This video presents an excel-based game I created. I have called this game ‘Life Choices’.
Life Choices is a game that applies economic concepts to decision-making. Unlike many other games, the objective of Life Choices is not to make the most money but to instead maximise happiness. Managing money is still an important part of the game as a negative dollar value will wipe out your happiness score. The key concepts applied to the game are utility, risk, and choice.
The maximisation of happiness requires the understanding of utility. What decisions should be made to maximise utility? The game gives the player the option to buy goods and services, each good and service provides a level of utility. The player must decide if the utility yielded from the good or service is sufficient for the cost requirement; remember if you spend too much and become in debt, you will lose all your happiness.
Risk plays an enormous part in this game. There is the risk of negative dollars and losing all utility. There are risk cards. This allows the player to bet on activities such as sports events or just rolling the dice. There are cards of random events, which may cost money now but can be rewarded later with awarding of karma points. Rolling the dice even offers choices that involve selection the type of card; the game has ‘buy’ cards, ‘gamble’ cards, ‘random’ cards ‘karma’ cards, ‘special’ cards, and ‘lottery’ cards; These cards are explained in the instructions. Should the player select a ‘random’ card and rely on chance or choose a ‘buy’ card, where the player can opt out of buying anything.
The whole game is about choices. There are numerous strategies a player can adopt to victory, high or low risk. The player can even select the personality of their character in the set-up page. Do you want to play the altruist, the materialist or even the joker; it’s your choice.
Watch the video using the link below:
If you are interested in more videos relating to economics check out my YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCILwyLtjl7ZTlYOqFkAwLzw
The official Spectrum Economics website can be accessed at: https://www.spectrumecons.com
You can find me on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waynedavies-spectrumecons/
You can also find me on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/SpectrumEconomics