Game Theory
Board games like Financier, Little Wholesaler and Oil Magnate teach kids about business - Russian-style.
By Anna Malpas Published: July 21, 2006
If you want to make it as a financier in Russia, don't forget to buy a gun for your bodyguard. And remember to fill in your tax declaration on time, or you'll end up in jail. But don't worry, you can always escape by throwing a double-six.
Those are the rules of Financier, one of the many Russian-made board games that take the basic Monopoly model and add local color. The shelves of Detsky Mir and other major toy stores offer a wide range of such games, from Little Wholesaler to Oil Magnate.
While Monopoly originated in the Depression era, the first Soviet economic games appeared during perestroika. One of the first was Manager, an unofficial version of Monopoly that appeared in the late 1980s and is still on sale now. Since then, the choice has exploded, with game developers trying to reflect local norms, some humorously and some with serious aims.
Financier is more at the humorous end -- the box shows a little boy holding a mobile phone and flashing a V-sign. Players must prepare themselves for the worst squares by acquiring a gun and cartridges, and hiring a bodyguard to use them. In a surprisingly law-abiding touch, they are supposed to buy car insurance as well.
Perils include the mafia section of the board, marked by a gold-chain-wearing goon, where players lose up to 5,000 in the game's currency, whether or not they have a gun. There is also a Black Tuesday square that causes all the players to lose money and temporarily closes the bank, in an echo of Russia's 1998 financial crisis.
The criminal elements are not meant to be taken seriously, said Yelena Palkina, the director of the St. Petersburg company, Fun Game, that developed Financier in 2001. "I think the humor of this game is obvious -- it's enough to look at the funny illustrations," she wrote in an e-mail Wednesday.
"By now, modern Russian children definitely know that to be successful in business, you need knowledge, a good education and the ability to build partnerships, but certainly not criminal talent!" she said, comparing the games to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Another Fun Game creation, Oil Magnate, is more educational. The box shows a map marked with the names of real oil deposits, and the players must construct pipelines by answering trivia questions such as "How much oil is there in one barrel?" But in a topical touch, one chance card reads: "All the accusations against you turned out to be false."
Both Oil Magnate and Financier are published by a Moscow company, Astrait, that takes on many of Fun Game's ideas and also buys games from other developers. Astrait is part of the publishing group AST and, appropriately enough, has released a game called Book Publishing Magnate.
An ad on Astrait's site asks game inventors to send in their ideas, but warns, "Authors of the numerous clones of Monopoly need not bother."
The mafia theme has also become outmoded, Alexei Kalinin, the company's publishing editor, said by telephone Tuesday. "It was fashionable a few years ago." His company now presents a more "serious view," he said, with games such as Russian Business and Big Business, which aim to teach players about the stock market.
One of the first game developers in Russia, Yury Somov, also believes that his games have a serious purpose. A professional economist, he created his first game, Market, with another economist in the early 1990s and has produced it commercially in Saratov since 1996. "My idea is based on turning the boring and incomprehensible study of economics into a very entertaining, beloved activity," he wrote in an e-mail Wednesday.
"My intellectual games help people come out of their economic nihilism ... and realize that there are many different ways to make money," he said. Market is a very complex game that involves haggling and deal-making between players, he said, calling it "business chess."
His Saratov-based company, Yunsi, also makes simpler games, such as Little Wholesaler, which involves buying food cheaply and selling it at higher prices. "In our games, the emphasis is only on the main economic realities," Somov said.
Locally made games have an advantage over official Russian versions of Western games such as Monopoly, since they are much cheaper. "Localized games aren't affordable for everyone," Astrait editor Kalinin said. "They're quite expensive."
For Astrait, the price ceiling is 800 rubles ($30), Kalinin said. Economic games such as Financier retail for around 300 rubles ($11).
This low price range can be a problem for game designers, Fun Game director Palkina wrote. "In Western games, there are electronic, wooden, pop-up paper and moveable cardboard elements, and other innovations. Our developers can dream up a grandiose set of pieces, but ..."
Astrait's "economic" games are aimed at adults as much as at children, Kalinin said, and each game is tested by 5 or 6 different people from both age groups before being published. "Economic games generally interest teenagers aged 12 to 14," Palkina of Fun Games said, adding that "some very established and successful people" also enjoy playing.
"Some do it as a kind of training, and some do it to remember how they started out."
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/169496/
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