Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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...
One of my first successful programming tasks was editing the code of lemonade stand so it could recognize my name and my sister's name. It would give me more super-hot days, and while it didn't change the rate of days for her, every once in a while it would flash up a message saying "Meghan is a stupid head!" and then blink 3 times, then go away. That way when she got my parents, they wouldn't see that it was insulting her.
It was great fun.