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.

Comments

Posted already?

[CmdrTaco (editor)]

I believe an article was posted on this a few months back, but it seems to be there have been a few updates.

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.

Don't bother

[tfreport]

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.

Growing trends towards simulation

[JohnBE]

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.

Re:The Sims

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

2. Build a game where many areas are conceptual and abstract so that people can explore core issues and imagine the details that make up their more general decisions (i.e. fill in your own backstory as you cut the IT budget because you're moving to open source IT tools).

I haven't read the code, so I might be entirely wrong. But my guess is, cutting the IT budget would lead to lower available services and thus inefficiency and more student gripes. But that doesn't (necessarily) model the switch to Open Source. Open Source breaks the financial model of "higher price == better (more) service". In other words, just because you don't pay for the tools, doesn't mean the tools are garbage.

On one level, you could abstract this by saying the IT budget reflects license costs and service costs. If we drive down the license costs, then we can spend more on services in the same budget. But actually the model doesn't work that way. There's simply no way that paying for Office licenses (and Windows licenses) is intrinsically equal to paying for more help desks. If we need to abstract this much, then a very useful sim capability -- test whether Open Source can work as well for less -- is not available.

On the other hand, it's hard to see how you could code for that without simply incorporating your own personal bias towards Open Source (or against it) into the simulation. Is there hard data anywhere?