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Top1. Introduction
In addition to offering intense emotional immersion and concentration of focus for players, games also facilitate the inspiration of intrinsic motivation (Graesser et al., 2009; Prensky, 2007). And when intrinsic motivation is boosted, it would prompt players to engage in repetitive plays (Sitzmann, 2011; Wouters et al., 2013). According to Newzoo (2021) global games market analysis, the total value of the global gaming market is expected to grow from $175.8 billion in 2021 to $218.7 billion in 2024, with a compound growth rate at an impressive 8.7%. Not only that, Asia’s digital gaming market will grow to reach 50% of the global gaming market in 2021. Evidently, the market value of the digital game industry in 2021 would be a critical point that could explode into massive business opportunities.
Past studies indicate that the integration of gaming with teaching motivates students more and enhances the learning outcome (Chang et al., 2017; Sánchez-Martín et al., 2017). Games that have been designed for a primary purpose (such as education) by integrating target elements and entertainment are known as “serious games” (DeSmet et al., 2014). Serious games have been developed with the fundamental objective of facilitating learning for learners and behavioral changes for the target users (Thompson et al., 2010). More business management courses nowadays use business simulation games, virtual games or simply the gaming concept (Hernández-Lara et al., 2019; Ortiz-Martinez et al., 2022; Yen & Lin, 2020) as a teaching aid in such areas as retail management (Lin et al., 2018), production and supply chain management (Liao et al., 2015; Liu, 2017), entrepreneurial management and education (Stummer & Kiesling, 2021), and operation management (Kaliappen, 2019). We also know that serious games have been widely used in different management courses in business school (Zulfiqar et al., 2018). According to Allied Market Research (2022) prediction, the scale of the serious game market is potentially set to grow by as much as 18.47% between 2020 and 2030, reaching a market worth of $32.72 billion in 2030. And as such, learners’ capacity of understanding the dynamic nature of system administration through the use of serious games and their learning orientations have become vital issues for educators and managers alike (Katsaliaki et al., 2014).
In early 1960s, the MIT Sloan School of Management developed the beer game as a tool for the analysis of supply chain management and bullwhip effect. By playing the beer game, learners were able to gain better understanding of the impacts of decision discrepancies and the dynamic environment of supply chains (Edali & Yasarcan, 2014; Macdonald et al., 2013; Strozzi et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2000). Nevertheless, as corporations become more susceptible to the impact of globalization and fluctuating economies, many conventional processes of supply chain management have also been rendered obsolete by the highly dynamic environment. In the past, the rules of order placement primarily depended on the experiences of the managers. But in a dynamic environment, reckless formulation of ordering strategies without the appraisal of environmental factors and other unknown factors, it could dramatically impact the overall performance of the supply chain and result in bullwhip effect (Chaharsooghi et al., 2008). And as such, the beer game is presently the most popular serious game in the instruction of supply chain management (Chaharsooghi et al., 2008; Katsaliaki et al., 2014).