Bubble Street, the board game about finance and the stock market
OwnerDomenec Miquel Ruiz Devesainventor
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Abstract
The key novelty of this financial game is that the prices are not fixed during the entire game, nor are randomly determined in an exogenous way, although some random disturbances interact with the endogenously determined prices. Players are encouraged to buy shares to make prices go up and sell to make a quick profit, but their plans can be disrupted by unexpected events. The mathematical function depicts in a formal way the operation of the board game: PY=AX+U Being: PY=Price of “Y” share. X=Quantity of “Y” shares traded. A=Slope (or constant multiplier, that combined with the given value of X makes PY move upwards). U=Random disturbance (positive or negative).
Claims4
The game's theme focuses specifically in the formation of asset bubbles, which is an original feature since other financial games do not specifically focus on artificial bubbles as a result of herd behavior.
In addition, this game is not about buying property in the real estate market, although one of the markets is the land market. The dynamic of this market, like the other ones in the game is purely speculative. It has nothing to do with building houses and hotels or paying/earning rent. The game could be played without the land market or it could be given a different denomination, and this will not alter it in any significant way. Hence it is not a game about the real estate market nor about paying/earning rent on real estate property.
This financial board game represents a methodological innovation as well, since other financial games keep asset prices fixed throughout the game or they vary according to pure randomness (i.e. by rolling a dice), hence the variations are not related to the player's actions. In “Bubble Street, The Board Game about Finance and the Stock Market”, there is a new and original feature, the endogenous determination of assets prices by the player's themselves. To the best of the author's knowledge, there is no other financial game that is based in the dynamics set out in this game's rules. In the first place, these dynamics imply that the asset prices do not remain fixed during the game but vary. Secondly, the variations are not determined randomly (i.e. by rolling a dice), but are mostly determined by the trading decisions of the players themselves following a mathematical function of the type:
- PY=AX, Being:
- PY=Price of Share “Y”, X=Quantity of “Y” shares traded, and A=Slope (or constant multiplier, that combined with the given value of X makes PY move upwards. According to the formula, there is a positive correlation between the quantity of shares traded and the unit price or price per share. This means that the more shares traded, the higher the price at hence the market value. The players will realize that, but they are unaware of the precise value of the slope (A), which varies across sectors. The players will have an incentive to buy shares in order to increase artificially the price but also to get out at the right moment, before a rival sells and the value crashes. Hence, unlike is common in other board games, the prices are not randomly determined by the roll of the dice or any other external device. They are endogenously determined by the player's actions, and this done in a practical way. The players do not have of course to run any mathematical function. The game's tables, known only to the banker, establish a precise equivalence between any possible amount of shares traded and the corresponding prices. These are recorded in the values tables.
Finally, as a yet another novel feature, as in the real world, unexpected events can alter the workings of the market. This is achieved by the uncertainty cards, which can interfere in the prices as determined by the described mathematical function. This is also an original feature, since no other known financial games allows for interaction between random and not random effects in determining price movements. Formally, this random disturbance (U) is introduced in the mathematical function in the following way:
- PY=AX+U. U can have a positive or a negative value, depending on the particular event described by the uncertainty card. This adds a fair amount of realism to the game, since in the real world prices sometimes change for reasons beyond the control of the individual investor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.