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I came across this clever (and funny) suggestion for a kids game based on what's been going on around the globe.
Many of us played Monopoly (by the Parker Brothers) as children, the classic game which first introduced key concepts such as handling money, counting, renting, mortgaging and famous London streets names (if you've got the UK version) to the young whitemice.
This game is so influential that many of the conventions of the game passed into popular culture: we can all recognise Monopoly money, little plastic Monopoly houses, etc. Some say that all this can be tied in with the British obsession with owning property.
...Education is the key to avoiding the endlessly repeating mass bubble/crash hysteria which has plagued western society over the years (see Tulips, Dot-coms, Housing, etc)...
I propose a game targeted at children that deals with simplified stock markets, property or some other asset that is prone to bubbles.
Players will be encouraged to pour money into an inflating asset, making paper gains all the way up. The winner would be the bear to take their money out first, before all the asset value drains away.
The winning strategy wouldn't be explained in the documentation, but instead the language of the game would be to suggest otherwise (e.g. newspaper headlines saying BUY BUY BUY, with charts pointing skywards).
The game would have to be multiplayer to capture some of the social aspects of doing well, competitiveness, group think (mass hysteria), being paper rich, etc.
Does a game like this exist? I think that someone would try to make a game like this for some kind of social experimentation.
Do kids still play board games? Perhaps a well designed Flash or mobile phone game would do just as well. I program both, but would need some help getting the fundamentals right.