and it looks over the top.”
Drake added: “I think seeing people playing in that space of the fantasy capitalism — to steal a phrase that Loni coined in the short — of Monopoly, of what does the crazy hotel version of this look like in the board game? That’s where I saw the art team bringing the most making-me-laugh-out -loud moments per click. There’s a lot of fun stuff to chase, create, and blow up.”
Watch the “Monopoly Go!” mini episode of “The Simpsons” in the video below.