A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Designing Business Management Games

Abstract

Computer games have become an important part of the new digital economy, employing thousands of Information Technology professionals worldwide. Their role as a novel approach to reduce the distance between students and knowledge is also well documented. In this chapter, we will describe a multi-disciplinary approach to designing a particular class of educational games: business management games. We argue that through a better understanding of the relationship between work-domain based decisions and processes, professional game designers can achieve effective results. The design approach was based on intensive collaboration and co-design meetings with business management researchers and professors. The result was a game called “SimCompany”, aimed at teaching children about business management concepts, thus promoting an entrepreneurship culture in classroom settings. “SimCompany” proved effective as a teaching tool about business management concepts, and initial evaluation showed a positive increase in students’ rate of learning, when compared to traditional teaching methods.