- Oh, hi!

- And we are talking about Mall Madness.

- Yes, it's the best game from when I was 10.

- And we are also talking about a few other things

that you are pretty passionate about.

- Uh, you mean like universal basic income?

How did that happen?

- I think, that's the one.

- Let's go shop.

- Let's go shop.

- Becca Scott,

thanks for joining us.

- It is my great pleasure to be here.

- You are everywhere.

Literally, everywhere.

I look on the interwebs, there you are,

I look in my kitchen, there you are.

Everywhere.

- You have good snacks.

- I do have good snacks, sometimes.

No seriously, if viewers don't know Becca Scott

where are a few things they might have seen some

of your work?

- Uh, my Instagram story, cuddling with my dog a lot.

I do stuff with Geek and Sundry primarily.

- Yeah.

- I have a show called How to Play and a show called

Game the Game, where we first teach you how to play

a game and then we game that game.

- It's true, it's true.

- I have a podcast about games called Victory Points.

- All right so, obviously you're doing all the things

board game related now.

- This is correct.

- But where did Becca Scott start board gaming,

cause you know everybody loves to know.

Like obviously this beaut right here

- Yeah, yeah beaut.

So, you know there's a lot of games that influenced

me heavily and what was the first game that wasn't

because my dad always wanted to play Monopoly,

it was because I loved this game and I knew I could

crush everybody with my expert strategy.

Mall Madness baby.

This is such an excellent game.

Can I tell you?

- Yeah, let's do it.

- Can I give you my spiel?

- Yeah, do your spiel.

- It's all about this electronic banking system.

This was cutting edge of technology in

- 1990?

- Yeah, 1990.

You tell it how many players you have and it tells you

there are two locations with a sale and one location

with a clearance and that will change periodically

every couple of turns.

- Right.

- You are shoppers in the mall.

You choose one of four colors.

That shopper comes with their very own

credit card.

And a player board with holes for pegs.

Now these represent the mall layout

and represent each of the stores.

Now obviously in each store there is only one

purchasable item.

For example, what every teenager wants, in the kitchen

store you can get dishes.

In the card shop, you can get a ceramic gift.

Maybe for Grandma.

The objective is to visit six stores, pay the money

to get an item, and after you have six items or six pegs

in your player board, you got to get out to your

personal parking garage exit.

Yeah, and once you've done that you win the game.

And it seems like, well what's the strategy here

you just you're dictated how many moves you can make

by the computer.

But, strategery comes in with the money management

because obviously cash is infinite in this world

of young, white girls at the mall.

(laughter)

But, what you have to go all the way up the stairs

to the bank and get more cash out if you run out

so it's all about the economy of movement and

being able to take advantage of the sales and clearances

in order to get the best price for the only one item you

can buy at each store.

- This might be one of the first pick up and delivery games.

- Absolutely.

There's not a, it's just mostly pick up

it's accumulate things.

- If you're like me and poor with your money

you're gonna need a pick up.

- Yeah.

- And delivery.

- Yeah, it's funny the consumerist culture of the 90s.

- Yeah.

- Cause it- - That was a thing.

- Yeah! And this came at a time, my favorite tv show was

Saved by the Bell, my favorite movie was Clueless,

and my favorite game was Mall Madness.

And it's all about consumption and this color palette and

- You feel like a passkey.

(heart beat)

Zack's the word.

- He's a real, the original misogynist,

but at the time, Zack Morris.

And now, Kelly Kapowski.

- Yeah, I may have had that poster on my wall as a teenager.

- Yeah, that was a good poster.

That was a really good poster.

You know, my copy of Mall Madness is gone forever.

- What happened?

- Well, you know naturally it would sit

in my parent's basement until I come visited

at Christmas and maybe we play it.

But my little sister, who I love very much,

she's just a couple years younger than me,

she brought it to her college apartment

and I remember we played when she graduated college.

- Oh nice. - When she was 22.

So, I was 26 and it was great.

Loved it.

We had a great time, we were in this little

halfway in the basement apartment getting

super stoned, playing Mall Madness.

It's California, we can say that.

- Yeah.

- Her apartment, her old roommates held on to the game,

and she was going to come get it and they got evicted.

And all of the communal stuff, she had like kept her clothes

at her significant other's house but like the game

was just, it was trashed.

It was just somewhere.

I hope that that horrible landlord that evicted them

kept Mall Madness for himself.

- Yeah.

- Even though it maybe brought a little joy into his

heartless life.

- RIP

(gong)

- Real quick, before we continue,

we are looking for your support.

Check out the game below,

it's our weekly game recommendation.

Very similar to an updated version

of Mall Madness:

Last Will.

So click the link below, check out that game

and help us continue our storytelling about board games

changing lives.

- Do it, you gotta do it.

Click.

- So Becca you had a friend who has a theory

on how to upgrade your little humans, if you have those.

- Oh, like for childrens?

- Yeah, the offspring.

- Well I remember in college, my friend James,

he was like, "Did you play board games as a kid, I have

a theory".

I was like, "Yeah, duh, I crush at Monopoly, no big deal".

And, he was like I have this theory that like anybody

who is smart or like intuitive and strategic

on a different level, like I could probably point

to the people in this room that played board games as a kid.

And it's funny now because our entire community

is these people like, yeah, we love nerds

- Right. - And all nerds game as kids.

And that's why we're obsessed with strategy

- Yep.

- And optimization, but in theater school

not everybody gamed and in the world not everybody games

it's upsetting to hear, I know.

- We're working on that.

- Yeah, but so we had this theory about like who was

a board game kid.

- It's funny that you say that though because even

Parker, he went to the school back in Alabama

and the teacher knew us and followed me on the

Instagrams and socials and she was just like

"hey, Parker is one of the best problem solvers in the class

and I'm pretty sure it's because of all the board games

that you've play with him."

- Absolutely.

- And then she asked would you like come in

and like teach the class some board games?

And I was like yeah, duh.

- Yeah, did you?

- Oh, yeah.

- Okay, cool.

I thought maybe you'd say yeah I'd say I'd go and then

I moved to Los Angeles.

- Actually, I think you're right.

Actually, no.

I think I said I would and then I never got around to it.

- That's not the same.

You gotta follow through James.

- Sorry, Ms. White I owe you a board gaming class.

- Ms. White, you heard it here.

So, can we play?

- No, I don't want to play this with you.

You're gonna just dominate.

- You know it's really up to the bank whether or not

I dominate because it tells me how many spaces I can move.

- True, that's true.

Just like in real life.

How much money you can actually have.

- Yeah.

(electronic cha-ching)

- So in this game, each of us was given $200 to start.

- Right.

- Why aren't we given that as citizens of the

United States of America?

- The greatest country in the world.

- The greatest country in the world.

- Right.

- A big thing that I am very interested in as a concept

of the world moving forward into the future is the idea

of universal basic income.

- Okay.

- But hear me out, hear me out.

So this is the idea.

- What, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps

and everybody else should have to do it to.

- Did you though?

Because I know I was born into this world.

So there were no bootstraps involved and that helped

me get where I am.

- I do remember several times when I had to ask for help

and help was there to be given to me.

- Absolutely, and a lot of people are not given

that help, so why don't we

- What do you mean?

What do you mean they don't have help.

- There are poor people in the world that don't have

a mommy and daddy that puts money in the bank

in the middle of the mall for them.

(electronic cha-ching)

What we need is to solve poverty

and homelessness for everyone.

Because we have such a prosperous society, why is it

not possible for us to just get people off the street,

get people fed, get people not dying on our watch

because it is our job as the richest country ever

to make sure that people don't die from poverty.

- Sure.

- And that's my two cents on it.

- Well I lived in a place for five years where

I got to walk with people who didn't have

they're marginalized, right, and they didn't have that

and you don't understand.

I knew I had my perceptions of people going into that

stint of our life, right? And when you walk with people

and you're like okay, well I'm gonna use a fake name

to protect identities here.