Authors:
Felix Kiechle
;
Corinna Uhr
;
Mario Schlereth
;
Yao Zhang
;
Leon O. Burkard
;
Andreas C. Sonnenbichler
and
Andreas Geyer-Schulz
Affiliation:
Institute of Information Systems and Marketing and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Keyword(s):
Salt Seller, Business Games, Gaming Simulation, Simulators, Business Simulation, Browser, Multi-player.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications
;
Business Models
;
Business-It Alignment
;
e-Business
;
Education/Learning
;
Enterprise Engineering
;
Enterprise Information Systems
Abstract:
This paper describes the realization and implementation of a business game named Salt Seller. Salt Seller was
first described by John Sterman in 2014 and implemented for the MIT Sloan School of Management. However,
Sterman only provided a high-level description of Salt Seller and no low-level details about the realization or
the market model were revealed. Our first aim is to fill this gap. As our second contribution introduces a
generalized n-person framework for round-based games which serves as an abstract game architecture and
encapsulates the round synchronization mechanisms. Utilizing this framework we provide a detailed view
on a possible model of the market mechanisms for Salt Seller. We describe all the market functions which
are needed to calculate the game outputs in each period. Our work aims to improve decision making in
management and to support teaching. To support this third goal we implemented the game using modern web
technologies allowing us to use the game in stud
ents’ lessons at the KIT. All input and output parameters of
every round are stored in a database for later analysis of the players’ behaviour. Generally, our implementation
demonstrates how general round-based multi-player games can be realized in a browser, our architecture
supports various other 2-player round-based games.
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