Serious Social Games: Designing a Business
Simulation Game
Matt Critelli, David I. Schwartz, Steven Gold
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY USA
thrive and has international attention, e.g., conferences [1] and
publications [2].
Abstract—This paper describes a newly released educational
game called StoreWorld(TM) that introduces students to
fundamental business concepts. Although many educational
games introduce business concepts, they were founded many
years ago and lack modern innovations. The core innovation that
StoreWorld attempts to address is how social interaction can
enhance simulation in the field of business gaming. After giving
some background about related games, the authors provide an
overview of the design and implementation of StoreWorld in
regard to business modeling, education, and social interaction.
The paper gives preliminary results and concludes with future
directions of design.
B. Business Simulations
Serious games aimed at teaching business principles have
adopted a variety of genre titles, like business simulations,
business simulation games, and tycoon games. Although not
authoritative, Wikipedia hints at what appears to be a rather
exhaustive list of such games [3, 4], though it lacks mention of
formal simulations [5]. Many sites still omit popular games
aimed at teaching a variety of business concepts, like CapSim
and BusSim, considering them to be more simulation than
game.
One of the most popular educational games, BizSim (which
recently stopped receiving support from its publisher), used
much older computational models and user interfaces [6, 7].
BizSim demonstrates a common design, whereby the instructor
tends to control the interactions instead of the student.
Typically, the instructor enters a series of decisions made by
students into a spreadsheet-like application. The game
processes the inputs and returns the outcomes of the students’
decisions. The instructor prints out these results and hands
them to the students, who analyze the data and make new
decisions, starting the process anew. While students were
competing against each other to see who could run the more
successful business, there was little actual student interaction
with game or with their peers.
In most of the above games, students’ decisions only affect
their own stores. For example, if Team A decides to raise their
prices while Team B lowers prices, Team B sees no benefit
because each team’s store exists in its own world. However, in
StoreWorld, all student teams taking the same class exist in the
same world, and they compete against each other in the same
market. Instead of trying to figure out how to maximize the
model behind the game, StoreWorld students must learn how
to outsmart their classmates to gain a competitive edge.
Index Terms—Game Design, Social Games, Serious Games,
Business Simulations.
I. INTRODUCTION
This paper describes a newly released educational game
called StoreWorld™ that introduces students to fundamental
business concepts via social computing. Although many
educational business games introduce business concepts via
collaboration and cooperation, they were founded prior to
social computing platforms, like Facebook. The core
innovation StoreWorld attempts to address is how social
interaction can enhance simulation in the field of business
gaming. This paper first gives the background of educational
games to explain how StoreWorld forms a unique experience
in an apparently crowded genre. Next, the authors explain the
game design and development of StoreWorld with a focus on
the business models. The paper concludes with initial results
and plans for future development.
II. BACKGROUND
There are two main game design categories in which
StoreWorld fits: serious and social games. In this section, we
explore related work in these fields, especially how they relate
to business simulations.
C. Social Games
Early “social games,” as defined via economics (e.g., [8]),
closely relate to StoreWorld’s design. But, modern work on
game design for social networks [9] has progressed, yielding
many games on social media (e.g., Zynga’s Farmville). In
many of these social games, players run a variety of simulated
spaces with simulated items, e.g., virtual farms, stores,
dungeons, and more. These games often embed social
A. Serious Games
Academia, industry, and government have embraced games
as useful tools for education, training, advertising, and a
multitude of purposes outside of “pure” entertainment. Serious
Games began to receive attention with moniker “serious” as an
attempt to encompass this variety of games, especially to
distinguish their importance in funding. Work continues to
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interactions by having other players help manage these virtual
spaces, purchase items, and communicate.
m=p*a*q*b
(1)
where the variables are defined as follows:
D. Serious Social Games
Early “social games” studied the Prisoners Dilemma for
competition of resources [8]. Related work attempts to bridge
game theory with game design theory [10]. Whereas many
social games provide basic concepts of business (e.g.,
Farmville), most of the educational business simulations were
developed prior to the social computing revolution. StoreWorld
(Fig. 1) combines social computing to facilitate recent
explorations of social and serious games.
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III. DESIGN
Investigating Farmville, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and many
other business simulations, the StoreWorld design team
initially wondered how to modify a common virtual store
concept with actual business models. But, unlike more
established games developers prior to social computing,
StoreWorld would work via a social computing platform. Thus,
the team could make a social, serious game that teaches
introductory business concepts in an environment that already
facilitates the multiplayer aspects of an online community. The
process involved a large degree of iteration, especially given
the need to define levels of abstractions of business decisions.
The social aspects of StoreWorld are indeed common
aspects of social game design: players build virtual stores, sell
virtual clothes, and hopefully make sufficient profit to continue
to stay in business. However, the rules guiding the business
decisions use real business models, as discussed below.
m: demand for the specified item in the given store.
p: price rating compared to other stores selling this
same item.
a: attraction of the given store’s customers to this item,
e.g., if the store’s customers want punk-style clothing,
they will not be interested in a sports t-shirt.
q: store’s quality as determined by the store’s decor,
quality management, and number of employees.
b: store’s level of advertising.
The software calculates each variable with Eq. 1, which
results in a logistic curve to simulate diminishing returns:
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(2)
-8(x-0.4)
1  2.7182
where x is a value between 0 and 1. Equation 2 generates the
values multiplied together in Eq. 1, which results in the market
demand for the given store. This demand is then taken and
compared to the demand for the same item in all of the other
stores in a class, resulting in a final per-item market share.
The market share describes the maximum number of sales
per-item that a store could make. The game uses this number to
determine how many AI shoppers to spawn and enter a
player’s store. From here, specialized searching routines make
the shoppers walk around the player’s store in a realistic
manner while they search for items they want to buy (Fig 1.).
Each shopper is created with certain likes and dislikes, as well
as a certain income level modeled after real-world income
brackets to ensure proper distribution of money among
shoppers. These factors determine the items shoppers want to
buy and how many total items they can purchase before they
must leave the store. Thus, students must not only manage their
store’s pricing, advertising and quality well, but they must also
design their store’s layout so that items are easy to find.
Our model also keeps track of lost sales and market
saturation. Lost sales happen when a store fails to meet its
demand, usually by running out of inventory. This overflow
pools on a per-item basis and then redistributes to the other
stores in the class, allowing competing stores to “steal” sales
from their unprepared competitors. The game also tracks the
total sales of an item. In about one year of in-game time, the
market saturates. Thus, players must to keep track of what their
competitors sell if they want to avoid fighting over an already
saturated market. Figures 2-5 show a variety of financial
statements and reports the teams use to run their stores.
For products other than clothing, a new model would need
to be created. However, thanks to the game’s architecture
(discussed in Section IV), changing models is relatively
painless. StoreWorld could easily support a different type of
retail environment (like an electronics store instead of a
clothing store) or even an entirely different type of business
(like a restaurant) with a new model.
A. Business Models
The economy in StoreWorld is driven by the Bass diffusion
model, which describes the rate at which a product is adopted
by consumers over time [11]. StoreWorld adapts the Bass
model, created from a series of Bass model equations and
tailored for the specific characteristics of the game. The game
uses this model to determine the demand for each item on a
per-store basis, as described by Eq. 1:
Fig. 1. A player’s store in StoreWorld
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Fig. 2. Income statement
Fig. 4. Balance sheet
Fig. 3. Cash flow
Fig. 5. Loans
B. Social Interaction
Players work on teams of one-four players that control a
single store. By using on-line and off-line communication, each
team coordinates the store creation, customization, purchasing,
pricing, and all other business decisions. The game facilitates
on-line communication via a virtual plaza to provide a common
meeting place for all teams. Besides inter-team
communication, every player receives a “stipend” from their
sales, which they can use to purchase clothes from other stores
to dress their avatars and investigate the competition. For
example, players might wish to show off their avatars in the
common plaza, which helps to increase player engagement.
The game also expands upon player interaction via
leaderboards that show sales rankings and profits.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION
StoreWorld currently exists on Facebook and will be open
for external play as of the publication of this paper. The code is
currently closed, but it may become open source at some point
in the future.
There are two main components to StoreWorld: the server
package and the game client. The client is written in
ActionScript3 and deployed using Flex to Facebook, allowing
anyone with an active Facebook account to play. The client
handles displaying the game and allowing the user to interact
with their store. Using this client, players will purchase
inventory, design their store, view financial reports, and carry
out many other operation tasks. The client also handles the
searching routines for the AI shoppers. The server handles
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most of the business model simulation, which helps to ensure
that the data used to create the market has not been tampered
with and keeps the database secure.
StoreWorld’s server package is built on a LAMP stack
(Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). A MySQL database stores all
of the information used in the game, including the clothing
catalog, all store information, and numerous data logs. A series
of PHP scripts handle communication between the client and
server, ensuring the game never connects directly to the
database. These PHP scripts also handle the large amount of
calculations that need to be done to fulfill our business model.
Upon completion, most scripts return an XML document that is
then sent back to the client to be parsed.
StoreWorld also a smaller, third component: the admin
client. Instructor will receive access to the admin client, which
allows the following:
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teach concepts about management. Moreover, allowing players
to work in stores could create networking for outreach, as in
college students managing high school students.
The business models need continued testing given their
complexity. By adding in different goods, more complexity in
the stock market, utilities, and a multitude of other factors, the
game could eventually expand into exploring economic issues.
For example, in addition to fashion, players might sell cloth,
hire designers, and manage delivery, each of which tapping
into other business models. Eventually, StoreWorld might
encompass a variety of businesses and markets.
VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are deeply appreciative of the funding provided
by an RIT Trustee grant from Don Truesdale and additional
funding from RIT’s E. Philip Saunders College of Business.
StoreWorld exists because of our colleagues Ashok Rao, Erik
Vick, Bob Boehner, Jason Arena, Richard DeMartino, and the
multitude of RIT students from across the Schools of
Interactive Games and Media, New Media Interactive Design,
and Business who created StoreWorld. Finally, we are indebted
to the School of Interactive Games and Media and the
Department of New Media Interactive Design for providing
laboratory space.
setup new classes within the game.
set certain game variables (like market growth/decay
rates and periods).
pause the game for a class (meaning that no stores will
be able to sell items to shoppers, but students can still
access the game).
allow the instructor to view all of the information for
each store in their class, which they can use to help
students perform better and assign grades.
VIII. REFERENCES
[1] Serious Games Summit, www.gdconf.com/conference/ sgs.html,
accessed August 6, 2012.
[2] D. Michael and S. Chen, Serious Games: Games That Educate,
Train, and Inform, Course Technology PTR, 2005.
[3] List
of
Tycoon
Games,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_Tycoon_games, accessed August 6, 2012.
[4] Chronology
of
Business
Simulation
Games,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_business_simulation
video_games, accessed August 6, 2012.
[5] Gaming/Simulation Packages and Books by ABSELites,
absel2011.wordpress.com/gaming-packages-by-abselites/,
accessed August 6, 2012.
[6] BizSim,
www.phronetix.com/bizsim/index.html,
accessed
August 6, 2012.
[7] J. L. Casti, “BizSim: the world of business – in a box,” Artificial
Life and Robotics vol. 4:3, pp. 125-129, 2000.
[8] G. Abramson and M. Kuperman, “Social games in a social
network,” Physical Review E, vol. 63, pp. 030901-1—030901-4.
[9] A. Järvinen, “Workshop: game design for social networks,”
MindTrek ’09: Proceedings of the 13th International MindTrek
Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era, pp. 224-225.
[10] D. I. Schwartz and J. D. Bayliss, “Unifying Instructional and
Game Design,” in Handbook of Research onImproving Learning
and Motivation through Educational Games, P. Felicia (ed), pp.
192-214, 2011.
[11] The Bass Model, www.bassbasement.org/BassModel/, accessed
August 6, 2012.
[12] StoreWorld™, apps.facebook.com/storeworldgame, accessed
August 6, 2012.
[13] Imagine RIT: StoreWorld, www.democratandchronicle.
com/VideoNetwork/1617948363001/Imagine-RIT-Storeworld,
accessed August 6, 2012.
The admin client is currently separate from the game client,
meaning the instructor does not need a Facebook account to
use the game in their classroom.
StoreWorld has been designed to be as secure as possible.
Since teachers may use this game to determine student grades,
the design team ensured that students cannot tamper with any
data to give themselves an unfair advantage. All data received
from the client is checked and verified before being used in
calculations or stored in the database to ensure it is true,
unaltered data.
V. CURRENT RESULTS
StoreWorld [12] has had a series of focus groups of
different undergraduate computing students and exposure to
the public via showcase events. Early results showed that the
single-player experience was indeed expected: it was brief and
somewhat undirected. However, once development of social
interactions became more fleshed out, reactions became more
positive, especially during public testing [13]. As of the
development of this paper, StoreWorld continues to be tested.
VI. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
StoreWorld has a formal release for a class of introductory
business students as of the release of this paper. As with all
game development, the process dictated that a variety of
features had to wait. For example, the integration of a
“newspaper” (i.e., “StoreNews”) could serve to provide
avenues for teams to advertise, especially to help engage
players visually. With advertising and an enhanced employees
system, players could hire other players, which would help
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