Restaurant
Bigwig for the iPad is a business strategy Serious Game
that uses real industry data to simulate the excitement and realism of owning
and running your own restaurant.
Serial entrepreneur and real-life business
guru Gary Hoover (who founded Hoover’s, sold to Dun and Bradstreet, and
Bookstop, sold to Barnes & Noble) and the team at Bigwig Games have
delivered a unique and compelling Serious Game that is fun to play, while gaining
an understanding of the restaurant industry, how it works and how it makes
money.
According to the website, Restaurant Bigwig
shall be the first in a series of Bigwig Games, each based on actual industry
data and dynamics.
Setting up the game: players can compete against other players or up to
4 bots
In the game, players can choose their own
strategy: serve their favorite cuisines, from Asian or Mexican food to Steaks
and Burgers; open new restaurants quickly, or open them slowly and invest in
your older restaurants; improve the food quality at one of the flagging
restaurants, or put energy into controlling costs by making high revenue
restaurants more efficient.
Check out the annual newspaper for important news about your restaurants and those of your competitors. Will you win the best restaurant award from Restaurant Times?
Competitors’ Data
The goal is to achieve the most profit you can
by the 20th year of your restaurant empire.
About Bigwig Games
Bigwig
Games, based in Austin, Texas, is the brainstorm of Gary Hoover, chief game
designer and company CEO.
Gary has been a lifelong student of industries
and started making board games to play with his friends by the age of 12. These
games were board games that required a lot of bookkeeping and calculations,
diluting the fun. When computers came along, the idea of digital versions of
his games went on his business idea list. Over the next 50 years, that list
expanded to over 300 ideas.
In the 1980s, Hoover first hit it big by
starting Austin-based book retailer Bookstop. The company grew to operate in
Louisiana, Florida and California before it was bought in 1989 by New
York-based Barnes & Noble Inc. for $41.5 million. A year later he
started Hoovers Inc., his most successful business yet. The business
information provider was acquired by Dunn and Bradstreet in 2002 for
about $117 million.
In 2012, Gary and longtime startup associate
Alan Chai formed the board of directors of a new company, which soon became
Bigwig Games. Their goal is to model every industry they can think of and turn
them into exciting business/economic Serious Games, all using real industry
and economy data.