trade the trees

Inspiration

Statistics show that there is a lack of financial literacy in the general population and that women and girls, especially young girls, are most affected. Furthermore, future generations will have to face the loss of forests to agriculture and other uses. Therefore, we created a finance game for young girls themed around planting trees both in-game and in real life.

What it does

trade the trees features pretty graphics and customizable avatars to teach easy finance concepts including trading, banking, mortgages, and taxes. The in-game currency is redeemable for gift cards to companies such as Starbucks and Amazon. The game encourages environmentally-conscious behaviour by promoting tree-planting in-game and in real life. In trade the trees, trees represent stocks. The game’s currency is acorns. The player earns money by trading trees and earns fruits from the trees that they own, with the fruits representing dividends. trade the trees aims to simulate building a stock portfolio, or a "forest". Players also manage their finances, pay taxes, and mortgage their land. Scattered throughout the game are info buttons, where they can learn terminology and real finance tips.

How WE built it

After considering the feasibility of the game, its target market, and its revenue sources, we built our project primarily on Figma to show the main functionalities of the game. Further functionalities can be added in the future.

Challenges WE ran into

Our biggest challenge was to express complex financial concepts into easy-to-understand terms such as explaining the P/E ratio trading multiple. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to code the full version of the game due to our inexperience with React and the complexity of our game.

Accomplishments that WE'RE proud of

We are proud of our innovative solution to address the relevant issues at hand. We presented our game to 11-13-year-old girls, and they completely understood the financial concepts and found the game intriguing. We are proud that we prototyped a visually pleasing game that we know kids would play.

What WE learned

We learned how to prototype on Figma, use the Git repository, and code with React. We also learned many complex financial concepts throughout the process.