A folk game is a game form that spreads not primarily through a fixed commercial edition, but through grassroots reproduction, informal sharing, and local adaptation by players and communities. In the provided context, this idea is used to describe the transformation and dissemination of The Landlord's Game. Although Maggie self-published the game in 1906 through the Economic Game Company, its commercial sales were poor. Even so, it spread widely across the United States through handmade copies circulated in university classes and community settings.
What makes a game “folk” in this sense is the way it changes as it travels. The context notes that the game’s name and the place names on its board were altered from region to region. Students made their own boards and pieces and passed the game on to friends and family, while a Quaker community in Atlantic City replaced board spaces with real street names such as Boardwalk and Park Place and introduced three-dimensional house and hotel tokens as well as fixed prices. The term therefore points to a process of communal remaking: a game becomes stabilized not by a single publisher, but by repeated local use and modification.
The provided passages do not offer a broader theoretical definition beyond this historical case, so the term should be understood here only in relation to that transmission process.