Group Brainstorm-Group:!Xobile
From CS 160 Fall 2008
- Mu-Qing Jing
- Geoffrey Lee
- Perry Lee
- Shaharyar Muzaffar
- Bing Wang
Contents |
Brainstorm
| Idea | Description |
|---|---|
| 1. Balancing your checkbook game | x amount of checkbooks. make sure they are balanced. |
| 2. How to write a check | Speed check writing, looks for correctness. Identify what the different parts of a check are. |
| 3. Auditing game (jump) | look through a bunch of logs to find oddities |
| 4. Accountant game | you are someone's accountant and need to manage their money |
| 5. Tax return | speed game, fill out your taxes quickly and accurately. How to minimize your tax return. |
| 6. Stock investment game (jump) | Real life stocks. You can generate your own market. MMO where everyone invests in these stocks. |
| 7. Stock market manipulation game | Shorts, manipulating data for stocks, teaches the shady areas of the stock market. |
| 8. Risk management | Poker game, teaches probability and risk/reward. |
| 9. Process of getting a mortgage game (jump) | Game trying to maximize the deal possible. |
| 10. Game where you're the banker | Role reversal, people borrow money from you know, you act as a venture capitalist. |
| 11. Game where you have to decide who to lend to | Do you trust your friend and do you want to lend your money to them? What's the return? |
| 12. Smart consumer buying (jump) | X amount of money with Y amounts of needs and Z amounts of wants. You try to maximize Y and Z while minimizing X. |
| 13. Real estate tycoon game | Buy and sell houses, maximize rental properties, factor in tenants and disasters; real life events w/interst and property rates. |
| 14. Selling goods (jump) | Lemonade stand type game; manage your own small company |
| 15. Counterstrike weapon merchant game | How to best equip your team with limited funds in order to maximize your kill/death ratio. |
| 16. Managing resources (jump) | Similar to resource management like in Starcraft |
| 17. Invest in a virtual market | Invest in virtual items within MMORPG's such as WoW |
| 18. Efficiently moving money between accounts | Take money and move them from account to account as interest rates and risk levels fluctuate. Also involves speed with mouse or wiimote. |
| 19. RPG life simulator (jump) | Similar to the Sims, but involving finances. Somewhat like Second Life. |
| 20. Game of life board game | Board game that leads you through the stages of life and different scenarios correspondingly. |
| 21. Macro Management | Act as the Secretary of Treasure or Governor of Federal Reserve and control world economy |
| 22. Rental Management Game | You are a landlord and you are controlling a apartment complex. Who are you renting the apartments to? Are you going to check their background? |
| 23. Trading Oil Game | You are going to trade oil and adjust price for oil in terms of dollar per barrel to see supply and demand |
| 24. Manage your own business | What are the things that you have to do? Unhappy employees, law suits etc. |
| 25. Managing your own sports team | You are in charge of a sports team and must earn money through ticket sales and merchandise. You also must win championships |
| 26. Be a Parent! | Manage the finances of your family to ensure the well-being and happiness of your family. |
| 27. Financial vocabulary (jump) | Gameshow, crossword puzzle, word search, text-twist, scrabble, etc. |
| 28. Vocabulary Typing Game | Type the vocabulary words before they reach the bottom. |
| 29. Bill distinction for kids (jump) | Teaches kids different parts of currency bills and what each bill looks like. |
| 30. Counterfeit detection game | Teaches about the security features of currency. Can be US or world. |
| 31. World currency recognition game (jump) | Teaches people what all the main currencies of hte world looks like. Drag currency to where it belongs on a map. |
| 32. Currency exchange game (forex) | Similar to the stock market game, but involves the foreign exchange instead. |
| 33. Sim-Money (jump) | Similar to SimCity but with managing money in a very broad overview. Decide where to put your money in real-time. |
| 34. Trading game | Start out with paper clips and end up with a house through trading since things are valued differently |
| 35. Virtual Ebay | Start out with some money and get an item and list another item for sale to generate money |
| 36. Managing a Mafia | Run a Mafia organization and rob other people for survival |
| 37. Online version of finance game | Interact with others online to gain money through investments and properties |
| 38. Manage a human body | You're a brain and must manage the body by providing energy to internal and external functions |
| 39. Animal Management | You're an animal in nature and you must gather food, raise babies, and plan for hibernation |
| 40. Business negotiation game (jump) | Bartering, negotiating. |
| 41. Get yourself out of debt game (jump) | Scenario campaings with different levels of debt and resources available. Try to set your finances straight to progress to the next level. |
Idea Selection (paragraph)
We eventually boiled down to two ideas and we tried to come up with pros and cons of each of the ideas.
Game of Life Board Game -
(pros)
- much more comprehensive
- more decision based
- emulates real life better
- more educational overall
- more expandable
(cons)
- too complicated
- possibly boring
- harder to decide what to abstract and keep in
- difficult to gain balance
- takes longer to finish the game
- less UI driven
Money Account Management Game -
(pros)
- fast-paced
- short
- exciting
- visual feedback oriented
- much easier to complete the game
- people learn without realizing it,
- customizable
(cons)
- less educational value
- much more specific
- simple (can be a con or pro)
- less replay value
- less focused on a target audience
- lacks expandability
Reasoning for our selection:
The money management game would target people looking for different alternative funds while the Game of Life scenario would target people who are interested in Finance 101. Game of Life is more effective in terms of a serious game but it is perhaps less UI driven. We believe that the money management game is more UI-driven than the Game of Life Board Game. Since the focus of this class is user interface and user interaction with the game, we think it is more appropriate to go with the money management game. The biggest win is that the players would learn without realizing it. We can also incorporating a wiimote as our interface.
A Longer Description of the Project (several paragraphs)
Target User Group(paragraph)
Our target group is working individuals who are unaware of and would like to learn more about the different forms of investments.
Fresh out of school, most people are unaware of their investment options -- Roth IRAs, CDs, MMAs, 401(k)s are just a random jumble of letters that have no associated meaning. This game targets those who are interested to learn about these investments and their retirement options.
Problem Description (paragraph)
There is a significant problem in America where a large number of people do not prepare for retirement. Similarly, a significant number of Americans put the majority of their liquid assets in simple savings or retirement funds. Not only do these funds generate very little in terms of interest, but they are often outpaced by inflation. We believe that having a good sense of what each of these accounts provide is important for an individuals to have a successful investment and retirement portfolios. Oftentimes, people just listen to their advisers but do not really understand the benefits of these accounts. Hopefully, this game will raise awareness regarding the different alternative investment accounts that are available that are more appropriate for retirement purposes. This game raises awareness of different investment and retirement options and subtly teaches the benefits of what each type of accounts have.
Problem Context (paragraph)
For many, all these different investment types are just jumbles of letters. More likely than not, many people will go through their entire education with out taking a single business or finance class. Their knowledge about investments are portfolios often come from unqualified sources, such as their parents, friends or co-workers. Many people do not care to attempt to gain knowledge about these topics, because they are unaware of the extent of the benefits of investing. When they do eventually learn about these different terms and their advantages later on in life, they do not have enough time to full take advantage of the it.
Other games have been developed which do involve managing money in a life simulation game, and there are also games which are based upon the speed o moving things around. However, no game has been developed which involves moving money around investments quickly.
Why Serious Games are a Good Technology for the Problem (paragraph)
A "serious game" works especially well for a game such as this one because, for the most part, players are unaware that they are learning as they play this game. When many people try to look at different investment accounts, they get bogged down by all the terms, this game provides an educational effect implicitly by using the visual cues, such as an "account" moving faster to express its volatility, or the size of an "account" changing to show its potential investment gains (or losses), players begin to associate the volatility and risk of a type of investment with the investment itself. For example, the stock market "account" might rapidly fluctuate between a large and small size, whereas the CD "account" rarely fluctuates in size or speed. The learning does not hamper the fun.
Solution Sketch (paragraphs + sketches)
Overview
!Xobile is a speed game that helps players learn how to control and maintain different types of investment accounts (with the goal to accumulate as much money as possible for retirement). In the game, different accounts are shown on the screen with a net worth and a gauge that depicts interest rates. As the game progresses, players can purchase additional accounts to manage from a random market of investment options. Each type of account has an associated volatility and reacts differently to the environment (e.g., world events -- this idea will be more fleshed out after contextual analysis). The goal is to maximize your money by transferring your money into the best account for the situation, interest rate, inflation rate, etc. The game ends after a set amount of time (e.g. 2 minutes, 5 minutes, etc).
Game Mechanics
In real time, players drag money from one account to another. You click and hold on the account to store up money into the "hand", and then drag and drop it to another account. Since interest rates fluctuate depending on the type of account you have, speed is a factor. More skill is required to manage more accounts.
Mock-Up
