A new board game parodying banking failures, particularly those of the Butcher brothers, was created in summer 1983 by UT student Bill Stribley, a junior in marketing. Joe Kyte, a senior in management, marketed the game nationally in the fall of 1983. When the initial one thousand copies went on the market in the third week of August, the $14.95 game received such national attention as a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, stories on USA Cable, ABC, and CBS national networks, the Good Morning America TV show, and the Paul Harvey radio broadcast.
The introduction to the game said in part: “The game you are about to play actually happened; only the names have been changed to protect the embarrassed. . . . The object of the game is to survive longer than anyone else (lying, cheating, swindling, etc. are necessary talents) while other players are forced into bankruptcy.”