Designer's Notes

Most of the Euro games currently available are designed for 4 to 6 players. As a gamer myself, I have experienced many occasions where large gaming groups had to be split into smaller groups, with the consequence that each group had less than the ideal number of players.

I designed 'Dividends' to fill this void- a game that is able to accommodate up to 12 players, yet retain the satisfaction of a game with more depth than what a 'party game' might have to offer. In fact, the game is more exciting with more players as the supply and demand dynamics become more pronounced, and the level of stock trading activity is much higher.

'Dividends' serves to simulate, in a fun and interactive way, the following concepts that are present in the real world of financial investments:

• Supply and demand
• income stream (dividends) versus once-off realized profits (capital gains)
• first mover advantage versus follow-on herd mentality
• cost of subscribing for financial information or investment research tools in order to achieve first mover advantage
• exercising of stock holders' voting rights
• peaks and troughs of a company's business cycle
• unpredictable nature of the stock market
• concentrated high risk/high return investment strategy versus holding of a diversified portfolio

'Dividends' is designed with both advanced and new gamers in mind. Game play is simple enough for beginners to pick up without much difficulty, yet at the same time, there are opportunities for more experienced gamers to exercise strategies while managing the cost and risk elements in the game.

As in the real world of stock investing, no one person can ever consistently predict what will happen next in the stock market. So too in 'Dividends', players will have to manage the fluctuations, take calculated risks and hedge their investments as best as they can. Again as in the real world of stock market investing, players will have to constantly re-evaluate the market situation, and re-adapt their investment and risk minimizing strategies along the way.


Game Objective

The aim of 'Dividends' is to make as much money as possible within the 5 game years while managing the costs & risks in the game. There are two ways of making money- either through earning good dividend payout, or through buying cheap stocks with the aim of selling them off later at higher prices for capital gains.


Game Mechanics

This section briefly explains the logic behind some of the elements of the game design:

(a) Roll Dice to Set Dividend Payout

How much money a company pays out as dividends is dependent on the company's profitability in the last operating year. Initially during game development, I made each company's profitability dependent on its own business success (or lack thereof), but this lengthened the game considerably to almost 4 hours! Hence in order not to excessively complicate the game, and to keep playing time to around 60 minutes, I abstracted this part of the game down to die rolling to reflect each company's profitability change relative to that in its prior year.

(b) Bid for Player Turn Order

This part of the game represents how much money an investor is willing to spend in order to obtain fresh financial information. In the real world, this would be represented by investors subscribing to the Bloomberg or Dow Jones financial news, or to online stock market financial research tools. The underlying idea is that an investor who pays for 'fresh' financial information is better able to exercise first-mover advantage so as to take up good equity positions before the rest of the crowd moves in.

(c) Event Tile

This part of the game represents the unpredictability inherent in the stock market. Investors in the real world normally diversify their investments rather than place them all in one basket for fear of a single loss wiping out their entire holdings. So too in 'Dividends', it may be tempting to jump in with the crowd to buy the high dividend paying hot stocks. However, the 'Technical Correction' Event Tile represents the situation when prices run too far ahead of fundamental underlying value. When this happens, the 'bubble' of euphoria bursts, resulting in quick sell-offs and nose-diving of stock prices as investors bail out.

The 4 Event Tiles were designed to introduce the over-sold and bargain hunting situations in the stock market, which as exaggerated in this game, may result in a change of major shareholders.


I hope you will enjoy playing the game as much as I have enjoyed creating it.

Dr Nikki Lim
nikki-lim@funfactorygames.biz
2005 June 18th