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Hobart
This project also available to Launceston students. The client will travel for some meetings, and other meetings will need to be via video conference.
Create a turn-based strategy game where the players are in control of managing Virtual Australia using economic, social, environmental and foreign policy. Players take on the role of the federal government and must try and maximise the welfare of Australians through their policy decisions. Players would make decisions on such matters as labour market reform, sin taxes, government spending priorities, welfare payments, immigration, environmental laws, foreign relations and trade.
The Economic Society of Australia (ESA) encourages the study, teaching, research and use of economics for public policy. This project is to help fulfil these roles by 1) stimulating interest in economics of pre and early tertiary students and 2) teaching the consequences of policy decisions on the economy and its people. The game is destined for the Tasmanian Branch’s website. (see below)
The Virtual Australia Game would be similar to the “Challenge the Chancellor Competition” in the UK that uses the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Biz Ed’s “Virtual Economy” model (see http://www.bized.ac.uk/virtual/economy/model/). The Virtual Australia Game however would involve multiple rounds of input, which would include social, environmental and foreign policy input as well. In addition the output for each round would be involve more graphics that help flavour and demonstrate the affect of the players’ policies on the people in their Virtual Australia.
The Virtual Australia Game would be based on existing macroeconomic models
(supplied by the client) modified to include environmental variables, social
variables and foreign relations (the client has some ideas how this could be
done). The players’ input affects the model and the new levels of economic,
environmental, and social variables are essentially the resulting output of
the players’ actions and initial settings of the model. This output could
be displayed as graphs, newspaper articles, or news bulletins to add flavour
to the game. The game would be playable over the Internet and the status for
each player’s Virtual Australia recorded and displayed on the web.
You would design, write and test the code for this game. Write an instruction
manual for the game with software and hardware requirements. Design a way to
market the game to pre and early tertiary students. Run a beta trial on the
ESA-TAS website.
Client Name: Dr Paul Blacklow
President of the Tasmanian Branch of the
Economic Society of Australia
Phone Number (business hours): 03 6226 2283
Email Address: Paul.Blacklow@utas.edu.au
Website: http://www.ecosoc.org.au/tasmania_branch.htm
Address: Room 406, Commerce and Economics Building
University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay.
The estimated software difficulty rating is 3.5-4