The team from GoVenture World will have five minutes on Sept. 23 to explain a massive project that they have been working on since 2006.
But if Mathew Georghiou and Bill Faulkner can build an online game that could change the face of entrepreneurship training, they should be able to figure out how to describe it in the 300 seconds allotted to them by DemoCamp Halifax.
GoVenture World is a massively multi-player online game that will train budding entrepreneurs in what it’s really like to start and grow your own business. First conceived of six years ago, GoVenture World will not be a game with comic-book-like graphics that requires you to sit at your computer for 14 hours a day. Rather, it simulates as much as possible what it’s like to be a real entrepreneur.
The objective of the game is to build a successful business, defined by such factors as revenue, profitability, market share, brand value and stock price. Players – who could number thousands or millions around the world –must compete with businesses for resources and market share, while collaborating with other businesses to manufacture, acquire, and sell products or services.
“This is such a deep project that it’s a little difficult to discuss,” Georghiou said in an interview. “It’s a very complicated product. There are a lot of interconnected pieces and we don’t think anyone has done anything like this before.”
The company is now doing what Georghiou calls “pre-alpha-testing”, meaning it will soon go through the game in-house to work out the last few kinks the team knows of. The beta-testing should begin this autumn.
The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of MediaSpark of Sydney, whose main business is producing GoVenture training software that educates youth and adults through simulations, social features and gaming.
Georghiou, who may miss DemoCamp and leave the presentation to Faulkner, said the GoVenture World roll-out will start with MediaSpark contacting the 30,000 people it now markets to. It may also advertise the product.
MediaSpark launched a new wellness eBook in July called GoVenture Health, and Georghiou said it sold well through a promotional period in August. The gamified eBook is designed to teach wellness to a broad range of people, including students as young as age 10.