MacTykoon is an economic game in which one tries to make purchasing and pricing decisions in an effort to make a profit. It is single player and does not require fast reflexes.
Tykoon simulates a business firm. Your goal is find a combination of labor, capital, and price which results in a profit. Understanding a bit of economic theory helps a lot in achieving this goal, which is probably inevitable because the program was originally developed as an instructional tool.
Tykoon is a simulation of the sort of firm which exists in economics textbooks, which means that many of the real-world decisions a real firm must make do not exist.
The firm in the simulation is a monopoly with fixed production function and demand curve. You make three main decisions: hire labor, hire capital, and set price. Output is determined by your hiring, and the amount you sell by your price. You can also purchase information about productivity which will help you if you know what to do with it. The information you purchase contains marginal productivity data.
When you have done as well as you can with a firm, you can sell it. If you are making a profit, your score will be increased by an amount which depends on how close you come to the solution. You can then start with a new firm with new parameters. As the score increases, the difficulty in finding a profit also increases. A score of 100 should indicate either incredible luck or an understanding of the fundamentals of the economic theory of the firm.
It is always possible to make a profit. When the program sets up a firm, it randomly generates the production function and demand curve, and then checks to see if a profit is possible. If it is not, it adjusts its parameters until one is possible. You can discover the best solution by selling out or by going bankrupt.
Robert Schenk
Games
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2023-12-08 / 
2024-10-23 / 
969802bffedefa10bbd38eb774e6530afe28302d / 
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mac-tykoon-113.hqx
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
