System Requirements: 486DX4/75MHz, 12MB RAM, Windows 95 (DirectX 3.0a), 45MB Hard Drive Space, 2X-Speed CD-ROM Drive, SVGA Video Card, Sound Blaster Compatible Sound Card, Mouse.
The Concept
Entrepreneur is a real-time multiplayer strategy game set in the real world of business.á It is not a business simulator.á Nor is it a shoot-em-up game.á In essence, the idea behind Entrepreneur is that every day, corporate CEOs as Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Fox, TBS, etc. are all waging all out war on each other.á But why should only the CEOs at billion dollar companies get to play this game?á Now everyone can try to crush their enemies!
The Game
In Entrepreneur, you start a company and choose a market to conquer.á The game will ship with the computer market and other markets will become available after release via Stardock or third parties through what we call "Dynamic Industry Modules" (DIMs).á Once you are in, you must order your sales executives (who act as generals who get your products onto the shelves) to different parts of the world where they compete with the sales executives of other companies for the market leadership of the region they are positioned in and the surrounding regions.
Each region has different desires and through research and development, you must try to engineer your products to meet their demands.á However, different parts of the world have very different demands.á For example, you may dominate North America through your leadership in reliability but the buyers in Europe may demand performance and thus you may be a minor player there to companies who are ahead of you in that area.
To offset this, you can create marketing campaigns which act as commando units.á They increase the perceived value of a target trait in the regions that are positioned in.á So even though you may be behind in a given trait, throw enough marketing resources at it and you can make the public perceive you as having the better product. And there's no shortage of marketing campaigns to choose from: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) all the way up to full scale TV campaigns.
On top of all this, certain regions have special resources.á If you are the market leader, you have control over that resource.á The resources range from political to scientific.á If you have enough of these resources, you can use one of the "Direct Action Cards" that you receive at the beginning of each game year.á Direct Action Cards are the great equalizer of Entrepreneur and their powers can vary between insignificant to clinching the game.á Have enough political resources? Then you can use your clout with the government to shut out a competitor from a target region.á Hold enough labor resources? Lure away an enemy sales executive or incite a labor strike at a target region.á There's many dozens of cards in Entrepreneur to choose from and they really do stir things up.
The game is won when you have achieved a basic monopoly share of the market (you don't necessarily drive your opponents out of business but keep them around for anti-trust purposes -- like say giving them $200 million to keep them afloat...).
SDS/AI
While many games that have multiplayer support have poor AI, Stardock takes its computer players seriously.á The AI in Entrepreneur was developed by the same team that created the AI for Galactic Civilizations (the 1995 game of the year from the Internet Top 100).á Each computer player has a unique personality (i.e. not just some different variable settings, they are actually coded differently) so that one computer player that makes a mistake may not be found in a different one.
STARDOCK.NET
Multiplayer play is pretty much expected today and Entrepreneur may have the best performing internet performance of any game currently available.á You can play people from around the world and Entrepreneur can handle latency times as great as 5 seconds or more without missing a beat (most games can't handle more than .5 seconds).á With STARDOCK.NET, you can visit other players in a chat forum right from within the game and join their games easily -- no searching around for someone to play.
Another unique feature to STARDOCK.NET is its hall of fame.á The top 100 scores are kept track of on it so you can get an idea of who is the best at it.á Imagine Quakeworld or Battle.net where you can keep track of number of "frags" and thus be recognized for your...ruthlessness.
Conclusions
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While some people may be turned off by the game being set in the "business world", rest assured, the game setting detracts nothing from the gameplay itself.áá The unique game mechanics of Entrepreneur really show off what a strategy game designed from scratch to be real-time can be like.
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