Move over Park Place, and back off Boardwalk, as some Swan City landmarks are taking over the best selling board game of all time. Grande Prairie-Opoly, created by Canadian owned and operated Outset Media, is the latest in a series of spin-offs of the greatest argument starting board game Monopoly.
Outset Media Senior Vice-President Jean Paul Teskey says they’ve used other cities across the country in previous versions of the game, but in 2019 their approach to which cities were ultimately selected changed.
“We started with the usual large cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary… but last year our best selling game was a smaller town…Sarnia, Ontario,” he says. “We sold more Sarnia-Opolies than Vancouver and Montreal combined, so based on that we are focusing on smaller and mid-sized across Canada and Grande Prairie I thought would be a perfect fit.”
Teskey says the uptick in sales may come down to bigger cities having a lot of different products that might have their name on it, with the customizability better suited to cities and towns that don’t get nearly as much of the spotlight. He adds while they do spend a lot of time learning about the ins and outs of Canadian cities, Grande Prairie was one that may stick in his mind for a long time.
“It’s pretty cool to learn about all sorts of different places, and even businesses, like in Grande Prairie-Opoly, we’ve got Broken Oak Distilling, Ramona’s Pizza, Grain Bin Brewing.”
However, this isn’t the first time Grande Prairie has been used in a Monopoly-style game, as in 2018, the Grande Prairie and District Chamber of Commerce released a version.
Grande Prairie-Opoly is available exclusively through Walmart Canada.