Well, the ruckus about Intel's failure to include women in their first go at the IT Management game seems to have inspired them to correct the problem! The new version of the game features female IT managers, staff, and other employees. Welcome to the 20th century.

Since I finally got to play, I can say something about the game. It's quite a clever idea, but I think it should be categorized as a hybrid advergame/training game. The way the mechanics work, you pretty much have to upgrade your systems to the best Intel products you can afford. It took me a little while to get used to the gameplay, but it makes sense -- anytime you upgrade an employee's system, you have to spend IT time to reconfigure it. Random events create IT need as well. The goal is to maximize productivity and profit. It's a clever idea.

Here's the most interesting design decision: you have to create an account to play the game, and you can only play one day in game time for every day in real time. When you think about IT managers' time, this is a good way to get them to spend 10 - 15 minutes every day, rather than an hour or more at one time.

There's a leaderboard with company rankings, but I fear it's subject to the power law problem I've described before. I think it would have been cool if the most successful players won Intel products for their company and themselves.

(thanks to Tore)