Slashdot Mirror
Virtual-U (SimUniversity) Now Available
Ben Sawyer writes "The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Virtual U project recently shipped a new version our university simulator. This software simulation game, available at www.virtual-u.org lets you play as president of a U.S. university. You choose how faculty spend time, allocate funds, and decide if you should give special admission to athletes. Version 2.0 improves the model, and adds new features. The product is supported through a grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The product runs on Windows 2000/XP/9X/ME. The software is being used by a number of university education programs, and is part of an overall project to improve thinking about how universities are managed." No word on if virtual-u features a "BSA attack" scenario.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/16/182723 4&mode=thread
:)
Now I can see if this works!
Will it also have a party simulator so I can join-in?
...if they can simulate my idiotic dorm roommate who puked on the sofa, didn't clean it, and didn't tell anyone about it...
I think this software might actually be fun to play, plus as an added bonus, it might give some insight into the "bureacracy" and "red tape" that are experienced in so many large institutions. Making decisions that will effect thousands of people is never easy, and a redundant system of checks is needed to prevent disaster.
187....147.....100....87......83.....40.....10KBPS
Ouch.
So we don't need a supercomputer to simulate interpersonal elationships and education. What will they think of next?
The Alfred E. Neuman foundation!
c-hack.com |
So someone will get a nice big research grant to sit around watching how a virtual university works, and then find out how to improve their university.
They will do this while sat in a perfectly good university, with all those "real" things happening. Sadly they will miss this because they are too busy playing The Sims "Brainy People Edition".
To me this doesn't sound all that fun, however, it will give the Student Governments of the world something better to do than write letters to the paper.
I hope the game has a more realistic simulation of people lives and economics than The Sims had. If so, it could be an extremely useful tool not only for universities, but for all large organizations - I imagine they face many of the same types of challenges.
Of course, like all such games, it's limitation will be your in-ability to impliment any policies or creative solutions that the game designs didnt think to allow. For instance, I bet the game doesn't let you switch to an Open Source IT infrastructure...
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
Naturally, tuition goes up every year no matter what. I will also enfore the no-reusing-of-textbooks policy set by my forefathers. Lastly, I will work harder to admit more students who only want to party. They know they're buying the degree, not the education, so let's have a wet t-shirt contest instead of a group study. Pass the beer bong, dude!
Can't see that happening with this- would you skip class to play at going to class?
From the website: Virtual U is a caricature of real academic life grounded in authentic conceptual structures and data.
Silly me, I always thought academic life was a caricature of reality already, how could they caricaturize it further?
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
the site gets posted on /. so i naturally figure i better download the game and try it before i comment.
/.
and i get 227 KB/s from their server while it's the top story at
impressive, well either that or the game sucks so bad that nobody is even bothering to grab the file
I'm going to ban my students from using P2P services and allow my research staff to patent my research
I hope there is a feature to 'Prevent all Grad Students who speak unintelligible English from teaching'. I just don't see why this happens. Many colleges seem to think it's ok to let the profs get by letting their grad students teach for them, but I don't see how this is what the student is paying for. They are there to learn a subject from a professional educator, not learn how to interpret thickly accented versions of their own language from another student. If a grad student wants to go into teaching the subject, it is reasonable, but in order to teach they have to be understood first.
Any good sim game has to have scenarios you can play where an impending crisis looms before you. Here are my thoughts on some possible scenarios:
- Your campus' Athletic fraternity have lost their frat house to a natural distaster. They, in turn, kick the nerd fraternity out of their house. Do you let the Athletes stay in the house or help the nerds get on the Greek council?
- The RIAA is threatening to sue your university over student mp3 servers running on network. Do you rebuff the RIAA or crack down on the warez sites?
- Students have petitioned administration to switch the student computer labs over to linux, saving thousands. The Evil company providing your university with their OS, has bound you with restrictive licences. Do you ignore the students or try and find a way around the licences?
... the address to download a Cmdr. Taco and Wife set of skins?
Slashdot posting PR for closed-source windows-only games? This is truly a a new low. There are tons of open source graphics packages and frameworks they could have used.
I love these kinds of games, since they're very much geared towards learning.
Am I mistaken in thinking that these guys helped fund Reinventing America (I and II)? That was a really cool idea which I'd like to see brought back.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
"Dammit, the Deltas beat me again! I really hate those guys! Next time, I won't waste my 'double secret probation' bomb quite so early!
[opens Game Settings and adjusts the ROTC 'Hitler Youth' slider more towards '100%']
Speaking of the BSA: Did anyone else notice the graphic on the BSA's website of a copyright symbol superimposed over the earth? Maybe I'm just paranoid....
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
It may seem to be a game these simulations, but in simulations it allows for a faster delivery of results statistically and realistically. Most of the time these simulations are money well spent. It doesn't mean that some stat geek isn't going to have some fun and poke around with things as we may do to have fun. You just can't do some things with certain senarios due to time and money.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Hey guys, I'm having trouble with my beta copy of Star Wars Galaxies(PS2). When I boot with the Lunix kit, I'm getting an error that says:
/dev/bb
Not found:
But I have the ethernet card config'd properly. Can anyone help?
Also, you were duped into reading this post. Lunis is for fags. FreeBSD rocks your socks. As an aside, I had your sister last night. In the pooper too!
The product runs on Windows 2000/XP/9X/ME.
Well, duh. What, you think it's going to run on Linux or something? I suppose their could have been a Mac version, but we know Mac versions are always at least a year behind The Industry Standard Platform.
What makes this stuff any more realistic or ground-breaking than the latest buzz phrases on the back of Mall Tycoon, I am definately not gonna take their word for it.
The BSA claims that billions of dollars in revenue, wages, and taxes have been lost due to piracy.
When in reality, the numbers would be much smaller because most software pirates are too poor to afford a $100.00+ program to do just a few projects on.
if they have an expansion pack so i can improve my social life in college too... just install *Hot Date* and i can find cuter girls in my computer engineering classes (or girls period)
if it realistically simulates a government hellbent on passing the income tax, so the money coming in from the state gets smaller and smaller due to "needing to tighten the belt". Its getting rediculous here in TN.
So, is there a secret part of the game where you get to be president of Clown College?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
This software simulation game lets you play as a Student Union President of a U.S. University. You choose how students drink, party and decide if you should sell magic brownies in the Student Union bake sale. Version 2.0 replaces Bud light with Molson Canadian and adds new features. This product is supported though University student money. The product runs away from exams. The software is being used by a number of drunks enrolled in Psychology, and is part of an overall project to improve thinking about avoiding hang-overs. No word on if virtual-SU features a "going to class" scenario.
Maybe we should send a copy of this to the demented Judge Stephen Limbaugh (Brother of the Big Fat Idiot) that ruled that games were not Speech and found "no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech" in the games.
Help fight continental drift.
This reminds me of a discussion I had with my friend today. We were discussing how crappy his MIS class is and how useless the skills he was practicing were (he is not at all technically inclined).
We basically came to the conclusion that all college professors should write their textbooks. They should draft them and have an on campus press print them. Nothing fancy, just the core information they are trying to present. This would certainly kill the college textbook racket as well as weed out the really incompetent Professors. Any thoughts? Of course I understand that it will never happen, even on the coldest day of a winter in hell, but still, it is an interesting concept to discuss.
Yay! now I can get my virtual degree in jornalism. :)
Will that at least qualify me to write virtual articles for slashdot?
Finally a game that is virtually real!
MSFUDMOD01.ZIP: Introduces Bill Gates' henchmen to your IT/Finance dept. This will install "virtual IIS" on every campus machine, increases complexity geometrically, saps resources, makes the better CS students grouchy.
PSEUDCHTMOD01.ZIP: Enforcment of such gems as "trying to learn how to be a CS major will get you thrown out of the class".
SLAVEMOD01.ZIP: Increases revenue for the school by making all of your students research yours to sell.
My
Limekiller
Downloaded and played it. The game would definitely benefit from either a tutorial or at the very least more active help features at the beginning. The interface is such that you are lost trying to figure things out. I wasted a half hour before realizing that I was getting nothing out of it and was figuring very little out. Seems like a great idea, I just need some sort of documentation to better understand what I am doing right and wrong.
(1) Backstabbing and in-fighting among the professors. Let's face it, not all profs are looking out of the best interest of the students. Some just want to do their research and not be bothered by such pesky details such as students who want to learn. At the Univ. I'm at, the chair of the deptartment I'm in is about to retire; in other words, there is blood in the water, and there is going to be a ego/pissing contest to get that seat.
(2) A lazy student gov't Let's face it, what is the job of student gov't? To serve themselves and get laid, what else! Really, the student gov't where I'm at is corrupt and has done nothing for the students. However, I hear their desks are used for more than writing papers...
(3) 'Loopy' Deans Overheard to between a dean and a prof: Dean "You need to get the enrollment up in your program before we can fund it anymore" Prof: "You need to fund us, since we are near broke and need money for facilities and staff to get studnets in the program" Dean: "You need to enroll more students to get more money" (Now, think endless loop...)
(4) 6 Chancaller, 10 year... We go through head hanchos like toilet paper, each with their own 'texture'... Really though, there seems to be little direction from the top.
Ok, really, this is a cool game; I just hope it can help teach the next generation to run a university (and NOT run it into the ground)
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
I skimmed the license agreement, and it looks like (at first glance) a BSD-advertisement license. In any case, the source is available, so (naturally) I am wondering if there are any attempts to port it to Linux/*BSD. Or does it use DirectX? I guess DirectX wouldn't preclude porting, just make it more difficult. Thoughts?
:Peter
heh heh. Student gov't is worhtlesss.
So does their simulator have giant radioactive
rats? Mass drivers? Block Wars? Vagrant ex-chancellors?
Someone, or many someones (perhaps a campaign or something) should call the BSA hotline (1-888-NO PIRACY) claiming that the BSA themselves use unlicensed software. This of course is a lost call for them, and enough at the same time would be about the same as a DoS attack, wouldn't it?
I'd bet that it would certainly piss them off enough to track people down, so if you do this, make sure that it's from a payphone and that you're wearing gloves. Heh.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
... for the Panty Raid Party Pack!
"Derp de derp."
This game had better involve throwing massive amounts of money at the wall and not listening to anyone or else it will be wholly inaccurate.
(...watching mtv2 on the giant wall of television screens at our new campus "gym", while waiting to use one of the 3 weight benches...)
hmm...
Virtual-university awards virtual degree, which in turn purchased by virtual "success people" to create virtual qualification.
:-P
My email box is half flood of these.
...I'd be able to assassinate Brother Jed.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I want to donate a copy of this to some of Stanford's management staff. They've made some bad decisions lately. Splitting off the hospital as a for-profit operation, then merging it back a year later, for example.
Umm.. yeah, right.
I wanna see some documents to back THIS up. Let's audit the BSA!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I wonder if one of the goals is to become a spinless politically correct nitwit similar to what Penn State's President Graham Spanier is really like.
No one wants to see you in a bikini.
Virtual-U = training ground for those aspiring to be University Presidents.
If you misallocate all your funds and can't build any more units on campus, other local universities will send wave after wave of orcish peons to overrun your administration building. Zug zug!
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
in order to make it fully realistic, you should be able to model your school after corporate structures. that is what is happening at my school right now - the CSU Chico administration has been steadily increasing administrative pay rates and expenses, while replacing tenured professors with part-time staff. i wouldn't be suprised if many other schools in the U.S. are following similar trends of corporatization.
here are the stats given by the chapter of our faculty association:
"The number of administrators increased by more than 125 percent from 1975-76 to 1998-99. During the same period, the number of full-time equivalent-students grew by 16.8 percent, and the number of faculty increased by approximately 6.8 percent."
peachy.
tim
Can I remove all forms of sports, athleticism, and jockism from my university?
I find the trend towards simulations of real life interesting. Does anyone else remember space simulations such as Elite? In a nutshell they were science fiction simulations. Isn't it odd that as computing power has increased more and more real life situations and systems are been simulated! Sim-this, Sim-that, Sim-U, Sim-Pets etc..
;-).
I wonder if there'll be a Sim-Slasdot, where you have to manage revenue over costs and keep the mods in line
So you increase your computing power and instead of simulating unreality, you simulate existing reality (albeit someone elses), there has got to be something backward.
e4 e5
Perhaps it should be sold to Maxis and be made part of The Sims family.
Ugly Bob
To Live Is To Die.
I am still waiting for simPimp. . . just think of the possibilities .. all the choices that have to be made, like how much crack to give to your hoes(you want to keep them on the job but you don't want them to overdose), whether to hire protection(you don't want to waste money if you don't have to),or if you fuck your own hoes are you loosing potential business(good question) what kind of system you have set up with cretin cops,(keeping them satisfied by whatever means necessary) to leave your corner in peace. how many hoes can you personally manage before needing to outsource(if you save up a great deal of money you can eventually run a hor house) and then manage rooms and what not, and when you go supper big time, you run a high class escort service to big time business clients.
...when student parking runs out, a real university ups the cost of parking fines and passes. It does not build more parking. It gives the students a nice tutorial in modern capitalism.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Where the hell is the "Commit NCAA Infraction" key?
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
"Your virtual university always features a football stadium and basketball arena"
:)
"Set your athletic policies and build a winning sports department "
Sports department? I really don't _want_ a sports department!
Hiya,
I just downloaded and installed Virtual-U and i'm getting an error bitching about not being able to open RESOURCES\A_WAVE2.RES. Anyone else getting something like this?
- Sadiq
www.toao.com
SysWear - Geek T-shirts (UK/Europe)
I bet if I played this it would end up like all the sim kinds of games I play.
An angry populace, a police station on every corner, 0% spent on social programs, and me hiding in my mansion.
Kind of strange how it always ends up like that...I mean, I don't INTEND on implementing libertarianism...
Was just enjoying a fantasy world where, everytime you run into a bug in commercial software you can get a court order and armed federal marshalls, raid the company, bust in their doors, install auditing software to track down and 'cuff the programmer responsible and demand they fix it or face $150,000 / day / bug fine.
Then I woke up.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
they grade you on things that don't necessarily reflect the performance of the university. ethnic diversity of students and faculty, for example. it would be far more interesting to compare how a university with a wide ethnic diversity performs as opposed to one without.
This sounds kind of like the Japanese hentai computer game "Sentimental Graffitti" where you are a college proffessor and you have to make all the right moves in order to get all of the girls to sleep with you.
That's what I think when I see the logo of Sherwin-Williams Paints: a paint bucket marked SWP, spilling red paint all over the globe, with the motto COVER THE EARTH.
I'll bet the Socialist Workers Party loves it, though.
http://www.vu.union.edu/about.html
Our version allowed you to waste time, mis-appropriate Student Activities funds, and decide if you should revoke accounts for warez hosting.
Hardware requirements are minimal, but the renewal fee is quite high (34+ K/year.)
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
What the heck. I typed in Rosebud and I typed in Klapacius and no extra money? Is the cheat broken or something :) Does anyone have a link to this cheat? Oh yeah and the one to tone down the overbearing Public Safety dept :)
The next poll: how many minutes will it be before we start getting spam promising us degrees from Virtual U?
From the buglist:
8. Initialization produces too much Financial aid
Our financial aide algorithm is setting financial aid to about 50% of gross tuition...
"Thats not a bug, its a feature!"
BSA==Business Software Alliance
ALSO
BSA==Boy Scouts of America
Get it?
Game crashed when allocating budget for year 2, though. Blah. Kinda buggy.