Last Friday, while waiting for my friend (to pick me up), I had a little window-shopping in Popular Bookstore. As this particular outlet is exceptionally big, it has a comparatively greater variety of PC games. And then something caught my attention. I saw an old game
selling at a very cheap price. It wasn’t the price that arouse my interest but the game itself.
This game titled “Capitalism II” is an old game launched sometime around 2003. When I flipped over to read the description on the packing, my interest grew. The description says that the game is about business strategy and building a corporate empire. There are also a few “testimonial” claiming credit of being the ultimate business simulation. Anyway, the price is about $10. So…what the hack…. I decided to buy it to try.
That night after I reached home, I was very curious about t
his game and decided to test it out immediately. There was no manual inside (what you expect with that kind of price) but the game itself comes with tutorial. Installation is straight forward and I started my tutorial. But even the tutorial is not that easy. For most of the tutorial, I could not meet each of the objectives. Fortunately, the game designed in such a way that even if a player failed to meet the objective, he can still proceed to next tutorial. But player cannot jump to next tutorial without completing current one (pass or fail). That night, I didn’t manage to finish all my tutorials and I finally call it a day.
Day 2 – wonderful Saturday. After I wash up, I quickly comple
ted last few tutorial and voila, I am really for the actual campaign. Now briefly, this is what you can expect from this game.
1) Set your winning parameter. There are whole list of winning parameter but I will skip it (don’t waste everyone’s time here). Basically when I play, I didn’t set any parameter other than the period so that the game will carry on for as long as possible. For the period, I set it as 130 years.
2) I started with 30 million and I quickly build my departmental stores to s
ell my products. Note that there are whole list of products and many kinds of store a player can choose from. I will skip the detail. When I started my business, as real as it can be, I made a losses initially and my cash holding keep dropping. After a while, I finally breakeven with positive cash inflow. However, soon I started to be impatient. This is because my simulated-competitors are making tones of money like above $100 million a year but I am still earning around $10 million a year. I replayed the game and adopted aggressive expansion but only resulted instant bankruptcy. I suspected that I might have missed some points during the tutorial and so I re-visited the tutorial. And y
es, I found certain “secret-to-success” which I didn’t pay attention to.
3) After a few more replaying, I finally get the hang of it and started to make decent money (around $50 million). Then I began building my R&D facility, adopted vertical integration to secure my primary resources and branded my products. The game offers three marketing strategy but I won’t go into the detail here. But still, I faced two problems - the AI-competitors are still much richer and one of the competitors was bought-over by another one. Then I got worried as I didn’t devise my strategy properly when I started the
game. So, I have no choice but to re-play the game again!!! I will not tell you about this strategy here.
Day 3 – Sunny Sunday.
With all the strategies I had in mind, I re-started the game again. Cut the long story short, I made $100 – $200 million a year and no competitor can take over my company. I set up my HQ and employed (where necessary) a few Chiefs such as Chief Marketing Officer. Naturally, I am the CEO. I devised my financial (di
vidend %), marketing (branding) and business expansion strategy. Player can also borrow from the bank or issue IPO. Then I proceed to “play” the stock market – ultimately, that’s the rich men’s game in real life. Player can read financial information about all the competitors. This is where it gets very very exciting. I started to buy stock with the (real) investment knowledge I had and made tones of money out of it. Before I call it a day (again), my net worth was a few billion dollars ranked somewhere number 60 on the top 100 billionaires. My mentor Mr. Warren Buffett was ranked aro
und top 10.
Other exciting characteristics:
1) Property investment.
2) Staff training and development
Conclusion
This is a fantastic business simulation game. Only shortcoming is that the ani
mation is quite poor with today’s standard. But then that is not a bog issue. I think what’s really interest is the stock trading simulation. The buy or sell decision is nerve-wracking and resemble real-time stock trading situation. Most importantly, the teaching on business in the game is exactly what we learned in our (Business Administration) course at diploma level.
Imagine if we played it with a few friends. Just three will be enough and it will be very challenging. Computer AI may be fast and complex but at the end of the day, it is still programmed. There will be certain pattern. But
human brain is forever complex and sophisticated. If you are interested, do give me a call. If you know of other business simulation game that is better than this, do let me know please.
selling at a very cheap price. It wasn’t the price that arouse my interest but the game itself.This game titled “Capitalism II” is an old game launched sometime around 2003. When I flipped over to read the description on the packing, my interest grew. The description says that the game is about business strategy and building a corporate empire. There are also a few “testimonial” claiming credit of being the ultimate business simulation. Anyway, the price is about $10. So…what the hack…. I decided to buy it to try.
That night after I reached home, I was very curious about t
his game and decided to test it out immediately. There was no manual inside (what you expect with that kind of price) but the game itself comes with tutorial. Installation is straight forward and I started my tutorial. But even the tutorial is not that easy. For most of the tutorial, I could not meet each of the objectives. Fortunately, the game designed in such a way that even if a player failed to meet the objective, he can still proceed to next tutorial. But player cannot jump to next tutorial without completing current one (pass or fail). That night, I didn’t manage to finish all my tutorials and I finally call it a day.Day 2 – wonderful Saturday. After I wash up, I quickly comple
ted last few tutorial and voila, I am really for the actual campaign. Now briefly, this is what you can expect from this game.1) Set your winning parameter. There are whole list of winning parameter but I will skip it (don’t waste everyone’s time here). Basically when I play, I didn’t set any parameter other than the period so that the game will carry on for as long as possible. For the period, I set it as 130 years.
2) I started with 30 million and I quickly build my departmental stores to s
ell my products. Note that there are whole list of products and many kinds of store a player can choose from. I will skip the detail. When I started my business, as real as it can be, I made a losses initially and my cash holding keep dropping. After a while, I finally breakeven with positive cash inflow. However, soon I started to be impatient. This is because my simulated-competitors are making tones of money like above $100 million a year but I am still earning around $10 million a year. I replayed the game and adopted aggressive expansion but only resulted instant bankruptcy. I suspected that I might have missed some points during the tutorial and so I re-visited the tutorial. And y
es, I found certain “secret-to-success” which I didn’t pay attention to.3) After a few more replaying, I finally get the hang of it and started to make decent money (around $50 million). Then I began building my R&D facility, adopted vertical integration to secure my primary resources and branded my products. The game offers three marketing strategy but I won’t go into the detail here. But still, I faced two problems - the AI-competitors are still much richer and one of the competitors was bought-over by another one. Then I got worried as I didn’t devise my strategy properly when I started the
game. So, I have no choice but to re-play the game again!!! I will not tell you about this strategy here.Day 3 – Sunny Sunday.
With all the strategies I had in mind, I re-started the game again. Cut the long story short, I made $100 – $200 million a year and no competitor can take over my company. I set up my HQ and employed (where necessary) a few Chiefs such as Chief Marketing Officer. Naturally, I am the CEO. I devised my financial (di
vidend %), marketing (branding) and business expansion strategy. Player can also borrow from the bank or issue IPO. Then I proceed to “play” the stock market – ultimately, that’s the rich men’s game in real life. Player can read financial information about all the competitors. This is where it gets very very exciting. I started to buy stock with the (real) investment knowledge I had and made tones of money out of it. Before I call it a day (again), my net worth was a few billion dollars ranked somewhere number 60 on the top 100 billionaires. My mentor Mr. Warren Buffett was ranked aro
und top 10.Other exciting characteristics:
1) Property investment.
2) Staff training and development
Conclusion
This is a fantastic business simulation game. Only shortcoming is that the ani
mation is quite poor with today’s standard. But then that is not a bog issue. I think what’s really interest is the stock trading simulation. The buy or sell decision is nerve-wracking and resemble real-time stock trading situation. Most importantly, the teaching on business in the game is exactly what we learned in our (Business Administration) course at diploma level.Imagine if we played it with a few friends. Just three will be enough and it will be very challenging. Computer AI may be fast and complex but at the end of the day, it is still programmed. There will be certain pattern. But
human brain is forever complex and sophisticated. If you are interested, do give me a call. If you know of other business simulation game that is better than this, do let me know please.
