Eh, I remember a few semesters ago I had Business Management and my teacher was incredibly crazy

he kept talking about the Batman videogame for Sega Genesis and how there was money and villains

never really understood him t_t

on-topic: I don't know if it's enough to be class worthy, but it definitly be a good parallel to show how to calculate true cost etc.

Astray

Canada59 Posts

August 24 2009 23:39 GMT

#23

No.

Even though I love Starcraft, it shouldn't be used to teach Business because there are way more effective ways other than playing the game. In addition, Starcraft only teaches the basics of business; if you are studying about Business you need WAY more.

29 fps

United States5724 Posts

August 24 2009 23:45 GMT

#24

certainly there's a link between econ and starcraft, but it's hard to directly relate it to real life.

in SC, surpluses are bad. in real life, they are good.

and you need an army to survive in sc, so even though producing a marine will cost 1000s of min over time, without that one marine (or an army in general), you could die (lose), so life > money. and in the game, you can only produce one unit at a time, so with all that money from the scvs, you can get both marine and scv

lazz

Australia3119 Posts

August 24 2009 23:52 GMT

#25

a lot of basic economic concepts like the more workers you have the greater marginal cost they have is actually not true in starcraft since each worker simply adds a linear amount that doesn't decrease. in some cases your later workers actually have less marginal cost than before because as you get closer to 3 workers/patch they wander less.

CaucasianAsian

Korea (South)11584 Posts

August 24 2009 23:53 GMT

#26

i dont know i made this graph to make this thread look more business related

lazz

Australia3119 Posts

August 24 2009 23:54 GMT

#27

On August 25 2009 08:45 29 fps wrote:
certainly there's a link between econ and starcraft, but it's hard to directly relate it to real life.

in SC, surpluses are bad. in real life, they are good.

actually that's not really true. most businesses try to minimize the cash they have lieing around. cash is better invested at 10% interest/year or w/e than sitting in your wallet. unless you have a huge business like walmart or w/e that actually needs large amounts of cash lieing around because they have a huge cash outflow into inventories etc.

CaucasianAsian

Korea (South)11584 Posts

August 24 2009 23:55 GMT

#28

On August 25 2009 08:52 lazz wrote:
a lot of basic economic concepts like the more workers you have the greater marginal cost they have is actually not true in starcraft since each worker simply adds a linear amount that doesn't decrease. in some cases your later workers actually have less marginal cost than before because as you get closer to 3 workers/patch they wander less.

they may not have a marginal cost, but they have an opportunity cost. The cost of $50 minerals for a SCV as opposed to a marine. The scv will bring you money and riches, while the marine will bring you fame and glory for winning the war!

lazz

Australia3119 Posts

August 24 2009 23:58 GMT

#29

On August 25 2009 08:55 CaucasianAsian wrote:

Show nested quote +

i understand and agree with what you're saying, but what does it have to do with what I said?

most of SC is about defending with the minimum about and charging up a huge eco, especially terran

CaucasianAsian

Korea (South)11584 Posts

August 25 2009 00:15 GMT

#30

well to relate to what you were saying, the more SCV's you have, the worse the mining becomes. More than 3 per patch is over-saturation and will decrease the amount of minerals you take in. and it will decrease the rate of which they improve after 1 peon per mineral patch. So there is a marginal cost.

koOl

Canada254 Posts

August 25 2009 00:42 GMT

#31

i dont think most students would stay engaged with a class solely focused on starcraft economics.

Heyoka

Katowice25012 Posts

August 25 2009 01:14 GMT

#32

On August 25 2009 08:53 CaucasianAsian wrote:

i dont know i made this graph to make this thread look more business related

Those functions shouldn't be linear at all!!

meegrean

Thailand7699 Posts

August 25 2009 03:22 GMT

#33

Yep, Starcraft is closely linked with economics and especially opportunity cost.

gchan

United States654 Posts

August 25 2009 06:47 GMT

#34

Seems like OP meant Starcraft should be taught in economics classes, not in business school. On the economics side, there certainly is a lot of application there; but if you're teaching something to students, you generally want to have examples that people can understand/relate to (ie. the real business world). On the business school side, it'd be rather pointless because business school is 90% about networking, not learning anything useful. It's rather hard to network over an actual game of starcraft.

United States496 Posts

August 25 2009 06:53 GMT

#35

The fact that SC is in real time makes this game even more closed to what we can learn in microecomics. Players are taking decisions in the same time regarding what the other is doing or what we thing he is doing (let's do some Nash ?).
The need of information is also key because in SC, the information is almost always imperfect.
A SC player has to optimize his resource with all these elements in mind and this is why, I think, a good understanding of SC can help to understand some basic concepts of management and microeconomics.

United States496 Posts

August 25 2009 06:57 GMT

#36

On August 25 2009 08:54 lazz wrote:

Show nested quote +

Yes.
In theory, surplus isn't good.
In a perfect world, companies should have no surplus.

Seems like OP meant Starcraft should be taught in economics classes, not in business school. On the economics side, there certainly is a lot of application there; but if you're teaching something to students, you generally want to have examples that people can understand/relate to (ie. the real business world). On the business school side, it'd be rather pointless because business school is 90% about networking, not learning anything useful. It's rather hard to network over an actual game of starcraft.

.
ok, you win.

Aegraen

United States1225 Posts

August 25 2009 07:04 GMT

#37

MK I'm sorry, but the only game that could realistically be taught in an University setting would be EVE Online's economy. It is the closest thing you can come to in a game setting that resembles a free-market.

United States496 Posts

August 25 2009 07:17 GMT

#38

On August 25 2009 16:04 Aegraen wrote:
MK I'm sorry, but the only game that could realistically be taught in an University setting would be EVE Online's economy. It is the closest thing you can come to in a game setting that resembles a free-market.

Yes. I've been told about this game but never played.
Maybe I'll give a try.
Thanks.