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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.
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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
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?
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
(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
The game would definitely benefit from either a tutorial
,or maybe this (22 MB zip file)
;)
hmm something like this (241 KB PDF)
lots of info listed right below the click here to download link
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
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...
No we don't let you switch to an open source IT infrastructure. As your point says, it's hard in a game to provide the same level of penultimate decision making that real-life allows.
This can be dealt with in a few ways:
1. Build a framework that lets you add over time ever more detail and realism
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).
3. Build some that has immense detail in it. (aka never finish.)
With Virtual U we went with a bit of the first 2 ideas. Ideally overtime with support we hope to continue progressing things toward ideas like more detail to the IT decisions given feedback and such however the original goal is to focus on the big issues and general decisions.
One other issue with the IT stuff that is important is to understand what the real impact is. Is there detailed analysis available saying what switching to an open-source infrastructure does to a universities IT budget? Does it really work? While we've undoubtably put some bias in our product, as we go forward and begin to add more detail like this we're inevitably going to add more bias to the model.
Also I think it can be safely assumed that in Virtual U some % of your overall IT budget is going to open source tools and infrastructure. It would be interesting to know what % of universities IT budgets are spent on such tools and services. Maybe the guys at Educause would know. I'll ask them.
Ben Sawyer
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?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach