Advances in the design of computerized business gaming simulations since the earliest works of the late 1950s are reviewed. A taxonomy of computerized gaming simulation is discussed, and the role of purpose in design is considered. Issues with respect to the representation, timing, hosting, and scoring of gaming simulations are covered.

Entrepreneurship, defined as executive deal making, involves four core activities: venture selecting, planning, executing, and assessing. These activities can be supported in a computerized gaming simulation to achieve cost-effective learning by doing, to study strategic processes, and to assess business education. Computerized gaming simulations give objective scores and can be comprehensive, flexible, and easy to administer They should game pedagogically important processes and model pedagogically incidental ones. DEAL is a computerized business gaming simulation designed to test the concept of gaming all markets (resources, products, money, and interpersonal relationships) in a multi-industry setting. Instructor configurable, network cognizant, and activity driven, it includes five instructor-configurable industries and seven participant-selectable roles. Being computer assisted, DEAL is generally very different from other computerized entrepreneurship gaming simulations, which are either computer based or computer controlled. DEAL incorporates all four core entrepreneurship activities and reveals the developmental stages of emerging organizations. DEAL resolves with computer assistance problems of participant antagonisms and conspiracies. A gaming simulation should be evaluated on the extent it games defining processes with administrative ease. Gaming simulations should have greater value in assessing entrepreneurship education than in facilitating it.

The authors apply the research profiling method to review all the research that has been published in Simulation & Gaming since the journal’s inauguration in 1970. The data include 2,096 articles, of which 1,046 are research articles. The authors identify the prolific authors and their institutional affiliations. They tally referenced articles, title phrases, and descriptors. They find that the most prolific authors neither engage in more work division nor author more conventional thinking articles than less prolific authors and that the 51 prolific authors fall into 7 to 11 clusters.

Pedagogically and administratively critical to computerized gaming simulations, the treatment of time can differ along three dimensions: scale, synchronization, and drive. Time can be fixed or flexibly scaled, synchronized or unsynchronized among participants, and driven either by the administrator, the participants, the clock, or the level of activity. Fixed scaling is more easily programmed; flexible scaling gives participants more freedom. Synchronization coerces participants unnaturally, but assures that mindless activity is not rewarded. Administrator-driven time is administratively burdensome, participant-driven time is difficult to code when decisions among participants are interdependent, and clock-driven time is inherently inadaptable to an irregular schedule. Activity-driven time can involve counting either decisions or accesses. Counting decisions encourages the churning of decisions; counting accesses encourages revolving access and collusive access, and can give rise to in adaptive pacing. Solutions to these problems and an application are discussed. Activity-driven time can enable gaming simulations to run for many periods without imposing excessive demands on either administrators or participants, and without engendering boredom. A symbiotic relationship may develop between gaming simulations and the study of temporal issues in management.

Objective scoring, comprehensiveness, flexibility, and ease of administration are characteristics of computerized top-management gaming simulations (CTMGS) that suit them for the assessment of management education. These characteristics may be substantially enhanced by the inclusion of real markets. Support for real markets can be supplied by microcomputer local-area networks (LAN) and LAN-cognizant software. Additional advantages of real markets include relief to problems of team forming, decision cycling, hand-holding, end gaming, assignment evaluating, and debriefing. Three gaming simulations that incorporate real markets have been used in undergraduate courses. A great variety is possible in CTMGSs with real markets. The scores of CTMGSs with real markets are valid to the extent the markets appropriately reward business competencies.