Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the un-game of Cashflow

A close friend of mine and long time gamer has embarked on a new career as a property developer and has become a fan of the work of business guru Robert Kiyosaki author of the well known book Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Diversification and Passive Income are the mantra of many of these self help millionaires and Kiyosaki has branched out into the realm of games design.  Yes, you heard right.  He's a Games Designer, that's his BGG entry for the boardgame Cashflow, he designed back in 1996.

Now doesn't that look exciting

Recently I was invited to play this little gem of a game and boy does it suck!! 

It's a game of two halves, but both are roll and move.  In part one you travel around the center circle trying to avoid the here you travel around a very small 25 space center board landing on various "investment opportunities" either stocks and shares or property which you can purchase with your savings.  You also have the chance of landing on one of the "bad" spaces which may result in you losing your job and missing a couple of turns, having a baby (aka a joyous bundle of unplanned overhead) or landing on a luxury space and having to buy a suit or repair your car.  These "bad" spaces are so few and far between that they have little impact on the outcome of the game in fact the distribution is arranged in such a way that it is a statistical impossibility.

Once you've amassed a passive income which equals your salary you have essentially "left the rat race" and can now move on to stage two.  In which you basically do exactly the same but instead buy established businesses with even less chance of risk.  There's so little risk or consequence to the game and your decisions have so little effect that a game of snakes and ladders looks appealing by comparison.

There's a mild form of game balancing via the drawing of "career cards" which control what your starting cashflow stats are, but there's no game here.  No deep decision making, no evaluation of risk (it's all laid out on each card in bold text), no balancing of resources, nothing.  I'm speculating but I think that there's an educational reason for this, Kiyosaki wants to teach you that becoming a self sufficient is easy and in the game of cashflow it is in fact there's no way to lose.  I think he needs to listen to the wise words of real plutocrat Nick Hanauer.

A quick google reveals that the game retails for in excess of £100 shipped to the UK, so I guess the secret of cashflow is to author an incredibly lame game and charge the absolutely earth for it.  Apparently there are cashflow clubs where this pile of shite is played on a regular basis, probably because they're too ashamed to play it outside of those select gatherings. 

Someone needs to give them a copy of Monopoly or The Game of Life it will blow their freaking minds.