Teaching Economic Risk Management through a Video Game Concept

Author(s)

Samantha MontellaFollow

Major

Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Minor(s)

Community Planning; Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship

Advisor

Sproul, Tom

Advisor Department

Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Date

5-2020

Keywords

Risk Management; Agricultural Economics; Video Games

Abstract

Many video games imply economic behavior: making decisions within a game highlights the fundamentals of human action. The basic idea is that virtual worlds, like the real world, present us with a series of choices. Games impose digital scarcity, obliging players to weigh the benefits of different courses of action, make tradeoffs, and incur costs.

Good examples are found in the role-playing game (RPG) genre, where players face tough choices between different specializations and skill trees. Obliging players to make difficult decisions highlights the opportunity costs of choice, not the money cost. Games also encourage players to think entrepreneurially: to take risks and sacrifice scarce resources to profit. Entrepreneurs specialize in a kind of creative problem-solving in the marketplace, and gamers do much the same in the virtual sphere. But there are many more ways – real and metaphorical – to bring gaming into economics and vice versa.

This project consists of a video game concept of my design that exemplifies a real-life simulation in which the player embarks on a farming career and has to make choices throughout the game that affect where the game will go to next. All choices have major or minor consequences that can change the way that the game unfolds in the end. The choices that they make will have consequences on the environment and also will involve monetary risk. For example, if the player chooses not to practice sustainable agriculture, then they may contaminate the ground which will lead to contamination of the groundwater supply, causing both severe environmental and economic consequences.

Video games can have educational value by offering motivation and relevance into students’ lives. When faced with problems in real life, we can become anxious, overwhelmed, and feel like giving up. In gaming worlds when confronted with a problem or obstacle, the player is motivated to persist until the problem is solved. Then, the player can advance and move forward in the game plot. In games, players are motivated to take risks, collaborate, and creatively problem-solve until an epic win occurs. Isn’t this the type of motivation we want to foster in classrooms?