So you kids like that hot gameSchedule 1, do you? You enjoy dealing illicit drugs while increasing your business production? You have a good time mixing your little blends and making a lot of money off desperate people? That’s a nice cozy business simulator mixed with hard crime comedy you’ve got there. And it’s all onSteam? Sounds pretty, pretty nice.
Sure, it’s not nearlythe first or only drug game on Steam. I’m also aware it’s far from perfect. It’s still in Early Access with a fair number of bugs. And I’ve heard thatone of the achievements is problematic, which could be a blemish on what’s clearly an otherwise morally upstanding experience. But the youth and their web streamers and their modems that haven’t made noises for 25 years don’t know how good they have it. Because in my day, we played Schedule 1 on a graphic calculator in physics class and we liked it.
Texas Instruments Were Gaming Life Savers In High School
I know, I know, you’re going to tell me that kids shouldn’t play games where you deal meth. I’m right there with you. I’m not advocating for it, but I am living in a reality where Schedule 1 is one of the most popular games in the world right now, so I think we can put aside the clutching of our pearls. Because, honey, they’re playing it as much as anyone else. And yes, I also know you’re going to tell me that graphic calculator games are still a thing. You’re going to say that the technology in school calculators hasn’t changed much over the years and boredom has remained at around the same rate. And I’m glad.
Nobody should ever have to sit through an entire high school physics class without something better to do. If there’s one thing I stand for, it’s people being as lazy and unsuccessful as me. But when I was a kid, before fun was invented, all we had were those Texas Instruments devices packed with games like Drug War, or Drug War, or even sometimes Drug War. Really, it was mostly Drug War. I think there might have also been aSimCityclone and a run at approximatingDoom. But, let’s be real, the game we were playing was Drug War.
Did we love it because it was edgy? Of course. Did we need it because it was literally the only thing in my high school teaching us how to run a day-to-day business? Honestly, yes. We were a public school in Florida. I’m not even sure there was an economics class. Our AP history teacher told us the moon landing was faked, so that’s the level we were sometimes working with. Supply and demand are a lot easier to get a grasp on when you’re using them to entertain yourself while looking busy in Mr Tabachnyk’s physics lab.
Dealing Is A Recession-Proof Industry
While our high school definitely had people who could sell you a bag of adulterated weed, their ambition was far too limited and - despite what PSAs led us to believe - were never recruiting new sales reps. No paths to career development there. If you wanted to learn that marijuana was only a gateway drug in that it was a gateway to selling more expensive goods, you really only had one choice: graphic calculator. And you really only had one place to do it: physics class. Or trigonometry. Or calculus. Or the bus. You actually had a few places to do it.
Again, I know people still do this. But back then? Having a little, crappy, almost impossible-to-read pixelated text listing sales prices going up and down? Heaven. Or, really, Purgatory. We were still in a high school classroom. But when everything else is Hell, Purgatory starts looking pretty, pretty good! We all begged anyone with a compatible cable to get us those games. We prayed we could have something to look at that wasn’t a teacher whose emotions existed in a quantum state of being both absolutely furious and completely apathetic.
That was our Schedule 1. Who knows what hero made Drug War originally? I mean, somebody probably does, but I’m not intellectually curious enough to find out. All I know is whenGrand Theft Auto: Chinatown Warshad a drug dealing minigame, I was very good at it immediately.
To be clear, I’m not criticizing Schedule 1 for existing. The people love a comfortable, comical game in which bonkers things happen. Especially one that keeps you coming back as you begin to grow your business and increase productivity. Nor am I saying that Drug War was a better game or that I lived in a better time. It wasn’t and I didn’t. We would’ve lost our minds if we could’ve played Schedule 1 co-op in the computer lab.
That’s not a wild dream, either. Our programming teacher didn’t give a crap so we spent years playingQuake 3,Unreal Tournament, and MUGEN. None of those teach business or why cocaine has good margins with a lot of risk. And sometimes MUGEN didn’t even work right!
If anything, I’m jealous of the world today with its Schedule 1s. Drug War may have taught me about the importance of learning market rates and the ways costs can change moment-to-moment, but did it teach me about customer acquisition? No. Did it teach me about automation? Nope. For a game that came on a calculator, it left a lot on the table as far as the spreadsheet is concerned. This was likely because it was a free game made by a random bored person, but still. A lot of people my age had to rely on a graphic calculator drug game and the movie Trading Places to understand business - which is the most likely reason we’ve ended up where we are today.
I’m glad the world has better crime boss simulators today, especially because that’s one of the few fields in the financial world that seem to be growing. But we had to make do with what we had, which was a simple criminal enterprise training game with a simple criminal enterprise training interface on an educational tool intended to teach us how to understand slopes and whatnot. But we loved it. Didn’t learn a goddamn thing about velocity, though.
