An Investigation of the Environmental Awareness Attained in a Simple Business Simulation Game

Abstract

Past research examining participant adaptability to game parameters in computerized business simulation games has examined the degree to which game participants understand the environment into which they are placed. Results suggest that participants only moderately understand their environments. It is felt that the complexity of the simulations used in these studies contributed to the lack of significant findings. This study uses a very simple simulation game in which the game administrator can only manipulate two game parameters. Decision responses were gathered from 331 single player competitive companies assigned to fifty-nine six team industries for a nine period competition. As with past studies, only moderate learning of the simple environment was found.