Business board game

Treball desenvolupat dins el marc del programa 'European Project Semester'.Create an entertaining, engaging game which allows students to gain basic knowledge about principal rules of economics and give a feeling that doing business can be fun. A clear task, but one that demands a lot of creative input. Firstly, the project is started by trying to make a clear picture of who the team is and what we can do. All the general methods for project management are applied: a work break down structure, an in depth project planning, preparing for any and all contingencies... Secondly as much information as possible is gathered. Existing online business games and economic simulating games are extensively tested. Looking at them allowed us to learn from the mistakes of others. Another source of information were interviews with students who played educational business games before. An expert in board game who has developed board games himself before was also consulted. We also researched how and how effective people learn when they learn by playing. What follows is an inquisition to which parts are needed in this game and possible options on how to implement these. The resulting game is in not a traditional board game as one would know. Players run a company in a team, they assemble or order bicycles and try to sell them all over the world. A close to reality stock market is generated by a computer program with which the teams can trade. Apart from that they also interact with each other, learning negotiating skills and general tactical decision making. This makes that playing this game is not just sitting around a table but walking around trying to gather recourses and information. On 24 of May a preliminary version of the game was tested with a group of 14 students. This showed that the basic concept of the game works and gave all the necessary information to make further improvements. At the last stage the layout and design of all the game boards were finalised and send off to be professionally printed. Pawns, coins, hourglasses and other pieces were searched for and ordered on-line where possible. The others will be either printed on a 3D-printer or custom-made with another process. A manual for the game is written to guide the students while playing. In the end our whole teams feels is proud of the result of all our hard work and hope this game will teach future student something. There were many lessons learned on a professional as well as on a personal level