Can online games teach financial literacy?
Russell Hutchinson sits down with a bunch of teenagers to play a financial literacy board game to see who can make the most money (a learn about financial things).
Wednesday, November 27th 2024, 6:33AM
by Russell Hutchinson
Since it was designed for teenagers, I thought I had better find some to review it. Fortunately, I happen to have a teenager lying around the house, who is an expert in games of all types.
Recently one of our readers encouraged us to take a look at Hackt!cs, a game designed to teach financial literacy to young adults.
Providing appropriate incentives ($100) I got them to invite some friends over, play Hackt!cs, and report on the experience. An abridged version of the review is below.
“In my time playing Hackt!cs, I became a pilot, bought a restaurant, a house, a rental property, had a baby, and spent two years at the beach. Hackt!cs is a board game based around finances in the context of your life. Hackt!cs is a competition in which success is a mixture of various life goals such as starring in a blockbuster film and financial goals such as buying property, owning businesses, and having enough money to retire by your early forties.
Hackt!cs is played over the course of 12 rounds, each supposedly representing two years of life.
There’s some basic game mechanics, and some randomness introduced by “Life Happens” cards. Some of these are positive, and others are negative, most of the negative outcomes can be avoided if a player has bought insurance, which is relatively cheap.
That’s the whole involvement of insurance in the game. At the end of the game, players add up the total value of their assets and subtract their debts. The amount of money they have is converted into points, some non-financial goals can contribute to winning.
As the four of us (all 17 to 19 years old) began our game, we began to notice a few glaring issues with the idea that this game was going to teach us about finance.
The first was that none of us ever had to worry about how to make sure we were living somewhere, or what the consequences would be if we ran out of money and couldn’t pay rent.
Perhaps this was because we’re all leaving high school and somewhat unsure of where the future will take us, but it felt as though we had more pressing concerns than how we were going to afford to buy a candy shop.
Each round of Hackt!cs is genuinely very satisfying.
Adapting my plans to the random events and watching my strategy play out felt rewarding. It was fun figuring out the ideal way for my chosen career to interact with the state of the game and my financial goals.
All in all, Hackt!cs is a fun, but flawed, board game.
It has interesting and fun strategic components but misses some of the tense excitement and intrigue that business games are capable of.
This boils down to its inclusion of elements of life, which feel somewhat hollow.
I believe the game would have found its place if it had placed more of a focus on either the life simulation or the business simulation element.
My final verdict is that, while the game is not perfect, it is worth picking up if you’re looking for something new for family game night. It isn’t the perfect business or life simulation, and I’m not convinced of the relevance it holds to a teenager’s life, but it is fun, and that’s what matters the most in a game.
You can buy a copy of the game here.
I’m still a sceptic on the question of whether gamification can genuinely help people do better in their financial choices.
But my bet is that if it is, it will be either an adviser or a client, or a combination of the two, working with a game expert, that will do it.
Product providers have the capital, and the patience, but have so far lacked the insight and the needed understanding that games must be fun.
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