Big Board Raiders blog

This game is intended to have fun teaching kids/teens about money, thru play, before they have to do it for real. I want to point them in the direction where they can begin to see what money is about. Too many people lose more than they can afford early in their lives and spend years in recovery mode. This is not encouraging people to invest, it is for understanding and fun. If nothing else, maybe the conclusion they come to is that it is not for them, but it won’t screw-up their future to find out.

I want to tell you about the new kid on the block which is a board game that was 36 years in the making. A great deal of thought has gone into this game to make it realistic but simple to understand for everyone. I didn’t work on it all that time. I developed it, copyrighted it and submitted it to Parker Brothers, who rejected it because they said the market category was too fragmented, but that was maketing jargon for the business cycle isn’t favorable right now. That was in 1974, which was at the bottom of the deepest depression, we had since the 1930 depression. Nobody was interested in the stock market. So I put it on the shelf and got on with my life, but it was always in the back of my mind. I creeated it when I was 25 years old, and while I had the theory approximately right, I had no experience to draw from. After rattliing around in an extended do loop for 30 years and getting spanked by the market many times, a few things that were not quite right hit me one day. It then became obvious what was needed to complete the picture. This game is not only faithful to trading in market securites but also the economic principles of supply/demand relationships and risk/reward relationships but kids can underastand it.

The challenge always has been to make the game mimic real life, but be simple so kids could understand it. My challenge now is to get people to see that it is presented so that it is easily understood, even if they perceive markets to be a thing to be feared because it is not something they understand. That is why we introduce players to the game with the Level system. Players can play this game on a simple level with their kids or among friends, like the many forms of monopoly, and they will enjoy it. If you know finance or you are a hard core gamer and want to have a real strategy game with some buddies, here you go. This is war and money is your weapon of choice, backstabbing is also a good strategy, some misdirection helps too, and you will need to use your mouth to play with the big boys.

The game is called Big Board Raiders, for grades 5 and up, but targeted at teens and up. It has Eurogame features, the one I like is that nobody is eliminated and it is a monopoly clone in play style, because everyone on the planet has played monopoly and nobody is intimidated by that play style. That knowledge is our starting point. We use the same “roll and move” mechanics of a traditional board game which is ideal for a family board game. This is the next logical step up after monopoly games (Google bait again, sorry).

Sorry to the people, these last two sentences where for your benefit, but the contrived deliver was for the benefit of Google Rankings, so just like at Walmart, we’re sorry about that.

You may be wondering what the name Big Board Raiders is all about. Today, the “Big Board” is like a nickname for Wall Street while “Raiders” are the teams of entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants, brokers and investment bankers who engaged in hostile takeovers of the companies they pursue. In the days before electronic trading, the “Big Board” was the name for the huge chalkboards that lined the walls of all the small regional stock exchanges around the country. There were walkways above the trading floor that guys used to access these chalkboards to record the trades the floor traders would yell out to them. Each member of the stock exchange had a number, so the board would show the bid and ask as well as the brokerage firms by number on the bid and on the ask. That’s how traders knew who was buying and who was selling.

In 1974, I copyrighted the name  “Big Board” for this game, and in 1978 the New York Stock Exchange (which is also their trademark) trademarked the name “Big Board”. In 2006 I applied for a trademark for “Big Board Raiders”, but the NYSE (which is also their trademark) is opposing my application because they say the public might be confused that there is an affiliation.

I do know better than to tangle with a giant. But I do get to say it here by copyright.

What I have to say about exchanges isn’t really good. It is a club of really rich members, who give themselves and their friends an unfair preference. The banks and hedge funds are allowed a blank cheque in regard to naked shorting, which is the equivalent of selling bogus electronic shares. History will show this to have been a contributing factor in their failures. Many people spoke up about it, but nobody would listen. In the video where Warren Buffet is speaking to Charlie Rich about the October 08 meltdown, he said “it was too easy to write on little pieces of paper” but what he was talking about was the derivative problem a large insurance company was having, they were doing the nasty, and now they want to be saved.

Kevin O’Leary, of “CBC’s Dragon’s Den” and host of “Squeeze Play” on the Business News Network, was talking about Big Board Raiders and said on national TV “Every kid should learn about corporate takeovers”, “This is a very realistic game” and “This game is just like real life”. Thank you Kevin for your unsolicated comments. He prides himself on telling the truth whether you like it or not and you can trust his judgement, millions do already.

Kevin in 1999, sold his game company called the Learning Company, (after it exercised takeovers on 36 or so other game companies) to Matel for 3.8 billion dollars, the largest tech deal in Canadian history to that date.

The first thing I want to say is that I was motivated by the fact that there were no games about money that were fun to play and would teach math skills and that were oriented to be inclusive for all players regardless of age or sophistication for the entire game. It was designed to be fun first and whatever else it is just happened. Talk, deal making, alliances and misdirection are all enhancements to your portfolio and there is no violence or shoot ‘em up stuff. Just money handling skills and practical math for kids. Plus, when you understand the rules of Big Board Raiders you also are on you way to understanding the trading rules of theToronto and New York stock exchanges.

As well as improving math skills, it is designed to teach kids, teens and adults about the mechanics of corporations, how ownership is traded and how you or your group could possibly takeover the control of one of these trading entities. It is a game relevant for our time. The world is consolidating into mega corporations.
The game is introduced in levels, of which there are 6 levels, each representing another way to invest your money and another way to enhance your ability to win the game. Beginners can play at level 1 right to the end along side players playing the full meal deal. In this game nobody is eliminated like in monopoly, everyone is in it until the last roll when a winning condition ends the game for the winner. It builds in intensity as each players money and power grows until someone wins, by taking control of their corporation.

When I was a kid, I was always doing something to earn money and I wanted someone to teach me about money, but my parents didn’t have the education to know. So eventually I learned from going to university and from the school of hard knocks. I am still learning, but that route has cost me in many ways, not just in a monetary way, it has cost friends, relationships and not to mention the self inflicted assault on my self esteem. Loosing money is something you never forget.

We need to teach our kids about money, because it is one of the things we all have in common and we all use it everyday. We all will have our brush with the markets, whether it is through a pension plan where we work, or the assets we own, or even whether the company we work for will still be in business. Somehow it always comes around and bite us if we think we are immune. This is pretty self evident in the last few months of 2008. Fortunately, with a bit of understanding of market mechanics, we can avoid much of the hurt.

Math may be boring to kids, but I have never met a kid that was bored about money. This is math on steroids, nicely disguised, but don’t tell them. In big board raiders math is made to be fun so that kids can see an application that effects them.

There is another side to this story, and that is that when stock markets crash and the price of stocks become very cheap, the takeover guys come out of the woodwork. You know the old saying, “the rich get richer”.

But now there is an added twist, western economies have been exchanging their freshly printed money for goods built with cheap labor. Now those IOU’s, also called dollars, are going to be called in, and the economies that did that are going to say goodbye to their best assets. This may be a turning point in economic history where power is shifted away from the USA and Britian. As well, foreign companies are scooping up our best companies for next to nothing. The control of our resources is going elsewhere and our jobs, our livelihoods are in the control of foreign companies who don’t really care about what happens in the neighborhoods where we live. In the past, when foreigners wanted the resources of another country, they waged war and took what they wanted. Today, without firing a shot, they are taking our best and leaving us with the stuff that is marginal. If companies can become global in governance that might not matter.

God I ramble on.

Big Board Raiders is mechanically like a war game in that respect, except that like today, the weapon is money, power and control.

We hope some of you little tycoons takes this material to heart. Take back the resources we lost.

Technorati Tags: adult board game, adult board games, monopoly games, traditional board games

Why should we play a family board game?

Primarily, I think that a parent’s job is to shield our children from all the violence and misery in the media. At the same time, we must also prepare them for the way things are in the real world, like choosing a career and getting an education, how money works, what to eat or not to eat, a sense of morality, communication and coping skills and many other realities in the passage through childhood.
Board games allow players to socialize, communicate, bargain, practice and interact emotionally in a safe place. Where as electronic games pull solitary players into a virtual world of often questionable material that is a tactile form of communication with a machine and that is not a substitute for human emotional contact, and may even be at odds with emotional contact.

On another note, the dungeons and dragons thing with their wizards and magic is a little to out there. I have noticed though, unofficial as it is, that D&D types do get into  Big Board Raiders. Reality really isn’t that bad.
In October of 2005, a Noble prize was awarded in Economic Sciences for “understanding conflict and cooperation through the lens of game theory”.
It basically said that people, families and countries that communicate often or just play together, have less conflict, are more prosperous, have more order in their lives and resolve differences eventually. The most important applications of game theory are to be found in such vital issues as security and disarmament policies, price formation on markets, labor negotiations as well as economic and political negotiations.
An example was the talks brokered by President Carter in the late 1970s  between Isreal and Egypt. While other Arab countries around Isreal stopped communicating, eventually peace between Isreal and Egypt was found through repeated interaction. Even when parties have nothing in common or dislike each other, repeated interactions like playing together brings cooperation, harmony and understanding.

These next two sentences are contrived for Google to rank this page, because the tags mentioned are supposely in context. Sorry about that.

Playing family board games is supposed to be fun, not the stuff of Nobel prizes, but I thought it was an interesting footnote, for those of us who do play fun family games and even adult board games.

Playing traditional board games takes us back to a simpler time when we all started with a game of monopoly and discovered this wonderful pasttime. 

The Prize in Economic Sciences 2005 • The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences • www.kva.se

Technorati Tags: adult board game, adult board games, family board game, monopoly games, traditional board games

These are not my words, but they are good words and I feel worth repeating.

Try to be patient: When playing these board games with your child or teen, play at their level. Take it slowly, be patient, play as many warm-up games as is needed, read and explain the rules, make sure everyone has a turn and doesn’t feel rushed. Nurture and assist your child or teen when they seem to be having trouble understanding the game. Try not to let your own desire to win take over the game! 

Make it fun: You don’t have to finish a game if your child or teen is frustrated, tired or bored – try it again in a few days. Lead by example, play fairly and with a sense of humour. Make it all about sharing the experience – not just winning – yet be competitive at the same time.

Make time: Set aside some TV and computer-free family time and play these board games regularly. It’s a great way for family members to interact with each other, plus you’ll find you really get to talk and listen to what’s really going on in your child or teen’s life.

Technorati Tags: family board game, monopoly games, traditional board games, \

When the subject of money is being discussed, they are right there like spounges soaking it up. I know because I was one of them, but my parents didn’t take the time to teach me about money. Today lots of parents still don’t teach their kids enough about money, and yet our kids will all deal with money every day of their lives and what they know will directly influence their lifestyle. This game is for parents to encourage those little finance prodigies. For Grade 5 and up.

The world is changing to where the cash in your hand is the crumbs from the table, while the banquet is inside the corporations.  Recently it was stated that as much as 98% of US dollars are moved electronically, leaving 2% for the cash in your hands.

Big Board Raiders was created because there were no games about money that were fun to play or relavent. Players use the same investments and the same theory as the real exchanges. Big Board Raiders gives you a realistic environment to learn about the trading of securities, the structure and strategy to control companies. Kevin O’Leary, our newest best friend, of TV fame on the hit shows “Dragons Den”  and BNN’s “Sqeeze Play” saw it right away, he lives this life of takeovers and money deals for real.

Markets are made from the accumulated decisions of humans who are motivated by two basic emotions, fear and greed. These are human traits that go back to the stone age but computers have not yet figured them out. Because of this, Big Board Raiders works best as a board game wherein the players make the market that exists within the game through their decisions to buy or sell, as they bring their personalities to interact with each other and champion their deals. Talk and deal making are a very big part of the game.

It seems that each generation somehow thinks they are smarter than the previous ones, but when it comes to greed and fear, the behaviour has been the same for as long as we have been recording markets. Markets are the record of human behaiour throughout history. One of these early busts was to do with tulips, in 1637 a tulip bulb was bid up to several years wages, actually 2,500 florins, a lot of money in 1637. Then there was a busted bubble called the South Sea Bubble in 1720. Dubbed the “Enron of England”, the South Sea Bubble was one of history’s worst financial bubbles. it got so bad that the royal familiy had to be forgiven their debts by parliament because they were so greedy. In recent memory we had the dot com bubble and before that the railroad bubble after the civil war, the radio bubble before the great depression and today we have a 20 trillion dollar housing bubble. But you know we are smarter than those that came before us and I have a bridge for sale that is still in fairly good shape. No really I do!

We always look back and say “what was wrong with their heads, were they totally clueless”?

Technorati Tags: adult board games, family board game, monopoly games, traditional board games

The frenzy in the takeover of companies is a part of the global consolidation that has become a part of every economy, regardless of nationality. There are many people with a lot of dough who cashed in on this recent phenomenon. I am not one of them, I am more like a sports broadcaster, never played but claim to know how. For me, I began to watch as a commerce student, in the 1970’s when a Texan named T. Boone Pickens and his nemesis Carl Icahn had takeover battles of legend for the major oil companies of America. In Canada, there were guys like Jimmy Pattison in the west and Gerry Shwartz in the east and many others. When stock markets are in the tank, the takeover guys get more bang for their buck where bang means ownership. This is a game that is an accurate model of economic principles of supply versus demand, the trading in stock markets, some basic derivatives of debt and equity and the mechanics of corporate control. Everything you need to play at being one of the movers and shakers. The currency is very real, just to bring out the larcony in all of us. The game has common shares, directorships with annual salaries, preferred shares with annual dividends, bonds and debentures with annual interest, put and call options with expiry dates, rights offerings and stock promotion. Time is built into the game. As well, you can play the long side of the market or the short side with margin accounts where you get a feel for leverage, credit and margin calls. Do you think we forget inflation; no we got that too. It is both entertaining and educational. Big Board Raiders plays like a war game, but the weapon here is money, your mouth and maybe a little back stabbing when the time is right. When you know how to play Big Board Raiders, you also understand some North American money theory.

My 10 year old daughter and beautiful spokes model, setup the game and showed the three dragons how the basics worked, without any help, on the CBC reality TV program Dragon’s Den. She was in grade 4 at the time.

The game may sound complicated at first, but you will just use your common sense to put together the concepts of how corporate money works. One simple idea on top of another. Play the DVD, I’ll walk you through the basics of how it works with voice and graphics. This game is meant for your entertainment and the opinions expressed are not financial advice in any form.

Technorati Tags: adult board games, family board game, monopoly games, traditional board games