Virtual U

[eMTe]

Virtual U is designed to foster better understanding of management practices in American colleges and universities.

It provides students, teachers, and parents the unique opportunity to step into the decision-making shoes of a university president. Players are responsible for establishing and monitoring all the major components of an institution, including everything from faculty salaries to campus parking.

As players move around the Virtual U campus, they gather information needed to make decisions such as decreasing faculty teaching time or increasing athletic scholarships. However, as in a real college or university, the complexity and potential effects of each decision must be carefully considered. And the Virtual U Board of Trustees is monitoring every move.

Virtual U models the attitudes and behaviors of the academic community in five major areas of higher education management:

* Spending and income decisions such as operating budget, new hires, incoming donations, and management of the endowment;
* Faculty, course, and student scheduling issues;
* Admissions standards, university prestige, and student enrollment;
* Student housing, classrooms, and all other facilities; and
* Performance indicators.

Virtual U players select an institution type and strive for continuous improvement by setting, monitoring, and modifying a variety of institutional parameters and policies. Players are challenged to manage and improve their institution of higher education through techniques such as resource allocation, minority enrollment policies, and policies for promoting faculty, among others. Players watch the results of their decisions unfold in real- time. A letter of review from Virtual U's board is sent every "year," informing players of their progress.

development team

http://www.virtual-u.org/index.asp

[Scythe]

Wow, I don't think I understood a word of that description. Maybe it's because I had too much to drink...

[Chroelle]

I am quite sober so I got the whole thing

It sounds quite interesting. I will definently give this a play-over at some point (as if I dont do that with pretty much all the games in here)...
But I like the concept and after playing Gamebiz 2 I am thinking that I like the genre, and it looks somewhat like eachother so... Maybe sooner than later.

[Chroelle]

I finally got around to opening this game up, and I must say that it is really hard for me to understand lots of the important details in the game being a Danish male, with absolutely no connection to the American teaching system. Simple terms are not translatable to the schoolsystem I know and as such it is really hard to play this game. I will however give it another go at another time, because it looks and plays too good to just be put aside.

[eMTe]

I was also a bi lost... More because of incomparable education systems than controls. Game itself isnt harder than average economy sim.

[Drasir-Vel]

I think it has a really steep learning curve, and there's no in-game toturial. It would be a good university simulator when you've learned how to play it. But it's not something i would like to use my time on, if i knew it.

[SFault]

It was a little weird that I needed to register to install the game. The developers haven't put much effort into the game play. It is really hard to get into this game. There are so many statistics and the interface is quite clumsy. I couldn't find many elements that I could actually adjust and those that had some interaction didn't clearly state what is the effect they make. I tried it about for 10 minutes and then the game crashed. I'm not going to play this ever again.

It was quite interesting to note that the ethnic standing had a big value among the employees and students. I don't think that racism is reduced by dividing people to minority and non-minority.