Best Educational - Economic - Business - Financial Games
Sebastian Sohn
United States
culver city
CA
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Games for a business, investment, and personal growth group.
I attended a personal finance seminar, where entire seminar was, back-to-back games and other activities. The games were all home grown, board games, party games, and live-action-role-playing games. It was a great experience and I want to recreate that in a group that meets on a regular basis.
This is a list of games that I am considering for the club.
The games should:
1) be fun, or I would rather read a book
2) be a good simulation and be realistic
3) teach sound business principles
4) reward team work or at least reduce player vs. player hostility
This list is meant for an audience who are not from boardgamegeek.com
Most of these games can be found at www.boardsandbits.com , if not you can search with this tool, www.boardgameprices.com .
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Sebastian Sohn
United States
culver city
CA
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I have locked this geeklist list from input to reduce clutter.
If you want to add input to my list please do it to the source geeklist, Business Economic Finance Games that Help You Get Rich in Real Life, where I decide if games make to this list--Best Educational - Economic - Business - Financial Games.
You can make suggestions or comments to my source geeklist.
Source geeklist: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/3372/
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Sebastian Sohn
United States
culver city
CA
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Player is pitching Martian gasoline virus
 Educational
Fun
play time: 90 minutes
Pros -- uses the creative side of the brain.
Cons -- little
Lessons -- an exercise in creativity. Practice the art of persuasion and your sales and marketing friendly vocabulary.
gameplay:
"... each player has a few cards. Some cards are items (cigarettes, umbrella, car, shack...), others are characteristics (frozen, mentholated, disposable, erotic...). Each player associates two of his cards to generate a new product. Each player has then five minutes to describe his product and his marketing plan, and convince fellow capitalists that they must invest big money in frozen sushis, mentholated pants, disposable chairs or [your cration]..."
-- from Bruno Faidutti's review
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Sebastian Sohn
United States
culver city
CA
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 Educational
Fun
play time: 90 minutes
Pros -- learn forecasting and risk management in a social way
Cons -- more "gamey" and less of a simulation
Lessons -- forecasting, risk management, and resource management
The commodity production is abstracted into a disconnected theme, where nobody know what will be produced, because it is determined by a die roll. However what I like about the die roll is that the game provides information to practice business forecasting and risk management. You cannot predict the rolls but you can build your town and cities to maximize opportunities to produce.
The 8 has more pips (5 dots) showing it higher probability of being rolled than the 4.
As picture above you know that 8 are more likely to be rolled than 4 (8 has more pips than 4), thus try to build towns into corners of 8's or other high number. Also try to build into corners with different numbers than the ones you have already so you have a wide spectrum of numbers. While if you surround one hex with cities and concentrate production, you are likely be a target of the thief or you may have a game where that number is not rolled frequently.
What I like about Catan is that it simulates unpredictability of raw materials and gives but give you enough probability to manage the risks. Games that have pure control over supplies, like Power Grid, is unrealistic, because you can predict exact amounts raw materials that will be produced.
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Timothy Sullivan
United States
Florissant
Missouri
suggestions for econ lessons
t_s_sullivan wrote: ...
If I could make a suggestion (I teach economics at the university level), while I realize that many students will think of economics as being the same as finance/business, I'd encourage you to give equal weight to the more subtle (but equally interesting) ideas in economics. Using Settlers, for instance:
1. Scarcity: There rarely is enough of anything (let alone everything) to go around in a game of Settlers. How does the game allow you to get more of what you want? Is it fair that someone with nothing to trade can't get what they need/want? What would be the advantages and disadvantages to changing the rules to require that players with "extra" have to share? (Most folks who think the answer to that last question is easy - in either direction - haven't thought about it hard enough.)
2. Opportunity cost: Buying a development card in Settlers means not saving for a city, which could generate even more cards in the future. It also means not trading away the wool for wood. Even if something isn't valued in dollars, there is still a cost from "using" it.
3. Gains to trade: On the surface, trading seems like a zero-sum game. If A & B make a trade, the total number and mix of cards in their two hands stays the same. So, on the surface, we might suppose that the only way that A can be happy about the trade is if he "ripped off" B (and visa versa). So why is it that both A & B are happy to make the trade? Does it mean that one of them is always duped, or is it possible that they both are better off since they were both able to obtain a resource they didn't have immediate access to? How would they feel if their trade was "disallowed." Who (if anyone) would gain by disallowing the trade?
4.Conflict and cooperation in groups: What other "informal" trades occur during the game that don't reflect resources? For example, If A rolls a 7 and puts the "robber" on B's city hex, what does B tend to do (5 minutes later) when he rolls a 7? If you're generous in allowing someone else to have the red markers, how might that affect your interactions for the game? How does your willingness to "cooperate" with another player change once he has 8 or 9 VPs?
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Would like to expand #3. Gains to trade:
3a) comparative advantage -- if my territories are ideal for producing bricks but not ores, then I will trade bricks for ores.
3b) diminishing marginal utility -- my 7th brick is not as valuable to me as my 1st brick, and eagerly willing to trade them away for 2-1, 3-1, or even 4-1.
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Posted Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:38 am
Educational 
