Anybody ever played a game for their job?

September 21, 2007 12:34 PM

I am working on a book on the use of games and simulations for training by businesses - have any of you played or seen a game like this? I am thinking of anything from the Beer Game to the Virtual University sim to a specific game built for your company. (If you have in-depth experience and wouldn't mind being interviewed about your adventures, let me know in your response.)
posted by blahblahblah to work & money (12 comments total)

I hope you'll put something in there about Lemonade Stand, which is how a lot of folks my age first came to understand the concept of supply and demand.
posted by bondcliff at 12:43 PM on September 21, 2007

This wasn't for a job, but my math class played the Stock Market Game in seventh grade (a long, long time ago)!

Here's one of many similar games aimed at adults.
posted by SisterHavana at 1:08 PM on September 21, 2007

You might want to look into military logistics simulations. Some quick Googling led me to the Army MSRR.

If you want to talk to a company who writes this kind of software, email me and I'll give our URL and phone number. (I just write the code, with very little knowledge of the bigger picture.)
posted by natabat at 1:36 PM on September 21, 2007

IIRC Theme Park was developed for Lloyds TSB as a business training exercise.... but I can't find anything about that online.
posted by missmagenta at 3:15 PM on September 21, 2007

There's the VBS series based on the Operation Flashpoint game, which is used by the USMC as well as some other military and police organizations.
posted by pravit at 3:59 PM on September 21, 2007

Just in case you're not familiar with the term, these are generally known as 'serious games'. There are many sites on the internet devoted to their discussion: Watercooler is probably the largest, as Serious Games Source is only updated infrequently now. Gamasutra, the parent site of SGS, often runs Serious Games news, and their print publication Game Developer will have a serious games article on occasion.

Although, I'm guessing if you're writing a book on it, this isn't news to you!
posted by fishfucker at 5:01 PM on September 21, 2007

As part of my ITIL training, we took part in a racing pit crew simulation.
posted by JaredSeth at 5:20 PM on September 21, 2007

Serious Games are turning into a huge, billion-dollar business. The first real re-purposing of an existing game I'm familiar with was Marine Doom. There's always America's Army as a recruiting tool. But really, this is a big, big topic nowadays in several different industries.

As a teenager working a Disneyland in the 80s, we had to play "Jungle Cruise, the Boardgame," a custom-made, table-top game set up by the ride's trainers to understand the flow of employees from work station to work station, and how to understand the flow of setting up the queue area for the guests and so forth.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:01 PM on September 21, 2007

Yes, contact info is in the profile. I used to help design and facilitate these games for corporations, as well as evaluate them by participating. Beer game, custom game that we designed with a U of C prof and Second City, Army Ranger simulations in the woods, the whole gamut.
posted by jeanmari at 8:06 PM on September 21, 2007

I played Capitalism II while I was doing my MBA. It wasn't part of class -- just something I did for fun. I used it to reinforce a lot of the concepts I was learning. However, Stanford and Harvard apparently used it in the learning environment.

When I was a co-op student, I built some games into the computer-based training courses I was putting together for a hydro company. Nothing fancy, though.
posted by acoutu at 10:12 PM on September 21, 2007

Hmm, my International Business class ran a competition on the Investopedia site. We created a private game and people basically traded stocks near-real-time and the top stockholder at the end of the year got a cash prize. The one that we're playing right now in Business Managment is the Business Strategy Game.

The premise that you (and a few group members) take over control of a major shoe company valued at about 100 million dollars starting in year 10 of the company. You get to make decisions regarding financing through bonds/shares, plant expansion, selling branded/private label market shoes, focusing on different areas globally, whether to go for high quality boutique or low quality affordability type shoes, celebrity endorsement, advertising, quality control, employer wages, etc... The amount of control you have is, to a University freshman, ridiculous. You develop a strategy for your company and implement that strategy on a periodic basis (Weekly for my class). You compete against other groups in your section/"industry" so that no strategy is guaranteed to win or lose and all that matter is that you do better than the others.

We've just started playing this game two weeks ago, so if you want to talk more, email's in my profile.
posted by Phire at 10:33 PM on September 21, 2007

Take a look at Intermezzon.
posted by martinrebas at 2:45 AM on September 22, 2007