I’ve been playing video games since I was a kid. I’ve rescued Princess Zelda numerous times. That’s why I couldn’t wait to tell my wife that I would not be able to clean the garage this weekend, because I had to play video games for school.
I had a look at the suggested titles, Farmersi and McDonalds, and decided that McDonalds was more appealing to me. Farmersi, with it’s bland yellow interface and complicated rules, seemed far too difficult to learn in the time allotted. The McDonalds game has inviting colorful graphics, humorous text, and cute characters, but exploring the interface revealed a lot of depth and challenge.
The game allows you to run the entire McDonalds enterprise from 4 perspectives that interact simultaneously and mimic the major facets of the real McDonalds operations. The areas are the pastures, the slaughterhouse, the restaurant, and the corporate HQ. Changes to one area have various side effects to others, just like in real life. For instance, if you neglect your pastures, they will become toxic, and begin producing sick cows in the slaughterhouse. If you neglect to euthanize these sick cows, the tainted meat will make it’s way to the restaurant. Selling tainted meat to customers will make your customers sick, and they will boycott your restaurant, which means no more sales.
You begin the game with $50000 in cash, and 100 burger patties, which I will assume is the intital investment of capital, and you are now beholden to the investors to make them some money to pay them interest (I assume they are being paid, considering the fancy suits they wear in the boardroom). Your other factors of production are the pastures (land) which you pay rent on, and the labour of your workers, whom you pay wages to. The player is the factor of enterprise, and the decision they make represent the risks and efforts involved in the pursuit of profit. Profit will allow you to continue playing the game, and that is your payment.
My first attempt was a dismal failure. My instinct was to fully staff my restaurant, and sell the initial burgers. Once I had that going, I went to my pastures to see about keeping the flow of raw burgers coming into the restaurant. I built 3 pastures, and 3 soy fields to feed my cows. Returning to my restaurant revealed that my burger supply was nearly depleted, and there was no shortage of customers in line. The boardroom was happy because the cash register was dinging nonstop. And then it stopped. I was out of burgers, and my cash was low. Where were the burger patties for me to sell? Apparently I had neglected the needs of the slaughterhouse, and failed to notice the cows did not have enough food. They were keeling over and dying in pairs, and the food was just not there to sustain the ones that survived. The soy fields are harvested just once a year, so filling the cistern to feed the cows is more important than I thought. Plus, I had the sad duty of having to manually put down cows who had become sick. Their big sad eyes stared into my guilty conscience as I put them down. It didn’t take long for the boardroom to recognize my incompetence, and I was summarily dismissed by Rotten Ronnie himself.
My subsequent attempts to turn a profit were far more successful. I scaled back my desire to expand too quickly, and instead spent conservatively on minimal staff, and a single soy and pasture field. This allowed me to focus on creating a level of operating that didn’t demand me to be in 3 places at once. It also allowed me to let the game tell me when it was time to expand. When I found that my restaurant was being supplied with a decent amount of patties, and the customers were still waiting in line, I decided it was time to hire another cashier and cook. Profits were on the rise. However, burger supplies were beginning to dwindle, so it was time to think about increasing production in the pastures. By adding more cows and soy, I was now becoming busier and busier, and stretched a little thin, but the board was happy. And then came the enviro-freaks to derail the profit-train. Apparently they didn’t like that I was raising beef cows in a fragile eco-system, and threatened to boycott. I didn’t know what to do, because I was finally making money, and I didn’t want it to stop. How much damage could a bunch of hippies cause to my stellar thriving business? Apparently, a lot. They called on customers to boycott us. All of a sudden, my demand had taken a massive drop. The lines of customers dried up, and my restaurant staff were just standing around. The burgers from the slaughterhouse were piling up. I had to scale back my production, and fast, because my pastures were costing me money. I didn’t have the option of lowering my price.
Eventually I ran out of money, but I did last until 2010, and was able to generate profit for a brief time. The game is actually a real brain teaser. It makes you think about what effect your actions (or inactions) will have on the other facets of the business, all the while making sure your costs are less than your revenue. When the revenue slows down, you have to proactively think about what you can live without in order to keep business going. If the game had the option of allowing the player to manipulate the price in order to increase quantity demanded, it might have been a bit more interesting. I think the main lessons I learned would be, first, be careful with your opening capital. Spending that money on expanding too soon can really create more costs than you will be able to handle once the capital runs out. Instead, focus on spending the money conservatively, focusing on initial operations, and only expand your ability to supply once the demand increases. Secondly, planning is by far the most important strategy. The pause button will give you the opportunity to stop time, and go from section to section and really think about what needs improvement, and what should be left alone. What you must bear in mind is how your decisions will affect other departments. Opportunity costs come into play because you must think of what you must give up in order to add something else. If you give yourself ample time to really weigh the options and risks, you will last much longer than if you just jump in and go go go.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go try again!
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