CS 501 Home

Syllabus

Projects

Books and Readings

Assignments

Quizzes

Academic Integrity

About this site

Client

Robert Bloomfield, Professor, Johnson Graduate School of Management Cornell University, rjb9@cornell.edu.

Online Games for Business and Economics

The client writes:

I am in the early stages of devising a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) with a focus on business and economics. A brief narrative laying out the premise of the game is below. I am looking for students who are interested in helping out with one of several projects that will be necessary to make the game a success. I am willing to work closely with any groups interested in this project, but a successful team will require at least one member with knowledge of—and interest in—business, economics and/or accounting.

• Game Design Document. An early step in game development is a game design document that will lay out the key design elements that would be required to construct the MMO. This project would entail working with Professor Bloomfield to clarify details of intended game experience, and then identifying the design elements that would make such an experience possible.
  
  
• Constructing a simulated firm. The heart of the MMO would be that people would manage and compete with simulated firms. The firms would have assets, supply chains (customers and suppliers for what they sell), machines with production functions, etc. Moreover, they would need to generate financial data (cash, income, etc.).
  
• Constructing a single-player approximation of the player interface. Business games pose particular challenges for player interfaces, because good business decisions require (and generate) vast quantities of data. An entertaining and feasible business MMO must have the capability to collect all relevant data, and provide natural ways for players to access that data, in the form of simple financial statements and other reports. The interface will also require natural ways for players to make decisions about investment, contracting with other players, trading in markets, and producing goods.

Premise of Game

Tamaraya have a traditional economy with limited commercial arrangements.  Businesses are run by families and clans, so there is no active market for labor (employment is determined by birth).  Transactions are cash only, with no opportunities for credit.  Buyers take ownership of items by traveling to the seller and transporting the items themselves. To eliminate any risk of nonpayment, cash transactions that involve time delays (such as the performance of a service) use escrow accounts. 

Without a market for capital to be allocated where it can be most useful, a factory that doesn’t have cash can’t buy raw materials or new machinery, even if it knows it can use those to earn tremendous profits in subsequent weeks. Without a market for labor, a weak but personable child born to a family of farmers cannot take a job selling goods in a retail store, even if she would be a much more effective salesperson than farmer.   Combined with a culture that eschews innovation and risk-taking, the lack of these markets (and most of the other apparatus of capitalism) has resulted in an economy that has been largely unchanged over centuries.

In recent years, Tamaraya has been visited and studied by representatives of the main capitalistic economies.   You are one of a group of Tamarayan scholars and businesspeople selected to visit the United States, Europe, the UK and Southeast Asia to learn about modern capitalism, and return home with new ideas.  Some of these ideas come from finance and economics:  active capital markets, credit transactions, incentive compensation, and complex contracting.  Others reflect new ideas about how money can be invested—to create new or improved products through research and development, to increase customer demand through aggressive marketing and branding campaigns, and to reduce production costs through factory design and worker training. 

You will begin your training by taking on various roles in the current Tamarayan economy—mine owner, factory manager, and retailer—in progressively more complicated settings.  These experiences will provide you with a good understanding of the current state of Tamarayan economy, and the various tools Tamarayans have at their disposal (such as financial statements, markets, a financial press and the like).  Once you have mastered these basics, you will be given the opportunity to fill new roles that become necessary as Tamaraya makes the transition to capitalism—roles like banker, stockholder, and analyst. Eventually, you can create new businesses (if you can raise the capital), and shape the regulations that govern commerce.