2005: A Game of Macroeconomics is an educational strategy game that came out in 2001 and it is freeware. Even though it falls in the educational category, it can also be a fun game. It is also a helpful game to those who are taking macroeconomic courses because it teaches the basic lessons that are taught in the classroom, so it is a good review of the course. This game was designed by N. George Mankiw, one of the world’s most revered macroeconomics. He originally designed this game to be an accompaniment to his textbook that was published by Worth Publishers.
In this game, you are the highly honoured president of the United States of America. You have many goals that need to be accomplished in this game to keep your popularity up. As president, you have to set the monetary policy (by setting the money growth rate) and the fiscal policy (by setting the taxes, GNP, and the government spending to GNP ratios). That may sound complicated, but if you really understand the reason behind doing these things and what they are (and I mean really know what they are) then you should be just fine. You want to set the policies in a way that are effective and keep the economy healthy because if the economy fails, so does your chances to get re-elected for president. You want to get re-elected as many times as possible.
Other things will have an affect on how you set the policies and what happens in the game besides how you set the policies. One thing that will affect what happens is the news. As we all know, many things can happen that will ultimately affect the economy such as wars and natural disasters. I am not saying these will happen in the game, but what happens in the world does affect how your economy thrives or fails. Once you play the game for a while, you get a pretty good idea of what all of the good and bad economic indicators are.
As an educational game, this ranks high on my list for both high school and college students alike. The game play was designed to be fairly simple so that you can focus on learning how to set good fiscal and monetary policies. The screen is split into three sections and helps you view each thing that will help you make your decisions. You are basically learning the fluctuation of the economic market.
Written by:
~dorento1
