Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Discussions about educational uses of Capitalism II
counting
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by counting »

That's very informative :ugeek: :)

I do wonder though, how come 5 different corporations manage to let one student focus on earning money while another one use on stock market? Aren't they supposed to be separate save files? Or could they swap save files between them so someone can focus on manufacturing at the beginning and hand it over to another stock focused student? Or could 5 students co-op all the corporations as long as there are 5 different saves can be produced in the end?

There really could be a lot of different co-working and managing routes for this to become really interesting and useful practice/exercise tools.
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Meiaman
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

Well, the only rule regarding group organization i set was the conglomerate rule, they have autonomy to manage it in whatever way they see fit. Some groups worked as individuals while others showed different styles of co-operation.

And it is possible since they are in the same computer lab and physically close to each other, ofc, it requires some information management, but all they need to do is just swap computers. Doing it online is also possible, but i imagine it needs more work.

This is the example they showed me:
Whenever any of the companies needed funds, X person who is best at fund raising and stock market would swap computer with the other person.

Then again, this depends on the personality of the team mates and if the group has a leading, in terms of coordination, i can separate the groups in two categories:

1. groups working without coordination, with every person acting as a lone individual with almost no communication save for basic information exchange.

2. Groups working with coordination and using varied strategies such as central planning or speciality based management.

What i can say is while capitalism 2 is no miracle tool that will automatically make students super planners, it certainly does it job of providing an ambient where students intereste in planning can exercise those abilities.
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by counting »

I can certainly imagine the difference between less interactive case studies vs group exercise like this. It helps make everyone going through trial and errors quickly within limited amount of time, and various concepts can tested, let students get a grasp of those concepts not just by memorizing them but through actions.

I also think, if ground rules are more of a challenge (with certain game settings, or with CapLab using scripts and mods?), perhaps it would even make co-operation necessary. Individual game might be fun as a game on its own, but not merely as effective as a teaching tool and practices, if they are not group exercise.
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Meiaman
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

I also think, if ground rules are more of a challenge (with certain game settings, or with CapLab using scripts and mods?), perhaps it would even make co-operation necessary. Individual game might be fun as a game on its own, but not merely as effective as a teaching tool and practices, if they are not group exercise.
I do agree with this, but the challenge is knowing when difficulty barriers from challenging to too overwhelming hard.

Also, i do think that the idea that needs to be inserted into the student head is that they are competing against other groups, not just playing the game. So a visual feedback of each group performance against each other would be great to add this sense of competition, if capitalism 2 or lab had such feature, it would be a striking blow.

On a side note, i had an idea for the third experiment. I am going to do a quali-quanti analysis by noting which groups are doing coordinated work and how they are doing it and their overall ranking in class. This way i can verify tje correlation between coordenated team work and overall success.
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by counting »

Well, there are challenge games in Caplab, public ones probably have to be coordinated with developers, but private challenge games could be an easy way to compete with scores by goals setup on your own. And different game settings doesn't have to be set at higher difficulty, just different setup and settings within a group. Some setup to be easier on some aspects, like lots of retail AIs, so manufacturer can be free to be wholesalers, another with high leverage to play the capital market, some would require huge advertisement, etc, think of them as a collective campaigns need to be conquered within limited amount of in-game years, each one within the group can choose their strategies and make sure only those do analysis able to finish the goals with high score in sensible ways (especially make time score with heavier weight, hence the difference between good strategies and inefficient strategies can be distinguished easily)

Although competition in real-time like within a multiplayer games might be more favorable after all. since AI in general is not much of a challenge if you understand its behaviors. However, this I am afraid won't come up any time soon.

And I'd love to know the analysis result, rarely do we see comparison between group competitions with Capitalism games (actually none, normally it's just solo games for gamers, best we come up with are business reports and on occasion video recordings of game play, which might be a good way to do analysis and get into the mind of how strategies are formed during playing)
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

Hmm, i like your idea for custom made challenges and the private challenge might be what i am looking for. Peharps i could issue multiple scenarios for students to pick based on their preference and skill and have them compete on their own categories.

Example, students can pick one of 3 custom made scenarios:

1. Fueling the bubble: housing demand is at high and building companies are being agressive. Can you seize lands before they are too expensive?

2. stock crash: stock market goes ka-boom. Can you survive?

3. Wholesale mania: wholesales are engaged in a price war. Can you deliver a product cheap enough to keep yourself in the market?


I dont know how deep the game can be scripted, but this would be great for the 3rd experiment, since it would be a more purpose driven experiment.
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by counting »

Meiaman wrote:Hmm, i like your idea for custom made challenges and the private challenge might be what i am looking for. Peharps i could issue multiple scenarios for students to pick based on their preference and skill and have them compete on their own categories.

Example, students can pick one of 3 custom made scenarios:

1. Fueling the bubble: housing demand is at high and building companies are being agressive. Can you seize lands before they are too expensive?

2. stock crash: stock market goes ka-boom. Can you survive?

3. Wholesale mania: wholesales are engaged in a price war. Can you deliver a product cheap enough to keep yourself in the market?


I dont know how deep the game can be scripted, but this would be great for the 3rd experiment, since it would be a more purpose driven experiment.
For CapLab script system, option 1 is more problematic, since it's really difficult run out of land in Capitalism games, and honestly AIs won't be that aggressive, and they only grab town size land and build retail stores in rural area instead of near city center And rent demand heavily depends on economic status. It's very difficult to find retail AIs own large quantity of real estate in high land price area. Also AIs rarely purchase apartments from players, so bubble will be difficult to form. Real estate more or less behave like government issued bonds. A slow and steady "interests/rents" income investment. Although I suspect at certain level if you forbid players to be able to build anything except real estate, you can force a similar situation when economic crisis is triggered. Also since real estate is probably the least understood area in Caplab, very few players try to exploit and explore the mechanics behind it (mostly due to its inherent low profit margin). Personally I just use real estate to boost nearby retail stores traffic index, which is a lot more useful than depends on their rent income.

Opt 2 is doable, but you'll have to generate enough save files and run them for a while to find one that suits this scenario. Initially set a lot more stock-focused AIs to play in the capital market using scripts, with enough other AIs doing not so well in manufacturing and other area, so when economic crisis hit they would suffer more (especially if they only produce low necessity products, which can be setup with scripts, and mods). Wait for economic crisis to happen (this might need some luck and waiting), save just after crisis is triggered and make it a challenge game (I imagine a lot of save/load, trial and error are needed to generate a good save for the challenge).

Opt 3 is the easiest and could be done right away. Using scripts to set a lot of retail focused AIs, and product AIs with specific identical expertise, delete most products using mods, thus only a few products can be made by these AIs, and disable players' ability to build retail stores (can be done via scripts), even upstream raw materials. This is sort of an easier version of middleman challenge. And I can tell you to survive this kind of setup in Caplab would NOT be easy for new players. AI is generally very good at price war in Caplab (if it's set to be very aggressive).
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

Short update: i am done with the experiment, all that is left is the feedback phase from the students, where they will present their experience, strategies and concepts perceived from the game.


Groups scores are already out, i will put it online soon.
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

Hello guys. How are you all?

The mean goal score report of each student group:

1. 10,40
2. 7,60
3. 56,00
4. 28,80
5. 4,80
6. 16,60
7. 6,00
8. 40,40
9. 14,25
10. 26,50

Here is the complete result file, to whoever is interested:
http://www.filedropper.com/results_4


I will not post the feedback presentation due to ethical reasons, but i can say that they were a bit more shallow on their analysis than i have expected. Accounting data was presented, but i did not see any analysis on economic factors.

Students reported having trouble on how to understand properly the information center. The reports presented felt a bit overwhelming. (on their defense, i did not explain these reports to them, but rather told them to analyse each report and figure how they could useful).

Students also reported having a desire for having a frequent visual feedback data on how the other groups are doing compared to them. (valid point, if students are constantly reminded they are competing, i suppose they might be more competitive. Next semester i will use the private challenge game from capitalism lab to provide the data).

Some bugs hindered the experience a bit, however this was mostly due to the usage of an early version of Capitalism 2 that someone translated to portuguese.

Students reported that some of them didn't pay attention to the explanation, as they were experimenting with the simulator by themselves during that time. (i am considering using the tutorials instead. I assume the curiosity of experimenting with the game is high during the first days).

That is it for now. Stay tuned for photos and more information in the future.
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David
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by David »

Thanks for posting the results!

Look forward to your next post on this.
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