Happy New Year, everyone. What better way there is to start the year with a game.
Today, the game “Brave New Team” is launched in a public beta. Go ahead and play it in your browser.
The game's objective is to assemble teams of five (out of nine) to solve problems (that’s 126 possible combinations to assemble the team). You will base your decision on the team member’s traits (ability, attitude) to ensure a good fit with the problem’s requirements. You have to decide under time pressure and within a given budget. In total, there are ten problems to be solved. For each successful solution, you pay for the cost of the team and get rewarded. If you fail, you pay for the team. If the problem is too hard to solve, you can either pass or train your team members - the former is free, the latter comes at a cost.
The game is inspired by Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, a book by Michael Lewis, published in 2003, about the Oakland Athletics baseball team. The book’s focus is the team's analytical, evidence-based approach to assembling a competitive baseball team despite Oakland's small budget.
Below is a short video to illustrate some of the gameplay elements.
Ultimately, the idea is to illustrate the superiority of an algorithm (a “robot”) to assemble teams. The value created by the machine is usually about twice as high as that of a human team assembler. So, how close can you get to “robot mode”?
And please provide feedback. This will help us fix bugs and improve the experience of the next version. Thank you!