Made at Maker's Asylum. Investopoly is a game which aims to educate the general public on the basics of investing.
Made by Dhaman Chandran and Hriday Koppikar.
A lot of people from all backgrounds, do not have sufficient education in managing their finances. It is not a part of many school curriculums, and there is a belief that investing and saving money is only for people who are professional investors or work in the field of finance. We wanted to find a way to help people leverage their finances and get an understanding of how the system works. We thought of apps, financial calculators, stock market trackers, but we realised that the best way to teach people how to invest is through a much simpler and less technical approach, a game. There are already many games that use a financial system, but we wanted to make something much easier to understand, while still covering the core concepts of personal finance.
Our house help, and many others all over India, do not know how to invest money and save it in a bank account, because of this they are continually losing money to inflation, even though they save money, its value decreases over time. How can the general public gain knowledge about investing and leverage their own finances? We want to do this to help everyone gain knowledge about their finances and use tools to gain money from investments, and reduce the effects of inflation.
Our project encompasses the following SDGs: SDG1: No Poverty SDG4: Quality Education SDG8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
- We wanted our game to cover all the aspects of finance and be as realistic as possible, but, in reality, we had to strike a balance between complexity and realisticness, if it was to be understood by everyone.
- We also made our game with easily sourceable and relatively cheap materials and techniques.
Investopoly is a card game with an aspect of electronics involved. It encompasses 3 aspects of finance: inflation, risk and depreciation. Players start with assets, money and properties, from then on they can choose what to buy, sell and hold onto. While everyone gets income each turn, they must pay income taxes as well, money left in the bank loses its value and properties begin to depreciate. The aim of the game is to arrange funds to make the most money at the end of 5 rounds. Materials:
- AdaFruit 0.96" OLED Display
- Touch Sensor
- Arduino Nano BLE
- 9V Battery
We used laser cutting to construct the project. Furthermore we used our knowledge of programming to create the logic for the game. We used CAD to create our 3D models and 3D printers to bring them to life.