Financial Literacy Game

The Doorways to Dreams Fund (D2D) chose Enspire to create a casual video game to teach personal finance concepts—such as credit card payments, finance charges and annual percentage rate—to low- to moderate-income (LMI) individuals.

Challenge

The Doorways to Dreams Fund (D2D) is a non-profit organization with the mission of expanding access to financial services to low-income families by providing innovative financial products and services. Their audience is often targeted by lenders who prey on those in need of immediate cash, but have little experience or access to traditional banking services. Lack of experience leads them to frequent cash advance and check cashing services which charge high fees and do not encourage savings.

Another challenge was creating a learning experience that conveyed the message memorably, without patronizing the audience. D2D proposed creating a casual video to teach primarily LMI women about using credit and debit cards wisely. A concern of employing the serious game approach is that many such games fall short because they are often err on the side of being too light on learning or too light on fun. Creating an effective learning game was only half of the challenge; the game also had to be fun.

Approach

D2D partnered with Enspire Learning to create a casual game teaching smart use of debit and credit cards. Casual games are simple games that require little technical skill to play. Casual games—like FreeCell, Tetris, and Bejeweled—are popular with a very wide demographic. The goal of this casual game, Celebrity Calamity, is to maintain the finances of three consumption-crazy celebrities, while also keeping them satisfied to avoid getting fired. Each round, users strike the keyboard’s right and left arrow keys to move their avatar across the screen, catching falling wish list items as well as cash to deposit into the bank account. Then, players decide whether to pay for caught items with a credit or debit card. If credit card charges are made, the player must decide how to pay off the balance—minimum payment, full payment, or somewhere in between. The APR on the credit card changes frequently, which requires players to adjust their spending and payment habits.

Each celebrity has a mood meter that tracks their satisfaction with the player’s spending habits. If they buy too little or too much, or accumulate too much debt, the celebrity will grow unhappy and possibly fire the player. The game consists of 45 short rounds, each representing one month, that progress in difficulty.

Throughout the development process, Enspire and D2D worked with non-profit organizations in Austin, Tulsa, and Providence to gather volunteer play testers from the target audience to ensure that the game was both effective and fun. The focus of each session was two-fold. First, do the game mechanics work? Second, does the game teach personal finance skills effectively? Group testing revealed how players interact with the game, and individual testing yielded specific feedback. Developers refined the game mechanics and instruction based on users’ comments.

Outcome

Celebrity Calamity met the organization’s goal of a fun, effective personal finance game. Throughout user testing, D2D collected data to measure the efficacy of the game. In three testing groups in different geographical locations (Austin, Tulsa, and Providence), participants were asked to complete a pre-game and post-game test. Based on a Likert scale (a 1 to 5 scale assessing confidence), D2D found the following confidence changes:

• 31 percent increase in confidence to pay off new credit card charges monthly
• 20 percent increase in confidence to pay more than the minimum credit card payment
• 31 percent increase in confidence to avoid late fees, over-limit feeds, and overdraft fees
• 20 percent increase in confidence to save money regularly

Participants also completed a short test composed of true and false questions. The following knowledge changes were recorded:

• 58 percent increase in knowledge of APR
• 71 percent increase in knowledge of finance charges
• 14 percent increase in knowledge of credit card balance

D2D Fund recorded participants’ comments as well. One user noted, “Until tonight, I didn’t know what APR was and I’ve had two credit cards for a while.” Another said that she thought the game would be a valuable resource to have in her local community center.

Celebrity Calamity is the first in a suite of financial literacy games that D2D will produce. The game is available and free for everyone to play at www.celebritycalamity.com. Subsequent games will cover personal budgeting, payday lending, FICO scores, and more.