Lessons in Analytics From Mobile Gaming — Mercs of Boom
Another TBS but this time with strong lessons in prioritization
When you are trying to draw lessons in analytics from mobile video games, turn-based strategy is definitely an advantage. Sci-Fi themed games also tend to offer easy material. They are laden with technology, analysis, and discovery. If the game also features you running your own company or corporation, well… you have a veritable trifecta.
It would be easy enough to start digging in to the tech trees and discovery processes of Mercs of Boom. We could highlight the segmentation, dashboards, and scoring that are featured as you develop your mercenaries. Only, we have touched on these sorts of things in our many other articles and games.
Mercs of Boom feels like a clone of X-Com. It is a squad-based TBS, so unlike Age of Magic, position and location figure heavily into the combat strategy. Having played X-Com in both the 1994 and 2012 iterations, it is hard to say how this mobile version isn’t just as good. But this article is not about the alien shooter theme of this game…
A Resource Management Simulation
Time, people, equipment, technology, raw materials, money, and facilities all figure in to the resource management challenges of Mercs of Boom. It is perhaps one of the most complex systems I’ve seen. Given how frustrating it can be, it is hard to imagine any game adopting a harder or more complex one. The reality is, it feels a lot like reality.
I have run my own company and a multi-million dollar global organization (although the latter was part of a much larger one). This difficulty and complexity occasionally gives me flash backs. For experienced analysts and data-driven executives alike, this game feels a bit like a real-world simulation… ignoring the aliens, of course.
The game allows three paths to acquire more resources — combat missions (which have a strong analogy as you will see soon), a market (simple enough), and in-game purchases (a bit like venture capital?). The latter two do not really teach us much, so let’s dig into combat missions.
As the head of a global analytics organization, I often selected a handful of analysts and set them off on a project. I don’t recall any shooting or aliens — but these projects had time limits, objectives, and adversaries. All of which figure into Mercs of Boom.
Mercs also requires discovery, progression, and occasionally discretion. It is important how you time your missions. And missions figure heavily (as noted) into your development of future resources. If you are running an analytic shop in a global bank, pharma, or Fortune 500 — this is really close to how you get resourced as well. No — Mercs does not feature an annual budget process but it has it’s own equivalent of hiring freezes.
Honestly — the annual budget‘s main issue for me was the need to support a myriad of internal clients. My funding was almost entirely performance-based, if the team produced, we got more resources. Mercs of Boom models that pretty well for a mobile app alien shooter.
This game has a lot to offer. The story line is fairly deep. Even grind-style combat missions require solid amounts of strategy. But at its heart, Mercs of Boom is a resource management game with incredible complexity. It is highly analogous to many real-world situations. It is a way to practice aspects of management, prioritization, and organizational development. Not what you might have expected…
Enjoy playing Mercs of Boom and thanks for reading. For more Lessons in Analytics from Mobile Gaming consider:
For those with a fondness for the good ole days:
