The DiaryField Notes

From the
Workshop Floor

Slow notes on slow games. Devlogs, marginalia, postcards from the play-test table.

  1. 04
    May 03, 2026

    The Anspach Decade

    Part three of our history of Lizzie Magie's Landlord's Game. How a Berkeley economics professor who designed a game called Anti-Monopoly accidentally spent the next ten years in court — and, in losing his sabbatical, his savings, and most of his health, finally dragged the truth about Monopoly out from under forty years of corporate myth.
  2. 03
    Apr 26, 2026

    The Atlantic City Quakers

    Part two of our history of Lizzie Magie's Landlord's Game. How a teacher named Ruth Hoskins arrived at a Friends school in 1929, redrew Lizzie's board with the streets outside her window, and quietly invented the version every Monopoly player since has been playing.
  3. 02
    Apr 12, 2026

    The Landlord's Game — A History

    A century-and-change ago, a stenographer in Maryland sat down to make a board game that would teach her neighbours about land economics. It became, by way of theft and a long lawsuit, the best-selling board game on Earth. Here is what actually happened.
  4. 01
    Mar 09, 2026

    A Letter to Lizzie

    We wrote to a person who has been dead for seventy-eight years. Here is what we said.