Essay About Real World And Business Games

Business Games Have Failed
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In terms of their use, simulation games appear
to be one of the more successful recent developments
in educational methodology. The
commercial market for simulations is estimated
“in excess of $100,000,000 per year” (16), The
range in fields and context of gaming use is extensive,
from games using a parent-child relationship
as a model, to elaborate models of the
firm employing microeconomic theory, and
even to games to teach administrators of
planned parenthood centers. Viewed in light of
the widespread use and scope of simulation
games, claims to their overall success might
seem tautological.
Yet there is surprisingly little evidence that
games are in any sense efficient or effective
methodological devices. This is especially true as
the complexity of the model used in the games
increases (13). The present article documents this
irony and postulates why it may exist. Previous
John J. Neuhauser (Ph D. — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of
the Computer S( iences Program at Boston College, Chestnut
Hill, Massac husetts.
Received 4/2/75; Revised 12/30/75; Accepted 2/17/76;
Revised 3/10/76.
reports have indicated the lack of learning theories
which would adequately support comparative
learning measures (3), but there may be
more fundamental causes of this paucity of supportive
evidence.
Distinction Between What Games Are
And What They Teach
Fletchers (5) excellent critique correctly distinguishes
between the learning environment
present in a simulation game and those things
which one should learn from playing games.
Much previous research has been predicated on
the belief that games do something; therefore,
optimization of the mechanisms of play by sequential
experimentation should increase learning.
But some underlying assumptions of games
need to be examined prior to broader evaluation
— for example, the assumptions that they
are self-judging, relevant and environment
“rich”, that they free participants from any real
consequences of their acts, that they encourage
experimentation, etc. Fletcher presents feasible
counter examples to many of these assumptions.
The rest of the literature presents little of this
Academy of Management Review – October 7976 125
fundamental analysis, yet a careful examination
of the assumed conditions should proceed a priori.
Of course, such predicate analysis is often
absent in the early development of a field. Perhaps
only the perspective of experience can allow
for this to occur; yet games can still be
judged by examining what they are supposed to
Early game designers made much of the
analogy between simulation games and the physical
science laboratory. Games would simply
provide practice in those disciplines where real
world experimentation was impractical. The
fields in which games emerge should be characterized
by a need to integrate diverse concepts
for understanding the whole, and by a need for
cooperative socialization on the part of neophyte
decision makers (7). Certainly the fields which
have extensively used gaming — business, sociology
and political science — could be thought
of in this vein. Zuckerman and Horn (17) provide
brief reviews of 51 business games.
What should happen to participants when
they play games? First, they should acquire
knowledge of the model used in the game. Depending
upon the fidelity of the model to the
real world, they should begin to understand the
complexities of the referent system, and predict
how the game will respond to decisions they
nfiake. Their knowledge then encompasses facts,
principle” and relations between facts and principles.
Second, participants attitudes about real
world situations may be altered, because understanding
of the model system should increase
their empathy toward roles in the real world, especially