Overview of Business Games

The modern business games originated from war games exhibit salient advantages for participants to learn and accumulate their experience in a simulated world The usage of business games in teaching, training and research has obtained unprecedented growth. However, the effectiveness of business games has a significant impact on the development of business games. Based on the related works, this paper introduces and discusses the elements, the design, the application, and the trends of the business games. We find that the effectiveness of business games mainly depends on non-human factors (the game system function) and human factors (the game leader and the game players). Therefore, the design of the game system function should be highlighted in the process of a successful game design. Meanwhile, the characteristics of the players such as team cohesiveness should be taken into account during the game play.