Mr Bunnys Internet Startup Game

MrBunny author Carlton Egremont III and Java guru Patrick Chan teamed up to produce Mr. Bunny's Internet Startup Game (ISBN 0201657813 )

Players start with $10 Million, and try to purchase and debug software packages containing at least 20 feature points. Each software package, when purchased, has a number of bugs equal to its number of feature points. So, you need to hire programmers to debug your software. Packages and Programmers are both drawn from a deck of cards, and then bid on by both players.

The tricky part is that each software package has a specific type, and only programmers with expertise in that area can work on the package. Also, programmers have different abilities, measured in this case by how many bugs they can remove per day. Good programmers (ability > 1) only work in teams. Teams with multiple areas of expertise can fix bugs in any of the teams areas of expertise. The trick is to combine the teams so you get the bug fixing abilities of the best programmer (a "Step Team"), instead of the worst programmer (a "Training Team").

You can only hire as many programmers as you have packages. If you want to hire another one, you have to give one of your existing programmers $100,000 in severance, and turn him loose. At this point your opponent is free to snatch him up for a flat $100,000, so be careful who you lay off!

In addition to package and programmer cards, you will sometimes draw e-mail cards. These are usually bug-reports, such as "4-digit dates are not Y10K compliant", which add bugs to certain type of packages in your possession. Also possible is a "disk crash" e-mail, which restores your most completed package to its original fully buggy state. And "bad day" e-mail (out of coffee) where your programmers add (instead of subtract) a number of bugs equal to their ability to whatever package they are working on. (And I think we've all had days like that. :-)

--JohnBrewer

Even though the game is for two-players, it can be played by teams against each other. Lot of fun! --PeterGassmann

CategoryGame