A Lifer's Diary, Part 9: Blue Space Blues

A Lifer's Diary, Part 9: Blue Space Blues

Blue Spaces were introduced in Generation I and have been present through much of the history of the Game of Life. Their function has always been to provide any player to perform an optional action upon landing on them, with their exact purpose(s) differing between versions. Originally, in Generation 1, you could purchase stocks or insurance when passing or landing on blue spaces, or choose not to do so. However, it was generally advisable to buy a stock, since they were essential for Playing the Market (highly recommended due to there being a 40% chance of winning, and the $50,000 payout for doing so much higher than the price of a Stock Card) or collecting payouts (including some of large ones) from certain spaces. Finally, insurance policies purchased from Blue Spaces can be lost upon landing on certain spaces; the exact type depends on the space landed on.

Blue Spaces were reworked for Generation II, and there were now two different types. The first of these was the Salary Trade space (of which there were six, and two of those were on optional paths), which allowed players to trade their Salary Cards with one currently in another player's possession, and the last of these was the Night School space, which gave players the ability to voluntarily replace their current Career and Salary Cards with one each of any unused type of card for a small, fixed fee. However, unlike in Generation I, players could only perform these operations upon landing exactly on the corresponding type of Blue Space, and never when passing over them.

In Generation II, any (and every) Blue Space that wasn't a Night School Space had text that read "Trade Salary Card with any player" on it. Any player who landed on a Blue Space of this particular type could give their Salary Card to another player of their choice, and that player would give that player their current Salary Card in return. Such a trade could potentially change the outcome of a game, especially if the two players' salaries differed by $50,000 or more. However, given that the player with the highest-paying salary was the one most likely to have their salary traded away, it was often better to have the second most lucrative salary among all players, so that opponents will cannibalize each other's chances of winning just to have the largest salary.

Night School spaces (of which there were only two in Generation II) have a similar function to Lose Your Job spaces, but with a few key differences. Upon landing on them, a player may pay the bank (or, if there is one, the opponent with the Teacher Career Card) $20,000 to change careers and/or salaries. They must then draw two random Career Cards (either or both of which may require a degree), and then take either or neither of those cards (but not both), before doing the same with the Salary Cards, and returning any unwanted cards to their respective decks. Changing salaries via Night School is generally recommended if your current salary is too low and at least one higher-paying salary is available. It's also a great way to replace your current Career Card with a more lucrative one, if possible. In fact, most players use the Night School space to do both at once whenever they can.

For Generation III, Night School would be discarded, although the Return to School space serves a similar function; however, upon reaching this space, you needed to pay $50,000 to even be able to change careers (which also puts you on an alternate path), although if you made the payment, you had two options upon reaching the Change Career/Get $20,000 Pay Raise space: choose two College Career Cards (except when only one such card is available, in which case you will automatically receive that card in place of your current Career Card), or retain your current Career Card and receive two $10,000 Pay Raises (this option will be chosen automatically if no other College Career Cards are available). In either case, after reaching the Change Career space, you must spin again.

In fact, there was only one type of Blue Space in Generation III: the Lawsuit Space. Anyone who landed on it could take $100,000 from any opponent of their choice. However, if the player being sued has at least one Exemption Card, that player pays nothing, and must instead return the Exemption Card they just used to the Share the Wealth Card deck. There are seven Lawsuit Spaces on the board, so in theory, a player could gain (or lose) up to $700,000 from these spaces. Even so, a single successful Lawsuit may be enough to significantly affect the outcome of a game.

Generation IV was the first version not to have any Blue Spaces at all, but this is justifiable given that two of the Action Cards that could be randomly drawn served the same purpose as the Lawsuit did in Generation III. However, these Lawsuit Cards (as players often called them) were considered less effective, since there were only a few of these cards in the Action Card deck, and the maximum amount of money that could be gained from drawing a Lawsuit Card was not only reduced, but also variable (from as little as $20,000 to as much $80,000). On the other hand, if a player drew a Lawsuit Card, there was no defense against it, due to Share the Wealth Cards also being removed from this version.

Generation V has many different types of Option Spaces, but they no longer have exclusively blue backgrounds, although their purpose is still to provide anyone who lands on them an opportunity to make a choice that could change the course of their Life. Nevertheless, throughout the history of the Game of Life, Option Spaces have provided players with countless memorable moments, and continue to do so to this day.