Thread: Two reviews for the price of one…
Since I had the opportunity to play this game last night, I thought I’d throw up a quick review.
I’m am an instructional designer by trade. That means I’ve studied ways people learn, and studied the best ways to instruct people. I’m always on the lookout for different ways to ‘teach’ people. Simulations are a great way to instruct people, and games are (can be?) a type of simulation. So because of this, games are often a very effective way to instruct.
That being said, a game can be more educational than fun, or more fun than educational. Or it can be a happy medium. World of Warcraft (the video game) is more fun than educational (there are some great things you can learn from the game), and the Reader Rabbit series (video game) are more educational than fun. Zoo tycoon, Civilization, and others (again, video games) strike a nice balance between the two.
So, why am I blathering on and on about video games when this is a board game review? Well, because this particular board game falls into the ‘more educational than fun’ category. While there are decisions that must be made, and better decisions will result in a better chance of winning, the simple fact of the matter is that there is so much luck to the game that the decisions are pretty much pointless.
The game involves you rolling a die and landing on different ‘events’. You may land on an ‘opportunity’ space that allows you to buy stock or real estate. You may land on a ‘doodad’ space that will require you to pay money. Or you may land on a ‘Market’ space that will affect you or anybody else holding the stock, real estate, or opportunity in question.
In our game, I had yet been able to ‘do an opportunity’, before somebody bought stock at a dollar a share, and then the next turn sold it for $50 a share. They could do this just based on the luck of the draw. They had 1.6 million dollars and I had 2,000. The end result being that the ‘fun factor’ of the game falls somewhere in between Monopoly and The Farming game, both of them heavily reliant on luck or dice rolls. The ‘fun factor’ of the game rates about a 1.5.
But if you are serious about investing, the game actually does a great job of boiling down the key concepts of investing. You get a good idea of the basics of cash flow, and what you need to do to ‘get out of the rat race’. For educational purposes, I’d give it a 6.5.
So, long story short. 6.5 + 1.5 / 2 = 4. If you go into the game wanting to learn some good concepts of investing, you’ll be pleased. If you go into it wanting a fun time, you might be discouraged.
If you want to play a good economic style game, I would instead steer you toward acquire.
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Thread: Two reviews for the price of one…
