Board Game Design to Understand the National Power Mix

This study reports a board game design that would be an effective tool for teaching and learning the best mix of national power sources in a class concerning energy and sustainability in higher education courses. A board game was developed to understand the characteristics of power sources from a Japanese viewpoint based on an earlier study of the authors. The purpose of the game is to satisfy electricity demands by choosing power sources and procuring the resources necessary for power generation to help develop a country. A total of 50 undergraduate and graduate students were asked to assess the game. The results of the questionnaire-based survey conducted after the game confirmed the students’ evaluation that the game was highly enjoyable and could serve as an effective tool for energy and environmental education in high schools or universities. In addition, the average of “the ratio of the power sources proper to win the game” given by the students was similar to Japanese power mix before the Fukushima disaster, although the game significantly simplified, and even excluded, various factors affecting the national policy of power sources

Sustainable Point Card Management Game

"Point Cards have been commonly used worldwide in recent decades. There are many systems involving a lot of functions by utilizing cutting-edge ICT innovations. Those systems are usually exclusive to other e-commerce systems, so the operators must compete aggressively to increase their share. The competition is often overheated. For instance, we can see too harsh point campaigns beyond the reasonable possible range. Consumers crowd to gather instant benefits but often lack a long-term perspective. The existence of people interested only in points heats endless matches among cashless transaction systems. After the game, only a few winners\u27 companies remain. They will terminate the point campaign. Furthermore, they will revise their rules to collect the cost consumed for the previous meaningless fights from the customers already captured in the specified system. To avoid such tragedy, people should learn the mechanism of a cashless transaction system to ensure service providers\u27 fair competition and benefits. However, such systems are pretty complex ICT systems quite hard to grasp for ordinary people.To resolve such problems, the authors developed the point card management game to support the learning point system experientially. In the first stage, a player works as an individual shop that provides points independently. In the second stage, players experience the joint point campaign with neighbouring shops to increase new and regular customers. When a shop offers points to customers, they must deposit the same money to the service provider. When the customer returns and consumes points at the shop, the shop can get a refund from the operator while paying a commission for the second transaction. In the third stage, other players, like a local government, step into the game. They subsidize the participants and sometimes host an event to increase the transaction. Throughout the process, the player can learn the outline of the point system, calculation, operation, and campaign. The player can determine the fair competition of cashless transaction systems and be able to discover the path to encourage sustainable E-commerce.

Development of Software Engineering Business Board Game

In recent days, software engineering has become a collaborative effort with others. Based on good communications, to control software development, skills for management of human resources, process, cash and others have become vitally necessary. To provide opportunities to learn such skills related to technology, we developed a board game called the Software Kaihatsu Game (SKG; Kaihatsu means ‘development’ in Japanese) in 2009. Students form teams to manage software firms, and assume roles as a Chief Executive Officer (CFO) or Project Manager. SKG has been used at the Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, and at Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University, Thailand. It was also used for the training of business people in the software industry around Sendai City, Japan. This paper introduces the features, effects, and expected improvements of SKG

Development of BASE Supply Chain Collaboration Game

Many books describe Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC), an important idea in the business world. Numerous successfulexamples of SCC are described in these books. Basic contents of teaching SCC at a university are explanation of SCC’stheory and successful case studies. Moreover, some teachers use SCC computer games in the lecture as educationalassistance. Regarding development of a SCC computer game themselves, the more they want to teach SCC knowledge, themore the computer game becomes complicated. These cir-cumstances are satisfied by teachers, but students might feelembarrassment. Students, except some very good students, assume that managing SCC theory and many parameters foroperating SCC computer game are extremely difficult, such that they can not be used. To resolve these misunderstandings,the authors developed simple SCC analogue games. As de-scribed in this report, the basic idea of BASE SCC games and theeducational effectiveness of applying SCC games to the lec-ture of SIIT Thammasat University are introduced

DEVELOPMENT OF BASE SUPPLY CHAIN COLLABORATION GAME BY USING TANGIBLE BLOCKS

To Teach Supply Chain Collaboration effectively, we developed the BASE-SCC business game in 2012. Throughout the experience, we aimed to have more options especially on the supply-side. To attach a new rule makes a game complex. Therefore, we designed this new business game by utilizing tangible blocks on the same topic, but from the opposite stand point of SCC and named i

Experimental Approach for Game Design: Online and Analog Game Fusion in the Corona Era

The Covid-19 epidemic, which struck the world in early 2020, strongly affected analog gaming researchers and practitioners. Social distance was recommended for reducing infection risk. Many people have avoided surrounding tables. Furthermore, disinfection is required for objects that have been touched by others. These precautions all degrade the analog game experience. Analog games will disappear if nothing is done. Therefore, the authors examined methods to apply the virtues of analog games to online lectures

Development of the BASE Life Planning Game to Teach Students the Balance between Money and Happiness

We created a simple game to help students plan their career in relation to money and happiness. Traditional career education has an over 40-year history and is quite important, but it lacks financial aspects. While following your dreams can make you happy, having money is also needed for achieving happiness and success in life. To teach students the proper balance between career and happiness in relation to money, we designed our card game named BASE Life Planning Game. It has two different stages, which are adjustable by the settings of the cards. Players are deemed to live until 75 years of age and select a job and residence every five years. The first stage urges players to spend money in the pursuit of happiness. The second stage encourages players to be more conservative. In our experiment, all players bankrupted in the first scenario when they retired from their job. After analyzing the reasons by midterm debriefings, they played the game again and now found a balance between spending and saving money