LUVOPOLY

Is love truly a game? Do we have to roll the dice and see where it lands us? 

This piece is heavily inspired by the most well known board game, Monopoly. I grew up playing the game and loved it, just like any child growing up in the 2000s. Monopoly has hundreds, maybe even thousands of different iterations of the base game. LUVOPOLY is my version: the game of love. 

This is the last piece of my mini series called “Games We Play.” The first piece is chess, then poker, and lastly, Monopoly. Each piece in the series depicts a different side of how love and game are related. Chess is a battle between two people. Poker is a gamble between all of the players, and Monopoly is about getting as much real estate as possible before going bankrupt. 

When I was first coming up with the concept for this piece, love felt like a game at this point of my life. Feeling like you were gambling with your feelings, trying to plan out your next move, making sure you had everything in check before jumping into something new. And it was exhausting. 

LUVOPOLY was based off of my friends and my own experience on dating apps specifically. The online dating world is more popular than ever in our day and age, but that doesn’t mean it’s always positive or successful. You will occasionally hear a success story, a young couple meets on a dating app and lives happily every after, simple enough right? Well, that’s not the majority of people’s experiences. A lot of people lack communication, aren’t clear about what they want, talk to 10 or more people at once so you’re overwhelmed by choices, go on a single date with someone and then ghost them right after. The list goes on and on.

At first look, the board looks straightforward, the first space is to download a dating app and the last one is to get married. But there are some road blocks that get in the way. Cancelling dates, getting ghosted, miscommunication, asking what are we, and of course breaking up are all things we experience when we step into the dating world. 

Do you have what it takes to get to the dating finish line?