This is an investment-educational game design proposal I made in 2016, aiming to train teenagers on investment-literacy (Demo:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2kpDmp1HhM)

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Investment-Educational Game
– Save Innocent Beginners From Incurring Great Loss Due To Knowledge Dearth
1. Summary
My parents were both employed in finance, therefore I have been curious about their
occupations and asked questions about investments since I was young.
It gradually occurred to me that many investors were not making money on the stock
market. After speaking to brokers, I discovered that there was even a saying, “out of ten
investors, eight fail.” Eventually, those who lost the most were usually seniors.
Question:
Why are so many investors losing money? Why is there such a huge contrast between Wall
Street and individual investors?
I researched on this problem and concluded that most investors aren’t well educated, and
without investment literacy, the possibility of being deceived rises and the odds of making a
profit simply depends on luck. This makes investing almost worse than gambling.
Solution:
To save investors from incurring loss, I have conceived an educational game for “investment
newbies” to impart all aspects of requisite knowledge through gaming. In this project, users
will be able to acquire knowledge from materials filtered from more than ten

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investment-relevant websites, be able to ask personal questions about investing instead of
reading frequently asked questions, and receive accurate replies from a Consultant. They will
also be able to interact with other learners through the Forum or Group Mode. After a
period of learning, they will simulate trading before entering the market in the
beginner-friendly virtual trading system.
As a beginner, I understand the needs of beginners, and by proposing this educational game,
I believe this is the solution that will benefit a myriad of investors worldwide.
P.S Term explanation in Result — Detail Explanation
<GSF slide>

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2. Question / Hypothesis
Context.
Speaking to many experienced brokers from different companies about their clients, something made
an impression on me: Many of their clients didn’t know what they were investing in, nor the risks
involved. According to these brokers statistically, about 80% of these investors are likely to lose their
money in the market due to a lack of knowledge. It was therefore obvious to me that losses occurred
due to a lack of investment literacy. Thinking about these innocent investors, clients deceived by
brokers, and especially those retirees who simply wanted to secure their assets losing their money on
the stock market every day without even noticing the reasons, I knew something needed to change.
Question 1
How do we stop innocent investors from incurring great losses, either by lack of knowledge, falling into
investment traps or being deceived by financial managers?
Hypothesis:
1. Once all beginners are well-educated, investors may more easily dodge the traps and pitfalls of
investment and the number of credulous investors will gradually diminish.
2. Humans are most likely to learn effectively when they are young, so fundamental education is
essential. To eradicate this problem, making a game that is simple, for both teenagers and
adults, to learn would be a good way to enhance learning.
Question 2
What kind of education helps, practically?
Hypothesis:
Since “investing” is more about a technique than study, learning in an active way would be better than
giving them textbooks. Game, according to a study of Stanford[2] and University of New South Wales[3],
are considerably an excellent tool of education especially for beginners.
Question 3
How to make my game “flexible” for further development?
Hypothesis:
Extant educational games contain primarily two types of models:
1. (Model.1) A link between players and players(or instructors)
2. (Model.2) A server that assigns instruction to players

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Adopting Model 1, which contains a feedback system, will enable my game to revise errors itself, and
since learning is a life-long task, keeping information and education materials up-to-date is essential. To
achieve the goal, a player-self-instruction system is needed to let the whole ecosystem “grow” itself.
3. Research
A. Game Learning:
Recent scientific research has shown that both children and adults tended to learn more effectively
when they “interacted” with knowledge. Dan Schwartz, professor of education at the GSE (Graduate
School of Education), who also runs the AAA Lab at Stanford said that traditional ways of learning, by
giving books to learners, usually stifles some of the attributes most crucial for human learning, such
as persistence, risk taking, collaboration, and problem solving. “Games allow us to measure learning
in ways we couldn't do before. Knowledge is not the outcome we want; we want students to learn
how to make choices," Professor Schwartz stated.[2]
Problem to solve:
However, he and his collaborators have confirmed that current learning measures do not match up
with games; either you change the games, "making them more schoolish," meaning to construct a
game full of quizzes and text, or you have to change the measurement terms.
Unfortunately, many educational games were developed with an initial thought of making them into
a tool for school education, making it extremely “schoolish” and filled with tedious quiz materials,
and consequently unable to achieve the best effects of game-learning.
B. Investment - education:
Since investing became a universal trend, the number of websites, books, and internet resources
regarding investment strategies has increased incredibly. Yet after I had tried more than 10 kinds of
investment educational internet material (in reference), countless of books and various virtual
investment platforms (from different securities companies), very few of them really thought of

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“filtering” extant resources and proposing a beginner-friendly way of learning with integrated
resources. Indeed, there are lots of useful resources for beginners, but there is a huge obstacle in
implementing fundamental investment education.
Problem to solve:
Investment is undoubtedly complicated, but is being taught to learners in an even more complicated,
unsystematic way, perhaps deliberately. Many feel that “learning about investment” is all about
understanding incomprehensible indicators and technical analysis theory, making numerous people
frustrated before even beginning to learn. Moreover, resources are often scattered, unable to keep
learners’ information up-to-date.
Is there a better way of learning about investment?
This question reminds me of Monopoly, a basic investment game that has remained popular with
adults and children alike for decades. All human-beings desire to beat others, as well as winning
money. Monopoly’s success is not only because of its playability but its beginner-friendliness, which
is what most educational-platforms (games) lack of. Though Monopoly cannot be viewed as an
educational game since it doesn’t convey much knowledge, its successful module can be adopted to
a new level by adding more educational material.
In addition, according to University of New South Wales, there is no evidence that playing
video-game (educational) leads to lower exam performance than reading a textbook. However,
learners enjoyed the video-game considerably more. Moreover, they’ve discovered no gender bias in
this result, and did not perceive any differences between the two learning tools in terms of
understanding requirements or usefulness.
As I am also an investing beginner, I feel that I can help those disoriented beginners to understand
investing since we are in the same situation. I believe teaching investment through an educational
game will be as effective as the experiment above. In this project I’ll be building an educational game
with integrated resources that also offers systematic teaching materials.
4. Method / Redesign
Step 1. Analysis
A. User analysis
To propose a pragmatic learning method to the players, sufficient planning and analysis
of target users before getting any further are vital. I did some research, surveyed about
people around me, and analyzed my targets’ needs to check if I omitted any information
of possible users.
(1) General User Base Analysis

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B. Previous Generation of Investment Education & Educational Games
(This part is research-oriented so included in the Problem in Research & Proposal)
C. Game Elements
Learning about the elements behind successful games will keep my project on the right
track, and moreover, avoid my game being “schoolish.” After trying various trending
games and educational games in different categories, I observed some mutual elements
between some successful games.

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Step 2. Game Structure Plotting
1. Flow Chart
Story and Mission:
Every function and part of the game are linked together with a “story”(one of the game elements) to
maintain its playability, which will intrigue users to learn more. Daily “missions”, unexpected events
such as Lehman Brothers’ sudden bankruptcy, are also crucial elements to test learners’ ability to cope
with sudden crises.

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2. Sub-system Design Explanation
A. Group Mode v.s. Individual Mode
Users can choose to play individually or collaborate with others when enter Simulation
Stage. In individual mode, users train themselves on islands like Traders’ Zone or Individual
Training, and can receive a Personal Risk Index.
Group mode allows users to enjoy individual mode’s functions, and can also form a team of
3~5 learners to simulate a mutual fund management team, and participate in Competition.
Group mode is designed for users to learn from other learners through collaborating and
can spice up the game with “teamwork” element, which is involved in many games as well.
Personal Risk Index (PRI):

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B. Player-self-instruction(PSI) system
The PSI system is a complement to the insufficiency of the resources the game initially provided.
It allows the game’s ecosystem to grow, to keep information up-to-date and revises inaccurate
information spontaneously. By letting experienced users launch their own courses, being
Instructors, the game to acquire a diversity of courses and can also stimulate the interaction
between learners. All the courses launched by users will be filtered by the developer of the game.
.
C. Inter-island Car Race
Inter-island Car Racing plays a prerequisite role as a game element in the entire game. When
users finished courses on an island, users have to answer some questions to travel to other
islands—by car racing.

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In the stock market, sudden decisions usually affect on the final result and inaccurate or
indecisive actions can lead to tragedies. Playing racing car game requires a lofty acumen and
the ability to be decisive but accurate, having this quality makes race car game an excellent
material in investing education.
This practice will give users the ability to assess one’s risk-tolerance, and cultivate the
accuracy and speed of making decisions.

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Step 3. UI Drafting

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Step 4. Prototype Building
I decided to build the game as a website to insert all the resources since web-building is one
of the skills I am familiar with, and will optimize the game part, such as inter-island Car
Racing, with Unity 5 to achieve a better user experience.
5. Result
l Prototype <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2kpDmp1HhM >
l Detail Explanation<Slide>
l Consultant system
Unlike most of the games, I will be designing a Consultant system instead of frequently

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asked questions (FAQs). The initial thought of Consultant system is to design a “chatbot.” If
the inquired question cannot be answered with information in the database, Consultant
system is also made up of experienced users (or professionals) whose duty is to answer
other users’ personal questions. There are consultants of different aspects, such as stock
and futures, to answer users’ inquiry.
6. Conclusion
My project addresses the lack of knowledge of new investors that can lead to their incurring
financial losses. The game environment will stimulate them to continue to learn, and develop their
financial skills; moreover, to keep involved within the learning process. Too many investors give up
the education process because of the way the material is presented, this game offers an alternate
method to retain their interest and thus achieve their goals!
Here are the major features:
l Add the method of game-learning: users “interact with knowledge.”
l Provide integrated resources: filtered from over 10 investing-relevant websites.
l Provide an intriguing game environment: game elements (containing educational meaning),
like Car Racing and Asset Store.
l Provide a range of filtered courses: from easy concepts to advanced analysis techniques.
l Provide a customized Personal Risk Index (PRI) chart: for learners to better monitor their own
investing proficiency.
l Design a virtual trading system (Traders’ Zone): users practice the knowledge the acquired.
l Design “Consultant” system: to answer users’ personal questions rather than FAQs.
l Design “Player-Self-Instruction” system: enable the game ecosystem by harnessing the
multi-player learning community to grow and revise with the feedback of users.
Future Development:
Yet, owing to the scale of the project, there are lots to be done in the future. Courses are filtered,
but should be “rewritten after filtering” not simply embedding websites to provide better user
experience. Establishing a database this large requires a huge amount of data collection and time.
Building a game at this scale, one with professional objects and animations, requires work of
hundreds people team in any game company, and a considerably huge amount of time. Despite
my familiarity with the two techniques, game developing and database establishing, in reality, it is
all about time and resources to complete this project.
In future development, I will spend more time building animations and game objects, revising and
rewrite the filtered resources, and complete Consultant to give users a better learning experience.
The entire game can also be developed better by letting users organize their own assets and
characters’ lives in the virtual world.
Game-learning, I believe, is a behavior that can be used in many areas of study. It is all about

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developers utilizing human’s daily behavior to solve a problem in an innovative, win-win way. Now, I
have a clear plot written of how this project can be developed in the future and how it is going to
benefit the world. Time is all I need to bring this educational game that can save many investors
lives into reality.
7. Reference
(1) http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/07/11/brokers-are-salespeople-not-financial-
advisers/#1d91404f5070
(2) http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/march/games-education-tool-030113.html
(3) Loretti I. Dobrescu, Ben Creiner, Alberto Motta (2014), Learning economics concepts through
game-play: An experiment. Published in International Journal of Educational Research
(4) Investment education material consulted:
1. Investopedia
2. Cmoney(Chinese)
3. Investing your future
4. Morningstar.com
5. TDameritrade
6. Smart.businessweekly(Chinese)
7. Economics-game.com
8. The Motley Fool
9. Investing for Dummies
10. Marketwatch
11. Wall Street Survivor
12. Izaax tutorial(Chinese)
13. Khan Academy
14. Stockcharts school
15. Countless of Books