While the idea of a game that's purely a business simulation might sound unappealing, it doesn't mean a game based on managing lots of money can't be fun. The appeal comes from the way that such games let you live out an entrepreneurial fantasy in a risk-free game environment. Unfortunately, French developer MonteCristo Multimedia's latest business simulation, Start-Up 2000, hardly makes this fantasy enjoyable. Several factors in the game contribute to what's simply a confusing experience that at times seems too much like real work than like play.
Start-Up 2000 lets you build a high-tech company from the ground up and offers you a chance to become very rich at doing so. You begin the game by choosing the type of product you want to manufacture. You have three options: a mobile video phone, a cyber television, and - interestingly enough - a next-generation game system. After picking a company name, product name, and logo, you find yourself in your new office with seed money in your bank account and a plethora of menus in front of you. A news terminal keeps you updated with business trends and e-mails from your partners and staff. At another computer terminal, you can change out components for your product to keep up with technological advancements. Clicking a financial chart on the wall brings you to a management screen that lets you borrow money, find venture capitalists who want to invest, and view your earnings and stock prices on a series of graphs. On yet another management screen, you can plan a marketing strategy and adjust your price to counter your competitors. At the end of the month, overhead is subtracted from your total capital while profits are added.
You can leave your office anytime and enter staff management mode. From here, you can begin hiring staff. The developers apparently went for a graphical style reminiscent of Maxis' popular strategy game The Sims, as all the desks, coffee machines, and workers are portrayed with pastel colors in an isometric perspective. But the graphics could have been much better; for instance, the workers lack personality.
There are four distinct floors at your new company: finances, research and development, marketing, and production. Throughout Start-Up 2000, you have to sift through résumés and fill positions with qualified individuals. When you select your workers, a smiley face, which indicates their morale, appears above their heads. You can improve this morale by adding more elements to their break room or by raising their salary. Even so, it's never clear just how much more or less productive your staff becomes. The only indication that you did something right comes at the end of the month when you find out how much money was gained or lost.
Start-Up 2000 features several adjustable options, in addition to an exhaustive manual that explains how everything relates to everything else. Even so, the fact that you're unsure of your progress until the month's end makes the gameplay elements seem that much more ineffectual. As a result, jumping from screen to screen tends to get tiresome and even confusing. If the game's interface were easier to navigate, if the staff had more character, and if the countless adjustments you had to make throughout the game had a more immediate effect on your progress, Start-Up 2000 would have been that much better. But as it is, it lacks the excitement and strategic challenge you might expect from a game about the cutthroat high-tech market. If you're looking to sharpen your management skills in a high-tech arena, you're probably better off digging up an old copy of Tom Clancy's Ruthless.com.
