Experiential learning is a method of teaching principles or facts to students not only through giving lectures but allowing students to perform some actions by themselves. Learning by doing is an effective means for various fields of education. Business games are powerful tools for learning business structures and principles by making decisions. The conventional approach to business gaming courses is to educate inexperienced students to understand the concepts of management, accounting, business processes, and/or the basic techniques for business analysis. In this paper, we discuss the technological feasibility of a multi-user based e-learning program for business games, which is designed based on learner-centered participatory education using the YBG (Yokohama Business Game). Going against restrictions of traditional business game class methods that can only be played in an onsite classroom at the same time and place, this type of program enables learners to play the game anytime and anywhere on the Internet. This thus provides people with a good educational advantage and creates learning opportunities according to individual needs. This program is granted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, of Japan as a good modern practice.

In the present paper, the author explored ethical problems when using Simulation and Gaming from the social psychological perspective. As an onset of prospective future discussion to be published in this journal, the author would like to pose the following questions, though they may not necessarily form a comprehensive list of all the ethical problems. 1) How should we, or can we, properly deal with participants of games? For example, can we force the participants to face an unpleasant experience, even if we are confident that the experience itself could lead to deeper learning?; 2) To what extent can facilitators behave as rulers of the gaming situations, when only they have a complete understanding of the games’ rules and procedures? Is this sometimes perceived as arrogance on the part of the facilitators?; 3) What kind of games can be accepted, especially in the educational field? Do violent games truly have negative impacts on the development of young people? Rather, should we be more attentive to ‘educationally sound’ games e.g. teaching stock market or moral behavior, considering the possible impacts on young people’s world views?

Computer supported business games are one of the typical gears used for business education. In this paper, we analyze state-of-the-art business game development technologies, and identify bottlenecks of the development, such as: 1) Issues of implementation to computers, 2) Determination of game parameters, and 3) Fine tuning for the game balance. The first bottleneck is improved by our support system BMDS/BMDL, however, the second and third bottlenecks have not been resolved so far. This results in parameter tuning problems of game development. Thus, we are developing an easy-to-use support tool based on a random number generator of a given probabilistic distribution. This tool is implemented as add-in procedures of Win Excel spreadsheet system. Using this tool, we are able to 1) tune up various internal parameters in a short time and 2) improve the intensive testing performance automatically. The experiment using this tool suggests that the development cost and performance of a business game is remarkably improved.

This study investigates how language, cultural system, and sex affects intercultural attitudes using a simulation gaming. Fourteen groups (of 4 or 5 participants) played a simulation gaming with similarly-sized groups of confederates (the out-group). Attitudes toward the out-groups were measured in four experimental conditions: both language and cultural system the same; language-same and system-different; language different and system-same, and both different. ANOVA showed that the language factor had an influence on behavioral intentions toward the out-group. The system factor had an influence on favorableness and the image of the out-group. The results were influenced by sex: males reported feeling conflicts with the out-group with a different language or cultural system, while females were tolerant of these differences and showed cooperative responses to the out-group.

On business education in university, business games have been studied and many researches and practical results exist. On the contrary, business games for problem solving in a real business entity has not been fully studied and there are more topics to be researched. This paper reports on the experimental approach by gaming simulation, which tries to show the effectiveness of business games for group decision-making in a real business entity. The scenario of the experiment is that several Japanese manufacturing companies launch the next generation DVD player into the Japan market. The hypothesis of this experiment is that in marketing and R&D division, persons from each company will be able to resolve the group decision-making problems through gaming simulation. Previous researches have pointed out that business games could be an effective tool for group decisions as a result. The uniqueness of this paper is to conduct the experiments for the solution of the group decision-making problems in the real business world and to analyze them.