The Associated Press reports Hasbro has unveiled an updated, modernized version of the classic detective game Clue, known as Cluedo in its native Europe.
The new version is meant to update the old-fashioned upper-class tinge of the new game and relate it more to modern-day culture. New cards are added allowing players to peek at other players’s cards and “murder” a fellow player, thus eliminating them from the game, but the investigation gameplay is the same. The mansion is now more of a modern-style, with a spa and patio, among others. Old-fashioned weapons such as a lead pipe and a revolver have been replaced with weapons such as a baseball bat, a dumbell, and an Emmy-like trophy.
And the sextet of possible suspects has been updated too, given new personalities and full names. Jack Mustard, no longer a colonel, is now a football quarterback. Victor Plum is no longer a professor, but a Bill Gates-type who made his fortune in video games. Rounding out the crew is the celebrity Kassandra Scarlett, well-connected Jacob Green (apparently leaving the clergy), manner-obsessed Eleanor Peacock, and ex-child star Diane White.
The AP article claims that the new version is meant to replace the 1949 classic, but Amazon.com and Hasbro’s own website offer both versions- either the AP misreported or Hasbro realized that offing the classic Clue would be a murder most foul. (We all know what happened when they got rid of the original Monopoly.) Either way, although purists will probably scowl, the updated characters and weapons sound amusing. I was never a Clue player myself, but I’m sure a lot of people will be plotting to off whoever at Hasbro came up with this idea.
I think the real problem with the popularity of board games is that there’s no way in hell they can possibly compete with video games, and updating superficialities like character names is not going to help one bit.
In 50 years time, board games will be almost entirely absent from toy shop shelves.
I love my board games but I suspect that the ones you’ll find in Toys R Us are likely to dry up. Hasbro has been milking the cow for as much as they can and I been undermining their properties by releasing a dozen different editions of everything (like Clue to go back to the OP).
On the other hand quality board games seem to be on an upswing and the board game hobbyist market is developing in the US. It’ll never be big but the niche isn’t going to go away.
But will they sustain popularity in the next hundred years? They may always exist (even if you don’t include Chess) but I find it unlikely they’ll be very visible.
What bothers me about the change is that someone at Hasbro apparently thought that the game wasn’t selling as well as it could because the characters seemed too “old timey” to the current generation of board gamers. Was this the best idea they could come up with?
I’m surprised they didn’t just come out with a pop culture version of Clue the way they have multiple “themed” versions of Monopoly, Risk and who knows what else.
Yeah, Hasbro, 'cause that’s just why a play a game…to pretend I’m in a world more like the one I have to live in already. Yep.
Honestly, though, I think they could have done better by staying with the Miss Marple setting, and just updating the weapons (say…Chainsaw; Molotov Cocktail; Pencil Stuck in Table; Bayonet Strapon…etc.)
By the way…anyone else ever play the Clue: Great Museum Caper spinoff? That was a good game for a power outage.
Maybe “upper-class” was the wrong word- what I meant to get across that the feeling you get is no longer “old-fashioned Agatha Christie story” but “modern celebrity-obsessed culture.”
Yeah, I’m going to have to disagree with you there. Just look at the Scrabulous/Scrabble flap on Facebook.
If board games disappeared in my lifetime I’d be hugely shocked. Especially since I plan to whoop my future kids at Monopoly and then gloat for days, but I’m a bastard that way.
1.) “Miss Scarlet Did It With Coloenel Mustard in the Bedroom.” Sorry. Had to get that out of the way.
2.) Changing character’s names is news? It seems pretty clear to me that they’re just angling for publicity. They’ve changed the character’s looks many times through the years. There’s even a “Simpsons” version of the game. Anything to give it a new twist.
3.)
Thank you. I’ve been wondering for years why the British edition had so unwieldy and cumbersome a name as the apparently meaningless “Cluedo”. So it’s “Clue” + “do” – so what? Why would you stick those two words together? It’s noty even like it’s a clever pun. But i didn’t know about “Ludo”, which makes at least a serviceable pun.
