Hasbro, TripAdvisor update the Game of Life with vacation options

You know your brand name has hit mainstream recognition if Hasbro makes a board game out of it. The company worked with the travel site, TripAdvisor, to bring vacation-themed cards to the new version of Game of Life: TripAdvisor Edition. The partnership follows another recent techie collaboration, between Hasbro and Nintendo, for Monopoly Gamer.

It’s the first time vacation cards have appeared in the 60-year-old board game. Players can choose from “a ski trip, a beach day in Punta Cana, hiking the Great Wall of China, and visiting the Eiffel Tower,” Hasbro says. And to make it relevant to modern travelers — painfully — players will encounter setbacks, like a flight cancellation.

In addition to helping travelers book their trips, TripAdvisor also researches trends. The travel themes in the game reflect a 2017 TripAdvisor survey of family vacation preferences, in which 86 percent of the 1,600 U.S. travelers surveyed said “taking a vacation is an essential part of life,” while more than half thought vacations brought family members closer together. Florida, one of the vacation options, was the top family vacation destination among those surveyed.

More commonly known as Life, the board game of chance is a simulation that involves the player going through the process of, you guessed it, life – college, career, marriage, buying a house, raising a family, and retirement. Like most traditional board games, it follows a track, from start to finish. Just as in real life, players encounter obstacles. It’s like the analog version of The Sims, but less time consuming and frustrating to play.

“Graduating from college, getting married, buying a house, and having a family are all major life milestones, but we realized we were missing one important element — vacations!” Jonathan Berkowitz, senior vice president of Hasbro Gaming, said in a release. “Through our work with TripAdvisor, we’re introducing vacations and adventures into the iconic board game for the first time to encourage families to take a break, connect, and make lifelong travel memories together.”

This isn’t the first “digital” partnership on a variation of the game, but it’s the first time, to our knowledge, Hasbro has worked with a website, especially one that deals with something players can actually relate to (sorry, Game of Life: My Little Pony Edition).