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Icons courtesy of komodomedia.com
We're some 140+ years out from the laying of the first transatlantic cable, and I feel like we could have a game centered on that.
Players could race to connect the thing up, across a board that shows the undersea contours. They would contend with the real problems faced by the actual effort - storms, navigation, the (at the time) unknown features of the sea bottom. Perhaps the funding and labor problems that dog any engineering effort?
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First shot at a game based on this
I've made a first shot at a game based on this. Check out Cable!
Undersea network map
Here's an olde-tyme map that could be used as a board, with the links as of 1901 already marked: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1901_Eastern_Telegraph_cables.png
Wooing investors
Sections of cable have a minimum cost (barring disasters), and you should raise money by building aller links (across the English channel, etc). You could either demonstrate these links to get money from investors (who will eventually stop backing you if you don't provide the link they're paying for) or charge for telegraph traffic across your link for constant income (which is lessened if another player builds a competing link). There could be population centers on the shores that determine how valuable your links are.
The goal is just to complete the atlatic link though. Once you finish that, regardless of your final financial position, you win.