Better Business Games
Better Business Games
URL: http://www.btplc.com/Societyandenvironment/Businessgame/index.htm
Cost: Free (but donations to charities listed on their Web site are encouraged)
Reviewer: T. Mike Childs
From British Telecommunications comes a pair of online, text-driven,
business-based, decision-making games: Better Business Choices, and
Better Business Dilemmas. The titles are as dull as the games
themselves, which are however, fortunately short and easy to play.
Better Business Choices
This very short, simple game consists of setting the initial parameters for a
startup business in one of three business environment settings you also
choose: "Boundary World," "Fluid World," or "Engaged
World." Each world offers different business advantages and disadvantages.
You then have a million British pounds to spend in 10 categories, such as type
of product, materials, energy, and marketing methods. Each choice costs a
certain amount, and you must balance how you spend your venture capital. Your
success over the next five years is measured in terms of environmental,
economic, and social impact. You have the option of viewing detailed
explanations for how each factor contributed to your success or failure. While
the game concept seems straight-forward, it actually comes off as confusing
with your choices seeming to have little direct relevance to the outcomes.
Thus its value as an education tool is undercut. The game graphics are also
poor, being a junky, grab-bag mix of clip art and stock photos.
Better Business Dilemmas
This second online game from British Telecommunications is more engaging
fare. Unfortunately the Flash version is sized wrong and appears tiny when
launched. Fortunately, the non-Flash version works normally. You are put into
the role of the new CEO of a large corporation trying to make socially
responsible corporate choices. You are presented with a series of business
decisions affecting your business's approval rating from five stakeholder
groups: shareholders, neighbors, employees, customers, and pressure groups.
You have three options for each choice, typically, a moral high road, a
profit-maximizing choice, and somewhere in-between. Shareholders and pressure
groups are the easiest to make angry or make happy. Small news blurbs give
you additional information on the issues presented. Although sometimes your
decision has no impact on one group or another, your decisions always affect
at least one of the groups in a negative or positive way. Better Business Dilemmas
gives you good, if simplified, examples of real world
moral dilemmas and realistic ways to deal with them.
This game is an improvement over Better Business Choices, because you
see the immediate impact of your decision on each group, and can change
direction at any time to try to change the stakeholder ratings. Graphics are
nonexistent, but this is an improvement over the busy, thrown-together look
of Better Business Choices.
