Restaurant City
One of the things I hear people regularly complain about are Facebook games. Some of the most popular include Mafia Wars and Farm Town. The idea of these games is to join so you can engage with your friends in some way. Some people view the games, and status updates that go along with them, as a major pain.
From a technical standpoint, there are two things you can do to rid yourself of this frustration (short of unfriending someone, of course):
- If you don’t want to see any activity from a particular game, just hide it. In the upper right corner of the status update, there’s a drop down menu that allows you to hide the game related updates. You will still see that person’s updates – just not the ones related to that game.
- And, if you play these games, you can turn off the status updates for that game…so no one can see them coming from you.
My recommendation is to find a way to peacefully co-exist with Facebook games. IMHO, they’re harmless, actually kinda fun, and can have an educational purpose. For example, I really enjoy playing Wordscraper (which is the Facebook version of Scrabble). What’s bad about learning new words?
There are also simulation type games that can challenge me on a business level. Take Restaurant City for example. In this game, you run a restaurant. But in order to be successful playing the game, you have to:
Design a restaurant – placing tables, chairs, doors, etc. within the restaurant footprint for maximum productivity
Select a staff – including figuring out how many chefs, servers, and cleaners to hire
Make money – this means I have to select menu items by acquiring ingredients
Maintain a quality rating – yes, the customers rate their restaurant experience
Sounds pretty simple, eh? Wait…it gets better.
Employees have energy levels. As their energy drops, so does their productivity. When productivity drops, customers get crabby. Unhappy customers leave the restaurant with a “thumbs down”…which impacts your rating and ability to move to the next level. So you have to monitor employee energy levels and make sure they are fed and rested. And if you get frustrated and decide to axe one of your staff…you have to pay them severance!
Wow! Does this sound like real life or what??
In the real business world, we have to design our facilities for maximum efficiency. We have to determine how many people we need and in what roles. Once they’re hired, we have to monitor their performance and make sure we don’t burn them out. Meanwhile, our business has to make customers happy and produce profits.
So yes, it’s possible that game status updates are a nuisance. And maybe I wrote this post to justify playing Restaurant City. But also consider – sometimes games (like TV shows) can be fun and teach you something. Wouldn’t it be great if all our learning experiences were like a video game? I think it would be super cool to teach people about business using Restaurant City.
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