Costs for Simulations

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Clark Aldrich goes over the costs for simulations — which can vary quite a bit:

Branching story:

Simulation in which students make a series of decisions via a multiple choice interface to progress through and impact an event.

  • Custom short (Less than 10 minutes): 30K
  • Custom medium (Between 10 minutes and 30 minutes): 100K
  • Custom long (Between 30 minutes and 2 hours): 500K
  • Off the shelf short (per user): $30
  • Off the shelf medium (per user): $100
  • Off the shelf long (per user): $500

Interactive spreadsheets:

Simulation in which students typically try to impact critical metrics by allocating resources along competing categories and getting feedback of their decisions through graphs and charts.

  • Custom short (Less than 1 hour): 30K+
  • Custom medium (Between 1 hour and 4 hours): 100K+
  • Custom long (Between 4 and 8 hours): 500K+
  • Off the shelf short (per user): $30*
  • Off the shelf medium (per user): $100*
  • Off the shelf long (per user): $500*

+ plus cost of facilitation, * including cost of facilitation

Mini games:

Small, easy-to-access game built to be simple and addictive, which often focuses on mastering an action and can provide awareness of more complicated issues.

  • Custom short (5 minutes): 10K
  • Custom medium (10 minutes): 15K
  • Custom long (30 minutes): 40K
  • Off the shelf short (per user): n/a
  • Off the shelf medium (per user): n/a
  • Off the shelf long (per user): n/a

Virtual product or virtual lab:

A series of challenges/puzzles to be solved using on-screen representations of real-world objects and software.

  • Custom short (30 minutes): 30K
  • Custom medium (1 hour): 75K
  • Custom long (4 hours): 150K
  • Off the shelf short (per user): $10
  • Off the shelf medium (per user): $30
  • Off the shelf long (per user): $100

Practiceware:

Real-time, often 3D sims that encourages participants to repeat actions in high fidelity situations until the skills become natural in the real-world counterpart

  • Custom short (1 hour): 100K+
  • Custom medium (5 hours): 500K+
  • Custom long (20 hours): 1000K+
  • Off the shelf short (per user): $100*
  • Off the shelf medium (per user): $400*
  • Off the shelf long (per user): $1000*

+ plus cost of facilitation, * including cost of facilitation

Increasing Cost

Here are some items that typically and significantly increase costs:

Note: All genre links include examples of the genre in [brackets]. Go to mini games and launch a few [examples].

He also shares an exasperating example of trying to sell a simulation project to a corporate training person:

Training Person: I can’t do simulations. They are too expensive.

Me: Not necessarily. There are many simple models. There are branching stories, virtual products, interactive spreadsheets, game based models, just to name a few.

Training Person: And are these more effective in achieving learning goals?

Me: Yes. They have very impressive long term productivity benefits.

Training Person: Those are great. But how about multiplayer ? Do you have any examples of multiplayer?

Me: OK. Here they are.

Training Person: Those are cool. But you have any with better scoring and coaching built in as well?

Me: Sure. Here are a few other examples.

Training Person: Animations and advanced graphics are really important to me. Do you have any examples of sims also with really great, smooth animation?

Me: Yup, I have a few right here.

Training Person: Our corporate colors are blue and red? Is it possible to customize it?

Me: Yes.

Training Person: Wow, that is so fantastic. That really blow me away. It’s too bad, really.

Me: What is?

Training Person: I can’t do simulations. They are too expensive.

Leave a Reply