The CEO Game

If you’re following this blog, then you have probably noticed that fact that the CEO Game is a serious game that will be a good tool for improving business-related skills. If it’s your first time please read our introduction post.  You might ask yourself if a computer game, or as we call it, a serious game, can really be a platform for passing on educational values? Can it really help? Well we believe it can.

Serious games can be a way to enrich our lives. They can educate us through lessons embedded in the game play, they can provide training that otherwise might be expansive or dangerous like surgery simulation or military training, they can aid in raising the awareness especially of global issues such as global warming, they can improve our creativity, and thanks to the new technology they can even make you move, such as through the Nintendo WII. Serious games can really help us change the world because of all of these strengths – and you can enjoy yourself in the process.

Ailon.

The CEO Game.

Conservative thinking is basically a matter of lack of self confidence.  Many adults feel shamefulness and that is why they do not express themselves.Playing increase creativity! and playing serious games combines the fun with learning.

Playfulness help us in getting a better solutions, helps us do our job better and occasionally even makes us feel better.  Many companies dedicate time and space for playing and for games, from any kind and just for the sake of fun!  All those help us to release from the things that stop us and let our creativity blast.

Business tycoons which wish to grow and always stay in motion must encourage creativity. Because there isn’t an exact formula for increasing creativity, let everyone in your business  share their ideas is one way for finding the next golden egg, or who knows the greatest idea of the millennium (The Idea of the CEO game was invented during an evening jogging).

The CEO game as a serious game and as business simulation allows you and your employees take the work and the potential golden egg idea to the virtual playground, in order to increase their abilities in the real life.

If you are new entrepreneur, work alone or with partners, you must find time to play.

Play in the business ground of the CEO game, and improve your business orientation along with fun, or just play ping pong for fun!So play, explore your creativity and continue your way to become a business tycoon (even if it’s only in the CEO game).I attached a keynote by Tim Brown about the subject:

Nimrod
The CEO Game.

The world constantly moves, changes, and we must adapt ourselves. It’s you’re in or you’re on your way OUT! There is not enough time or space to cover the meaning of learning, professionalizing, always in motion for every profession.
I would like to talk about the business value of the subject.

Getting ahead

Well, It’s a well known story that in Google every employee has its own 20% free time in order to innovate, to develop and to learn. The company leaders choose to let the employee free space, because of the huge potential each and every one of the workers have. When you take a step aside your daily routine, when you invest in acquiring knowledge, you can see things different, you understand things different and you may encounter new brilliant ideas. Of course it is also a matter of the workers satisfaction, the branching of Google as the paradise of Hi-Tech are another key reasons for that action, but in the bottom line, the main idea is based on the wisdom of the crowds.

What is the wisdom of the crowds?
The Terms describe why many people, opinions and sharing knowledge help achieving better business results, and actually change and shape businesses and economies.
In our case, the modesty of the management knowing that the next gold mine is more likely to grow from one of  its ‘human assets’ or, if you like, the crowd.

OK, and how it connects to books?
well, it is not necessarily books, and maybe (and especially) not that relevant for  the artistic kind (although they deserve a place of respect).

Knowledge and our senses…
Most of us (humans) don’t like to get stuck: not in traffic, not with the same pay check and not with the same amount of knowledge we posses. There are several leading ways to acquire knowledge: TV, internet, hard covered books. If we choose to look at it differently: you can hear (or watch) something someone said (or showed), you can read something someone wrote. But still- there’s something missing – the practice and experience. It is not a great secret that the major part of the knowledge acquire audience fulfill our satisfaction by hear, watch and read (how many of you guys watch cooking show and actually tried it at home?.

The importance of practice is what important when it comes to really acquire meaningful knowledge.
Will you hire someone to build your house who just read a few engineering books?
Would you choose a dentist to remove your damaged wisdom tooth who just read the last article of ‘dentists today’?
The same applies in the business world, software development and every other profession.
Practice Makes Perfection!

If you look at it carefully, not all experience acquired by work and tools.

• How many of you played ‘the memory game’ in their youth?
  • Science proved long time ago that game improves your memory abilities.

How many of you played (and still playing) chess?

• It’s a known fact that strategic games develop your mind in every aspect.

And what about the academy?

For nearly three decades the term of ‘Serious game’ is here with us, still keeping a low profile.
I won’t waste words, and it’s been approved above any reasonable doubts, that playing games is the best way for acquire knowledge!
Whether it is a basic human urge or the competition in games driving us to growth and self development? I’ll leave that for the experts.

And so, how does it improve my business value?
Business simulations and management simulations are an excellent way to check your ability to react. React to changes, react to opportunities and react to crisis.
Several companies adapt that model and are conducting business simulations at the level of junior managers, in order to find the player who can join the major league- in the real world.

Online Business Games are the best way to understanding your potential, acquire a lot of useful business knowledge and gaining experience and practice.  All that comes with hours of fun. The CEO game allows everyone to realize what it is all about being the CEO and compete with other ambitious players.

How does the future looks like?
We believe that in the near future ‘Serious Game’ will become the hottest Buzz in education, like a giant awake from its winter sleep.
Children will learn fast theory in class rooms and will play hours over hours in games made for the sake of education.
Great fun games will be what kids will play after school in games serves their intellectual interests, and provide them with a lot of useful tools.

What about serious business games?
We truly, deeply believe it won’t be just for junior executives or for academic simulations, but it will a part of the question you’ve been ask in your appliance process, you will be googled over and be a part of the training.
Moreover, we believe that the employees will be measured by serious games, online and offline.

Where the technology goes?
The market of serious games and business simulations is increasing. You can’t find open platform for serious games yet, but the CEO Game is planning to be a leading player on the field of Online Serious Games. For now on you can wait another few weeks for the release of the first serious business game that will improve your business qualifications and show the world your inner business potential. So get into action, learn and experience- because games aren’t just for children.
Not anymore!

Nimrod .

The CEO Game.

There are many business games out there – some for PC, others for consoles – so why do we need a serious game simulating a business?

moving forward with serious games training

Well, we need a serious game about business simulation because it’s fun. But more importantly, the main reason we need such a serious game is because of the lack of practical experience in the business management field.  The main reason for that gap is the high cost of good management training, and the lack of tools such as business and management simulations to train the next management generation. In the academy, many young students acquire the basic knowledge required to survive in today’s fierce business environment, but hardly anyone ever teaches them the real-life practices required to succeed. It’s a tough world.

In order to solve this problem, we at The CEO game decided to develop tools such as business simulations and management simulations under one serious game which is called “The CEO game”. This tool will combine the theoretical knowledge with the practical world in order to enrich its players’ knowledge.

We believe that by playing The CEO game, you will have a better understanding of how the contemporary business world works, and it will assist you on your way to bucome business tycoon.

Omri

The CEO Game.

The CEO game - Class starts at 1/1/10

As we advance with the development of the CEO game (Currently expected to release to beta at 1/1/2010) I thought that we should share with you the key points that will be focused in the first version of the game. As we mentioned in earlier posts the CEO game as serious game and as Web 2.0 will evolve according to feedbacks that will be received for our community.  Therefore we decided to share with you the goals and the key features that the first beta version will include.

The key goal of the CEO Game in its beta version is to improve the business management skills of its participants. The CEO game will do it by combining factors normally seen in business simulations and management simulation in to one serious game.

Among those factors you will be able to find:

• Managing human resources:  as CEO of your own company you will have to learn the rules of employing employees, motivating them and even firing them when needed.
• Managing development projects: You will have to take key calls and decide the future of your upcoming products (The wrong call might end up costing your job).
• Fighting for your market share: The ground is limited and competition is rising. You will have to decide how to beat  other companies to raise your own revenue
• Creating business networks: Like in real life having the right connections can be the difference between a Forbes 500 companies to a bankrupt business.
• Managing production lines. Knowing how much to produce and where, are the questions you will have to answer.
• Dealing with government regulation. Learning when you should enter a specific market and when you shouldn’t and also learn how to deal with the law.

The CEO game will include educational material to assist you in the learning’s of the business world. We aim to give you the tools that are required to succeed in the game without feeding you the material. We believe that’s the best way to learn for a serious game. As we continue with the development of the project we will update you with more details on each feature so make sure your updated.

Yesterday we had our weekly marketing meeting but unlike other weeks this meeting was special. In this meeting among other things we set our major mile stones for the CEO Game/Serious Game project. The current release to beta stage will be on the 1/1/2010 and the registration for the beta stage will be held from the 15/10/2009. Other than setting the mile stones dates we set our marketing plan and defined our marketing goals.

I wish to remind you that we will more than welcome any questions or comments about the game and we invite you to contact us.

Ailon.

The CEO Game.

Serious What?

Breaking the serious game barrier

If you follow this blog, you have probably read The CEO Game introduction post (and if you didn’t, you should), and by now you understand that we are developing a serious game. This might be the first time you have ever encountered this phrase, and why is that? serious games were among us long before the Internet or even the PC ever existed. We used to play card games or board games that tried to educate us and enrich our minds. As time evolved, so did we: as game consumers we became more demanding. We wanted better graphics, better sound effects and better ideas – and then came the computer industry to fill that gap. Computer games had more graphics which improved from year to year, better sound effects, and new ideas. The more the computer industry evolved, the more the main stream emphasized exciting the masses, rather than educating them.

Where are the serious games?

The serious games industry hasn’t died – it is just evolving slower than the main stream game industry. There are thousands of serious games out there. Leading universities use them to educate their students and give them an experience as close to reality as possible , mainly using them as business simulations. There are hundreds of studies that indicate serious games can assist in improving the learning experience. So why is this the first time you hear about serious games? The reason is that most of the serious games are developed by in-house teams for private purposes, which means that if you don’t belong to an organization that works with serious games, you’ll probably never get to see them.

Breaking a barrier

We strongly believe that by setting  an example with The CEO Game as a massive online serious game, we can push the serious games evolution one step further, in the same way that Google did to search engines, and YouTube to movie-sharing. We also believe that we can give you a unique and interesting learning experience.

And most of all – we strongly believe that you should keep visiting our blog for further updates and news.

Mike.

The CEO Game.

Before I start explaining the concept that stands behind The CEO Game, it is important to understand what a “Serious game” is, and what the difference is between a serious game and an ordinary game. By definition, a serious game is an application developed with game design and game technology for goals other than pure entertainment. Of course, The CEO Game is going to be entertaining, but that is not the only purpose.

In our case, the main goals are:

• Having educational value in the field of business management and understanding of how the economy works
• Creating a living community with similar interests that will discuss issues related to business management, economy and technology
• Having fun!

So what is this “CEO Game” really all about? The CEO Game is a massive online browser-based simulation of a real economic world. In other words, it is a game that will be played using your own browser and internet connection to compete against other people around the world in an environment similar to today’s global economy. The idea is that each competitor will take the role of a Chief Executive Officer (the CEO - the big manager who directs the company), and lead his or her company to financial success. Each competitor will have to deal with a wide variety of challenges that every CEO has to deal with on daily basis.

Among the challenges that the player will deal with are:

• Managing research of development projects
• Dealing with Human Resources
• Managing logistics
• Government regulations
• Signing contracts and outsourcing products
• …and much more!

The greatest advantage of this game is that it will evolve along with its user community, which means more features will be added according to the way players play the game.

We invite you to follow up on this blog, in order to hear updates and news about the development process of The CEO Game.  We also invite you to contact us for further details and partnerships (Our Mail).

Ailon .

The CEO Game.