The CEO Game

How can you best describe The CEO Game? Is it a Simulation game? Or is it a Tycoon game? A Business game? maybe its Management game?

The answer is: All of the above. The CEO Game is a management business simulation in which you play as the CEO. Your job is to increase your wealth and get rich but also to promote your company. At first you need to create your own company, analyze the market, and decide in which country you’ll build your HQ. This is a major step as once you build your HQ you can’t move it. The location of the HQ will give you some benefits in your home country and will determine the currency you mostly do business in. After this you’ll need to chose the city in which to build your stores—every city and region has its own unique population. Regions vary in the age, political leanings, and socioeconomic status of its citizens, so make sure you are selling the right products to the right population. For example, a luxury product will sell well in a region with high income and almost not at all in a low income region.

You will also have to deal with the storage and shelf life of your products. Managing the storage of your stores and factories will be easier over time after you collect some data on the sells rate. You’ll also need to manage the HR department by hiring the best employees at the lowest possible cost, as well as arrange the financial reports. If you manage to create a successful company you will be able to go public (sell your shares in the stock market) or take over other companies by hostile takeovers. As a creditor or as a major share holder you will also be able to develop new products and import and export foreign products—or even go global and start selling your product in other countries, or maybe just to move the production line to low cost manufactures contraries

You as a CEO can harvest much information from the newspaper and internet about your competitors’ stats and on macro data such as average income or interest rate. If you want to be successful you’ll need to utilize every bit of knowledge.

In summary, in the CEO Game you will aim to become a leader in the global market, a highly profitable company. You will be playing in a highly nuanced and sophisticated world more realistic than any other business simulation around. And, you will be competing against people who want it as bad as you. Good luck!

Serious Business Game

Omri.

The CEO Game.

You might want to ask: why use a game?

Can’t you just teach people basic management and economic rules? Well, the answer is: Of course not!

Why not?

Because human nature is such that makes us interested in something only when we see it as a challenge. Some of the most fascinating novels, the most brilliant movies, and the best guide books, are not appreciated as they should, simply because they do not interact with the reader or viewer. The CEO Game offers something new: an Interactive and serious, yet fun, challenging game that is being updated non-stop.

Sounds nice, so why not play Monopoly?

Well, first of all, you should play Monopoly; fun board games may contribute to your financial knowledge. But this can’t be compared to an online serious game such as the CEO Game.

What is so different about them?

Firstly, you can play the CEO Game, whenever you would like, alone, with friends, in the morning, at midnight, anytime…

The second reason is that nowadays, using the new technologies we discover and develop, we can reach a new level of teaching that has never been seen before, simulating the market, forcing players to consider every move they make, making them face the consequences of their actions, and all of that in a neutral, peaceful world where the threat of losing their job is not over their heads.

The third, and maybe the most important reason, is that in the CEO Game one can study not merely from the interaction with the computer but as well as from observing the actions of fellow participants.

Do I recommend playing the CEO game?

Yes, indeed. The 21^st century will sooner or later dictate its own new and modern method of teaching. One must not fear it, but accept it with the understandingthat these serious games have a new capability of making people, wherever internet access is available, enjoy a modern method of studying some of the lessons that a few decades ago one would probably dismiss as a lesson “you can only learn in the real life”. Well Not anymore.

The CEO Game - Serious Business Game

Alon Cohen.

The CEO Game.

Earlier this summer, Microsoft unleashed its newest innovation, a hands-free motion-sensitive control system that would allow a player to control the action of games with full body movement. Project Natal does this without making the user strap on a single sensor! Instead, it uses a self-contained module that is simply added onto the Xbox 360. The video camera in it tracks body placement and movement, reads depth, tracks 48 of your body’s joints, and can track multiple players. Project Natal can even differentiate your patterned shirt from the pattern on the upholstery and your voice from background noise. This bold project completely eliminates the need for hand-held controllers and allows the player to more fully immerse themselves in the world of the game.

So what does this mean for serious gaming? Obviously, seamless interaction between player and game means that simulations can be that more engaging, life-like, and therefore educational. For serious games such the army training game that we discussed earlier or flight simulations, the applications are immediate and clearly beneficial. Project Natal can sense and track a person crawling on the floor like a war simulation, or can sense a pilot’s motions in a game simply by having the player hold out his hands as though he is holding onto a wheel. In this way, it can give people extra experience in physical tasks that are otherwise hard to simulate.
But it seems that Project Natal will have serious application to other simulations that don’t focus on physical dexterity, including business simulations. In one demo of Project Natal, a woman interacts with a boy called Milo onscreen. Milo converses fluently with the demonstrator, picking up her mood by the tone of her voice and responding accordingly, and “taking” a picture she drew from her — and he recognizes it as an orange fish! There is a lot of potential for such intelligent, sensitive characters to interact with people in business simulations. Much of the job of a CEO is interaction with people, be they clients, workers, or peers. If Microsoft can actually pull of such detailed, responsive characters, the potential for serious gaming of all sorts is astounding.
Microsoft has yet to announce when Project Natal will become available, but keep your ears open for this exciting new development in gaming. Until then, game your heart out with other serious games, including, of course, the CEO Game.

Tamar.

The CEO Game.

The second of two articles on the Connection between Rio, the Olympics and cultural and financial prosperity.

do the games bring benefits to make up for the constant rising prices? Some do and some just don’t work out as well as planned, like described in part 1. The Olympic games brought a fresh breeze of regeneration to Barcelona, allowing authorities to use the games as an excuse to rebuild the coastline making Barcelona a worldwide popular travel destination and they gave Sydney a status of a “world class city”- live and kicking. The problem is that you can’t precisely put a figure on rebranding and giving a makeover to a city and a country. “This is the most emotional day in my life”, said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and he should be excited according to the next figures. The current cost estimations for the Rio games stand at $15bn while predicted profits are around $50bn, a worthy investment, but remember what happened to Greece’s first estimations. The Brazilians also claim that the games will create 120 thousands jobs a year for the following years. The IOC announced that the games will bring up the quality of life for the city’s residents, but in order to make it possible, Brazil’s leaders will have to step up, invest and upgrade infrastructures, fight the sky high crime rates and corruption. The same things were heard six years ago, when China was chosen to host the games, so that brings us to the next question.

The Olympic Games printed money for Beijing will it do the same for Rio?

What did the games do for Beijing? The Olympics committee’s people said that choosing Beijing will increase China’s involvement in western politics and economics and will help improve issues regarding human rights in the country. The result was kind of controversial. The diligent Chinese were efficient as usual and built mega structures who now decorate National Geographics’ magazines, in no time. It also had such pervasive influence both on national pride and on the economy that it even made China temporarily replace the images of Mao Zedong on their paper bills to the ones of the Olympic stadiums like the “Bird’s nest”. But, aside from these organizational and construction related achievements, it raised the inflation (partly due to the new demand for Yuan) and the horror stories about the relocation of thousands of people, some who lost their homes entirely because of the location of Olympic facilities, are still remembered. It did nothing to address the regional and ethnical inequality in China, a problem that Brazil faces every day. Finally, when the Olympic delegations returned to their home countries, Beijing resunk in its totalitarian routine.

In conclusion, the most important competition, in the Olympic Games, is neither the marathon nor the 100 meter swim in the glittering Olympic pool; instead it is the race for profit. The problem is that the staging costs can’t be calculated at the beginning, the same goes for estimating the benefits of placing your city as the host of the games. While, the short term effects are pretty obvious, no one can predict accurately what will happen in the long run. Issues like this, really concern us here in the CEO game and we believe that by using the simulation, and the ideas and theories you will encounter while using it you can assess such financial impacts to get a better view of the bigger picture. As for the question of how significant the Olympics will be? The answer is that Brazil is far from being a dark dictatorial country like China, but only time will tell whether the Olympics will actually change the problematic face of Rio for good and make it a pleasant, progressive city or will the corruption and crime return to rule the streets as soon as the games end like the pollution and tyranny in Beijing.

Omer Shachnai.

The CEO Game.

How can industry analysis and business strategy influence your decision-making process as a CEO?
This article discusses industry analysis and business strategy and the use of Six Forces Model (by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School) in the business world.

What is the Six Forces Model? And what is it good for?
The Six Forces Model developed by Porter is a tool that determines the competition level in any industry and the attractiveness of the industry.

The six Forces are:

• Competition – this parameter is determined by the number of the competitors and their aggressiveness. If in your industry you have many competitors, and your competitors might be drawn into price wars, this will cause the profit rate to drop towards a competitive level (perfect competition)

• New Entrants – if your industry is highly profitable and doesn’t have any barriers to entry, many companies will enter your industry. This may cause the profit rate to drop towards a low, competitive level (perfect competition). If your industry has many entrance barriers such as high fixed costs, patent laws etc. your profit will soar. For example, if your company has a patent on any product, you can sell this product at almost any price you want without fearing any competition (but if you know the demand curve you’ll set the product price in such way that will lead to highest rate of profit).

Porter's Old 5 Forces Model

• End users/Buyers/costumers – this parameter is the bargaining power of the customer. If the product, like luxury products, is not necessary to the customer he might buy it at a lower price. If on the other hand the customer depends on this product, he might pay much more. This is the case for essential goods such as gas and water. In other words the parameter describes the ability of customers to put the firm under pressure and also the reaction of the customers to price changes.

• Suppliers – every company needs a supply of materials in order to make new products. These materials can be components, labor, and services, etc. Suppliers may refuse to work with a firm, such as many Arab countries that sell trade oil to Israel. Or suppliers may charge excessively high prices for unique resources like highly trained workers.

• Substitutes (Product or service) – the existence of similar products or services raise the barging power of the customers over the products. The customer has the most power when two products are practically identical. In that case, the customers don’t have any incentive to pay more for any one product and so the customers will buy the cheapest product available in the market. This case may lead to high elasticity of demand.

• Complementary products/ the government/ the public – this is a relatively new parameter and it is determined by how the government, complementary products or the public perception can change the profit rate of your company. For example, sometimes corporations can grow too much and the government tries to limit the company control over the market through the use of competition law (aka antitrust law in the US).

Omri.

The CEO Game.