Become A Tech Titan In Smartphone Inc.
October 9, 2018 by cassn
Have you ever looked at Steve Jobs and thought to yourself 'I would wear that turtleneck better'? Good news, friend. No longer do you have to give TED Talks in your living room to your dog because, in Smartphone Inc., you can become the capitalist icon of your dreams.
As the CEO of a huge smartphone-producing corporation, your goal is to outsmart your competitors and to dominate globally in this lucrative business sector. Develop a cutting-edge technology, grow your business, set up new offices around the world, scale up production sites. Choose your strategy well! Only one will keep the market under control.
In Smartphone Inc., each game takes place over five rounds, with each round being divided into eight separate phases - planning, pricing, production, development, research, expansion, selling and profit.
Each player is provided with two player pads. These pads show players resources, their research and development departments, production and shops.
The player will configure their pad, along with any development cards they have, to make a 'decision' in the planning phase. This decision then informs what actions will be taken in the rest of the phases.
- In the Pricing phase, players price their product. A lower price will encourage more sales, but a higher price may yield more profit.
- In the Production phase, smartphones are produced.
- In the Development phase, players may take a development card for use in future rounds.
- In the Research phase, players use their research points (based on their planning decision) to discover new technology which will aid their company. There are six technologies to discover, and each comes with two different 'powers' to unlock.
- In the Expansion phase, players can use their expansion points to open sales offices in new regions.
- In the Sales phase, players can sell their phones in their controlled regions. However, each region has limited sales capability, and a rival company selling at a lower price may swipe your target consumers.
- Finally, in the Profit phase, income is gathered and tallied from smartphone profits and regional. control.
I love a good competitive game, but I'm so sick of games with capitalism as a base for their central mechanism. Build the thing, sell the thing, make the money, win the game; it has become a common narrative. And in my games, much like in my life, I believe there has to be more than this. But, then again, I have a socialist soul, so my bias is showing.
For those capitalist pig dogs, ahem...I mean budding entrepreneurs, who are interested in building their own Smartphone Inc. empire, pre-order is available until October 16th. The game will be available at Essen, and ready for widespread release in November 2018.
Do you have a favourite entrepreneur-style game? Let us know us below!
"Outsmart your competitors and to dominate globally in this lucrative business sector!"
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"Develop a cutting-edge technology, grow your business, set up new offices around the world, scale up production sites."
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Can I be blunt… Have we reached the bottom of the Apple barrel with games like this? It seems that they will make a game about anything these days and hope it sells, I play tabletop games to get away from smartphones (he says typing in a smart phone). This even make Eurotruck Simulator sound like fun.
I think this sounds kinda neat – it’s pretty much the same as building all manner of businesses in board game form just with the finish of a smartphone company. The actual layout and design looks swish and it could be a lot of fun I reckon.
…also, truck games are awesome and you should feel bad.
Gaslands with Trucks is awesome…that’s as far as I will conceed ?
Euro Truck Simulator is a wonderful, relaxing gaming experience. Who wouldn’t enjoy road tripping through Europe even if the experience wasn’t gamified?!
Running a smartphone company on the other hand…zzzzz
Truck drivers had exactly the same complaint about Truck Simulator, Train Drivers about Ticket to Ride 😉
Lol… Well maybe I should create a game about Information Architecture building or even better GDPR… I could lose a fortune on development and production and sell nothing…??
If you’d released that a year ago you would have made a fortune mate 😉
It’s why I am still not a multimillionaire I keep missing out on these golden eggs ?
We should team up for ‘Y2K III’ 😉
Where do I sign up ?
This looks and sound interesting and I don’t mind beeing a capitalistic pig dog in a board game afterall it’s not as bad as beeing an evil Overlord 😉
The hipster made my teeth itch! 😀
*FART* not into it
Such business games help to understand how entrepreneurship actually works but of course only in general. To know more about business, consulting, marketing I advise to take a look at the article about salesforce junior administrator salary. I bet you’ll find it interesting.