New Online Monopoly Game Uses Real Streets and Google Maps   - 666 Views,

Still, the premise is pretty cool: using the collaboration of Google maps and the Monopoly game format, players can register and “buy”, “trade”, “sell”, and “build” hotels and houses on real properties on the Google earth maps.

Of course, once the novelty wears off, it all still boils down to playing Monopoly. Not that that’s a bad thing.

Online Monopoly City Streets is slated to be open to the public for four months, but if it remains as popular as today’s rush suggests, we’re betting they find a way to monetize it, and keep it open.

Of course, first they have to get the site back up and running. As of the writing of this article, late in the night of opening day, the site was still down, and visitors were being greeted with the defeault Apache “whoops this site is down” message, advising that “If you are a member of the general public… The fact that you are seeing this page indicates that the website you just visited is either experiencing problems or is undergoing routine maintenance.”

Admitted the MonopolyCityStreets.com blog:

“So then… today has been a rather busy day to say the least. We appreciate your enthusiasm to try Monopoly City Streets. Thank you for your patience as we work behind the scenes to make the necessary changes to accommodate the traffic to the game.

We had planned for a lot of traffic on launch day and had been load testing the game - in fact, we’ve been testing and optimizing for a whole month. However, between the enthusiasm of Monopoly fans around the world, everyone who was excited to try out the new experience and non-stop mentions of the game on Twitter, blogs and everywhere else, our servers were overwhelmed.”

If you’d like to check out the Online Monopoly game - once the server is back up, you can check out the online Monopoly game at http://www.MonopolyCityStreets.com/.