Management Games

Life, the Universe, and Everything… simulated.

We live in a world of limited resources, which means resource management is a game that each and every one of us plays every day. This reality is mirrored in a wide variety of popular game genres. There are role-playing games like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or Elden Ring. World of Warcraft in its massively multiplayer online form. Simulations such as the Civilization series, the Sims, or any of the many Tycoon games. World Builders like Minecraft or Terraria. Survival games. Sports Franchise games. Pokemon. All of them are built around the theme of collecting, managing, and utilizing resources to win. 

So too, the Game of Life; And I don’t mean the monopoly clone.

Any of these sorts of gameplay designs can be harnessed for the purposes of training. Resource management takes place every day in every home, on every campus, in every company, and essentially defines the very existence of government agencies and institutions. How many of the most valuable lessons, life skills, and professional disciplines are encompassed by this category? And yet we still find ourselves learning them the difficult and expensive way, taking real life risks and doing real life damage when we make a mistake. After all, these kinds of skills require practice to master. But wouldn’t it be better if we could learn them in our downtime, playing an iterative game that mirrors the sorts of skills we want to develop while risking nothing but virtual assets in a world that can be reset as many times as we need it to be, without consequence?