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Management is a business simulation board game released by the Avalon Hill game company in 1960. [1]
Management is a board game for two to four players that simulates business management practices of a generic manufacturing company. [2] It was originally designed as a family game, but as The Urbanite Magazine noted in 2009, it was "used for years in many college-level business courses." [3]
In the basic family game published in 1960, players each operate a manufacturing company: purchasing supplies, determining production volume, setting sale prices, and expanding factories. Turns are measured in business cycles. Players compete with each other by secretly bidding to purchase limited raw materials, and then secretly pricing their finished product, hoping to be the lowest priced supplier. [4] The winner is the person at the end of the game with the largest company.
In 1973, the revised edition added three new layers of complexity:
The game comes with these components:
Charles S. Roberts founded Avalon Game Company (later Avalon Hill) in 1952 to publish his military strategy game Tactics . Sales were strong enough by 1959 that Roberts moved into an office space and produced a number of non-military games, Management in 1960 being one of these. In a 2009 interview, Roberts said of all the games he designed at this time, he was the most proud of Management. [3] [6]
The first edition was released in 1960 in a 14.25" x 11.25" x 1.50" flat box, the re-released the following year in a marginally larger 14.38" x 11.25" x 1.50" flat box. [7]
The first issue of The General noted that Management "has found considerable favor with professional administrators. We have learned that this game has been used in various management courses." [8]
When the game was discontinued Avalon Hill claims it received "a flood of protests {...} from irate educators." [9] After several years of not being available, the company released a new version of the game in 1973 retitled Business Strategy, with revised rules designed by Tom Shaw. The game was packaged in Avalon Hill's then-standard 11.5" x 8.25" x 2" "bookcase" box. However, as noted in a company history of Avalon Hill, "This version sold no better than its predecessor." [10]
In the book Teaching Data Analytics: Pedagogy and Program Design, Professor Stephen Penn (Harrisburg University of Science and Technology) commented "The game I've played the most [in class] is Avalon Hill's Business Strategy." Penn noted that, "I've played the game several times where each player was converted to teams of four to six students" and pointed out that "One game may typically take several hours to play with a minimal number of players. Increasing the number of positions and the number of individuals per position and the amount of times increases drastically. With everything considered, completion of the game is always secondary to learning." Penn then went on to outline in detail how he used the game in class, and what classroom resources he used to assist him. [11]
Acquire is a multi-player mergers and acquisitions themed board game. It is played with tiles representing hotels that are arranged on the board, play money and stock certificates. The object of the game is to earn the most money by developing and merging hotel chains. When a chain in which a player owns stock is acquired by a larger chain, players earn money based on the size of the acquired chain. At the end of the game, all players liquidate their stock in order to determine which player has the most money. It was one of the most popular games in the 1960s 3M bookshelf game series, and the only one still published in the United States.
Richard Channing Garfield is an American mathematician, inventor, and game designer. Garfield created Magic: The Gathering, which is considered to be the first modern collectible card game (CCG). Magic debuted in 1993 and its success spawned many imitations. Garfield oversaw the successful growth of Magic and followed it with other game designs. Included in these are Keyforge, Netrunner, BattleTech(CCG), Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Star Wars Trading Card Game, The Great Dalmuti, Artifact, and the board game RoboRally. He also created a variation of the card game Hearts called Complex Hearts. Garfield first became passionate about games when he played the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, so he designed Magic decks to be customizable like roleplaying characters. Garfield and Magic are both in the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame.
Avalon Hill Games Inc. is a game company that specializes in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contains its initials "AH", and the company is now often referred to by this abbreviation. Before its takeover by Hasbro, it was known as The Avalon Hill Game Company and the initials TAHGC. It has also published miniature wargaming rules, role-playing games and sports simulations. It is now a subsidiary of the game company Wizards of the Coast, which is itself a subsidiary of Hasbro.
Civilization is a board game designed by Francis Tresham, published in the United Kingdom in 1980 by Hartland Trefoil, and in the US in 1981 by Avalon Hill. The Civilization brand is now owned by Hasbro. It was out of print for many years, before Gibsons Games republished it in 2018.
Charles Swann Roberts was a wargame designer, railroad historian, and businessman. He is renowned as "The Father of Board Wargaming", having created the first modern wargame in 1952, and the first wargaming company in 1954. He is also the author of a series of books on railroad history, published by the small publishing firm, Barnard, Roberts, and Company, Inc.
PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame of armoured combat set in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. The game is notable for being the first true board-based tactical-level, commercially available conflict simulation (wargame). It also pioneered concepts such as isomorphic mapboards and open-ended design, in which multiple unit counters were provided from which players could fashion their own free-form combat situations rather than simply replaying pre-structured scenarios.
Battle Cry is a board wargame based on the American Civil War, designed by Richard Borg and published by Avalon Hill in 2000.
Bowl Bound was a board game originally marketed in 1973 by Time Inc., owner of Sports Illustrated Magazine. It was part of a line of sports games sold under the SI umbrella. In 1978, rights to the games and time-limited use of the "Sports Illustrated Game" banner were sold to Baltimore-based Avalon Hill.
Tactics is a board wargame published in 1954. Primitive by modern standards, it was nonetheless the birth of modern wargaming for the commercial market, and generally credited as being the first commercially successful printed wargame.
1830: The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons is a railroad operations and share trading board game first published by Avalon Hill in 1986 based on an original design by Francis Tresham. The popularity of 1830 spawned an industry creating similar "18XX" games. 1830 was republished in 2011 through a partnership of Mayfair Games and Lookout Games.
Dune is a strategy board game set in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, published by Avalon Hill in 1979. The game was designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka.
Gettysburg is a board wargame produced by Avalon Hill which re-enacts the American Civil War battle of Gettysburg.
Incunabula is a 1984 computer game by Avalon Hill. It was designed by Steve Estvanik. It is the original computerized version of Avalon Hill's Civilization board game. It was eclipsed by Sid Meier's much more successful Civilization, and its following series, released in 1991.
Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy video games, first released in 1991. Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the rest, and his name is usually included in the formal title of these games, such as Sid Meier's Civilization. There are six main games in the series, a number of expansion packs and spin-off games, as well as board games inspired by the video game series. The series is considered a formulative example of the 4X genre, in which players achieve victory through four routes: "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate".
The 3M bookshelf game series is a set of classic and original strategy and economic games published in the 1960s and early 1970s by 3M Corporation. The games were packaged in leatherette-look large hardback book size boxes in contrast to the prevalent wide flat game boxes. The series grew to encompass almost three dozen games. Most were multi-player board games or card games; a few were trivia games or 2-handed board games. 'Acquire' and 'TwixT' were among the best known and most popular titles. The series later became part of the Avalon Hill Bookcase games. Very few of these games are still being published.
A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The modern, commercial wargaming hobby developed in 1954 following the publication and commercial success of Tactics. The board wargaming hobby continues to enjoy a sizeable following, with a number of game publishers and gaming conventions dedicated to the hobby both in the English-speaking world and further afield.
Mark Simonitch is an American wargame designer and graphic artist. His game designs include Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage and Ardennes '44, and he has made maps for Wilderness War and Empire of the Sun among others. He has worked at Avalon Hill and GMT Games. He was inducted into the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame in 2002.
Hexagony is an abstract strategy board game for 2 to 6 players that was published as Bin'Fa by Taoist Arts Inc. in 1977, as Hexagony by Avalon Hill in 1980, and later re-released in a slightly modified form by Kenterprises as Bin'Fa.
Operation Crusader is a 1994 computer wargame developed by Atomic Games and published by Avalon Hill.
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