LONG LIVE YOUR BUSINESS GAME Simulations, Games and Experiential Learning Techniques:, Volume 1, 1974 7 LONG LIVE YOUR BUSINESS GAME Stanley C. Vance, University of Oregon One year ago I had the pleasure of contributing an article to Simulation/Gaming/News indicating that infant mortality of business games has been excessively high. In the year since that pronouncement at least 70 to 80 new games have come into being and a similar number have expired. In the seventeen years since the inception of management decision simulation, at least a thousand games have been conceived, gestated, and after a brief period of love and fond expectation, most of these new-born games were simply added to the infant- game mortality statistics. In my article I stated that “to reach a ripe old age Bulgarians swear by yogurt, and Armenians, by grape leaves,” but what should you do, eat or think about, so that your own game or the one you like, will get a reprieve from the bibliophiles mortuary. In the fifty-plus papers and panels you will be privileged to hear and participate in during this first “National Conference on Business Gaming and Experiential Learning,” I am sure you will learn much about what goes into business game longevity. As the proud progenitor of a fifteen-year old offspring, Management Decision Simulation, let me have the liberty to give some life-extending advice. 1. Keep your game understandable and simple in structure. The fancier and particularly the mathematically exotic games tend to be one-shot ventures. 2. Make it realistic. The game should be a learning experience. Since life and reality are synonymous, the closer you get to reality the longer life expectancy you give your game. 3. Give it flexibility. Adapt or perish is just as pertinent to decision simulation as it is to the preservation of living species. 4. Be sure it is purposeful. While class-room stimulation and having fun can and should be integral to game-playing, it must have pedagogical and hopefully, research value. 5. Live your game. Even a near dead game will be resuscitated by academic mouth-t-mouth first aid. Many an excellent game has been prematurely consigned to the mortuary because of lackadaisical instructors. As you go about today’s and tomorrow’s conferencing in business gaming and experiential learning, see if you can spot strengths and weaknesses relative to these five suggestions in the games you see and will hear about. Let’s put an end to the Blue-Baby Syndrome and give our games a better chance to outdo Methuselah. Table of Contents Volume 1, 1974 Long Live Your Business Game Marketing In Action In Collegiate Education How to Create Your Own Business Game with Imaginit The Design, Conduct and Evaluation of a Computerized Management Game as a Form of Experiential Learning Experiential Learning: Conceptualization and Definition The Teaching Potential of a Structured Experience The Lecture versus the Game Tracking the Elective: Student-Goal Oriented Education The Use of Internal and External Assignments with a Marketing Simulation Game Constructing Mini-Courses to Supplement Business Simulations A Video-Tape/Computer Learning Experience A Collective Bargaining Negotiation Simulation: Settle or Strike Simulation in Personnel Administration Introduction to Pablum: A public Administration Game Enrichment of a Multi-Functional Game through Dynamic Overlays and Intensive Decision Analysis An Orientation to the Oklahoma Farm Management Game A Description of INTSTRAT: A Game of Investment Strategy DØG: A Decision Mathematics Game The Use of Production Scheduling Simulation in a Production Planning and Control Course Interactive Gaming: A Production Example Marketing Interaction: A Marketing Management Game ADMAG I: An Advertising Management Game Meeting the Decline in College Enrollments Using the Money Game in the Classroom Training Salesmen with The Sales Management Game Smith Management Game (BUSOP) The Business Game: A New Approach to Managerial Accounting Administration: The Key to a Successful Gaming Experience Simulation: A Frustration, A ‘Game’, or a Meaningful Experience Using Complex Simulations in Policy Courses in Institutions with Limited Resources Flexibility in Simulation Design for Continual Student Motivation A Terminal Keyboard Experience in Executive Gaming Application of Theory and of Computerized Grading in Management Simulation The Executive Education Experience Using the Toronto Management Game Experiences with the Harvard Management Game Managing the Dynamic Small Business Via Simulation The Use of Business Game and a Simulated Stock Exchange in a Business Policy Course Managerial Strategy and Systems - An integrative M.B.A. Course SIMQ, A Business Simulation Game for Decision Science Students: Towards a Total Gaming and Teaching Package The Use of Simulation in a Financial Planning Course Simulation as a Supplementary Learning Experience in Marketing Principles Intercollegiate Business Gaming: The State of the Art Intercollegiate Business Gaming from a Participant's Viewpoint Correlates of Satisfaction, Learning and Success in Business Gaming A Student' s View of Leadership Training with a Two-Level Hierarchy, Two Course Simulation Autocratic versus Democratic Decision Making: The Executive Game as an Experiment Identifying Potential Game Participants Assessment Centers Selection Based on Simulation Business Games in the Process of Management Training in Israel and the United States Evolution and Flexibility in Business Gaming Quantitative Applications of Games Growing Emphasis on Implementation Debits and Credits: First National ABSEL Conference