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New Zealand Government Spends $150K To Create Video Game To Teach People How To Run a Business (nzherald.co.nz)
The New Zealand government spent at least $150,000 to create a video game that shows people how to run their own business. It reportedly took 14 months and eight designers to create. NZ Herald reports: The Tycoon Game series, which consists of Restaurant Tycoon and Tech Tycoon, challenges players to use what the World Economic Forum has deemed as 10 essential skills vital for the future of employment. The educational game will teach players business skills including emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility, as well as critical thinking and creativity -- skills the Forum has this year bumped up the prescribed list. Players can level-up and earn badges for certain achievements, determined by how they manage scenarios in the game, including paying supplier invoices and wages. Do you think a video game is an effective way to teach business? If so, do you have any other games you'd recommend? A couple that come to mind include Capitalism Plus and Hot Dog Stand: Top Dog.
On an emulator.
Now get off my lawn.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So, I would recommend Tai-Pan!, because you can borrow negative money from Elder Brother Wu and end up owning most of Hong-Kong, which is the way real business really works, right?
Bank Gauntlet 2: Bait and Switch
Mavis Beacon Teaches Inspector Bribes
Construction and Weather Roulette
For running a business.
I want a game to teach me how to get the government grant to do something that's been done a thousand times before.
It's the new buzzword. Although a Govt project costing $150k is pretty good value. Around here it would cost that much just to get the idea formalised into a proposal. The project itself wouldn't budget at least $20Mil plus spend another $20Mil in project blow out costs.
Capitalism Plus is a fun game, but I remember finding a kindof silly exploit back when I played it in the 90s. I was able to build a ridiculously high stock price by targeting the high-end of the market while keeping the shares 100% owned by me, then when I finally sold shares (basically simulating an IPO) at the overvalued price I'd manage to get it to I used the money that I raked in from that to buy up all of my competitors. At that point my business was vast and unwieldy and inefficient, but that didn't really matter since all of my competitors were gone, and any time a new one came around I just gobbled them up too if they started to get too big. It was fun, but it felt like the simulation just wasn't deep enough and I'd found a dumb exploit in it.
I mean, then I grew up and found out that that's an entirely valid real-world business plan. Hell, my flatmate these days works for a company that did exactly that.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
This is the game they need!http://lbcstudios.ca/portfolio/hempire/
It took 14 months and eight designers to create.
$150K for eight people for 14 months? I don't care if it had 1993 graphics, that's still a great value!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
How to make a business game:
0. Have a great idea after going to a university.
1. Find a lawyer, accountant and professional expert to look over the idea.
2. Have a lot of money and a great history of paying back banks.
3. Find a bank that gives loans to wealthy professionals with new ideas. Show them the amount needed, the collateral, a history of good past lending. What the professional advice was.
4. Get loan approved thats can be repaid.
5. Start the business.
6. Make money. Pay tax. Pay back bank. Ensure professional advice is given when needed.
Some new ideas for an expansion pack:
Take design to a low wage nation to have a production line set up.
Sell product using online marketing.
Use a low wage nation to make the product and try and get into an advance nations shops.
The boss levels:
The low wage nation steals the idea and exports your product globally as their own creation.
Working in Communist nations.
The wrong photo on the box and lawyers get ready for infringement.
Celebrity endorsement and branding goes wrong.
The industrial espionage level.
The investigative journalism takes an interest level.
Unions.
Wage claims by academics for workers in the sector.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
In my first year of business school in Foundations of Business, we had a game called Mike's Bikes that we used to simulate an actual business. Game included all the actual parts of the business including starting new products, investments, and financials. While it wasn't exactly Tycoon level easy, it was easy enough for Freshmen to use the basics.
https://www.smartsims.com/busi...
not sure why they need to spend that much money, doesn't make much sense.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Emotional intelligence: Showing empathy when necessary, possibly being good at gauging how upset a dissatisfied customer is.
Cognitive flexibility: Seeing an issue from both sides.
Both of those sound important for running a successful business.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
This whole thing is just a low-key slashvertisement to get employers in the Bay Area and Seattle to consider a branch office in NZ.
$150K is a bit over a starting salary these days.
The skills needed may also vary depending on where in the world you are.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Then I'm going to mention Taipan!, Drug Wars, Jones In The Fast Lane, SimCity, Railroad Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, Oil Imperium, Ports of Call, Theme Park, Zeppelin, ...
Step 2: Profit.
Besides isn't capitalism and self reliance and commerce all vestiges of our evil bourgeois past?
Shouldn't the government make a game that tells people how to complain properly?
First, get your allowance from your parents. Then go to the craft store to buy poster board and magic markers. Then write some really cutting phrase on the the poster board like "save the owl whales from corporate baby killers". Then get some friends to dance in a circle whilst you wave those around. And when you get tired, you can hang out at starbucks for half an hour and go home.
Why can't the government fund that game?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You aren't seeing that in context.
The context most people have here is along the lines of "Froth froth government spent some of MY money froth froth Venezuela".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No link to the games in the article, links in the summary are for other games. So where can i download it?
Great idea btw, if the army can make a recruting game, anything goes.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Does this game also teach business people how not to tank morale and destroy future potential by continuously screwing over employees for personal gain or petty selfish ideals? Does it teach that corporate cannibalism is bad? These kinds of topics, I think, are vastly more important to running a business than teaching yet another generation of MBAs how to maximize profit by derailing everything around them in the name of quarterly gains.
He was very good at inducing cognitive flexibility in others, though.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
> emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility
If you have to ask the question you wouldn't understand the answer.
Are those actually real things, and do they have real-world applications?
More than you know, grasshopper. Only by learning will you figure out what it means to you.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Just play Don't Starve.
Teaches resourcefulness, inventory management, foward-planning, and that instant death is just around the corner.
It's just like real life!
$150K for 8 engineers and 14 months? It sure was not a full-time job.
A true classic that taught me everything I needed to know.
Well, yeah... but like raw intelligence, they don't exactly tend to be skillsets that you develop remedially... but getting bureaucrats or school administrators to comprehend this... well, it's recursive. ;)
Back in my day, we learned how to run a business in Algebra class, by playing Drug Wars on our TI-85 calculators. Supply, demand, buy low, sell high, managing inventory... it's got everything you need to know.
Indeed, in the third world, the most important job skill by a wide margin is "being born to rich parents." If you live in the first world it's still quite valuable, and appreciating.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I loved that game back when I was a kid, I developed all sorts of models for running a business and making it work.
End game I learned that it was far more profitable to manipulate my companies stock price than doing anything useful. Like buy a research building so you're burning cash, your stock will plummet below the value of your assets as the market thinks you'll go bankrupt, buy back tons of shares at the low price. Then liquidate your buildings, the market cap will return to the value of your assets (with a much higher price as there's fewer shares). Issue new shares at the high price, then start burning cash again and repeat the cycle. I got up to $14 trillion in market cap in my last session. Compared to billions running successful enterprises.
Capitalism 2 fixed the glitch by preventing you from issuing shares over and over again if you weren't doing anything. Both very enjoyable / educational games.
The game doesn't exist.
Even the developer's own website doesn't have a download link, or even screenshots.
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