Investment is one of the keys to wealth. For some, investing can be complex or challenging. The idea of putting your hard earned money away and not using it for immediate satisfaction can deter people from investing at all. Investing to me has always been exciting, making it easy to put that money away. I see investment as a fun way to “spend” money, which easily allows me to invest regularly. In thinking through how to get others on the same page, I came up with a concept of an entire class of applications that would be both profitable to the creator and beneficial to users. At the root of the concept is gamified investment.
Table of Contents
Gamified Investment – The Root
The goal of this idea is to create a lucrative business that benefits the users. By incentivizing investment with appealing graphics, cute animals, cool vehicles, fun experiences, and a sense of productivity, it would be possible to help people invest while taking a cut for the service.
Application Model
This class of applications related to a gamified investment platform are both complex and simple to understand. Digesting the information and process can be challenging at first, but once you wrap your head around it, you see the simplicity. I’ll do my best to break this gamified investment concept down in a digestible manor.
Foundational Concepts
- There will be two currencies used in the application
- Money – Relates exactly to one real dollar
- Gems – A secondary form of virtual currency
- Obtainable via events, ads, and purchase
- This is a low-margin, high-volume concept.
- It would be unfair to take a large percent of profits in this model.
- There are many who struggle with investing, making the market volume large.
- There will be a limited asset that generates currency
- Rates vary by asset, but the rate compared to the market rate.
- There will be an unlimited asset that generates currency
- Rate compared to market is stable and does not change.
Model Expression
There are countless ways to express the model described below to appeal to specific audiences. Here are a few examples:
- Chicken and Eggs
- Hatch unique chickens, sell their eggs
- Super chicken, golden chicken, normal chicken
- Hatch unique chickens, sell their eggs
- Mining
- Discover unique digging tools, sell the ore
- Excavator, shovel, hands
- Discover unique digging tools, sell the ore
- Crypto Mining
- Upgrade your rigs with unique parts, sell/save the crypto
- Quantum GPU, liquid cooled GPU, integrated GPU
- Upgrade your rigs with unique parts, sell/save the crypto
- Business
- Open various businesses/chains, keep the profits
- Insurance, social media brand, burger shop
- Open various businesses/chains, keep the profits
- Zoo
- Open exhibits with unique creatures, keep the ticket profits
- Unicorn, penguin, mouse
- Open exhibits with unique creatures, keep the ticket profits
- Snowball
- Make the snowball roll faster, get paid per mile
- Jetpacks, hill incline, wind
- Make the snowball roll faster, get paid per mile
- Planetary Dominance
- Grow your universe with unique planets, trade the resources
- Ore filled planet, lush planet, dust planet
- Grow your universe with unique planets, trade the resources
- Sports Teams
- Build your team of unique players, profit on ticket sales/team performance
- Hall of famer, MVP, undrafted rookie
- Build your team of unique players, profit on ticket sales/team performance
- Lottery
- Open/play unique scratch off game machines, keep winnings
- Guaranteed wins, coin flip, standard scratch off
- Open/play unique scratch off game machines, keep winnings
- Monsters
- Hire unique monsters to scare kids, sell their screams
- Big blue monster, alien, leprechaun
- I wonder what my inspiration was…
- Hire unique monsters to scare kids, sell their screams
- Tower Defense
- Add unique machines to protect your treasure/base, profit for each second defended
- Laser beam, ninja, spike trap
- Add unique machines to protect your treasure/base, profit for each second defended
- Garage
- Add unique vehicles to your collection, charge for vehicle views
- DeLorean, Lambo, RC Car
- Add unique vehicles to your collection, charge for vehicle views
Description and Example
Great, we have a ton of concepts to apply this to, but what IS this idea? I’ll take the zoo concept from above to explain what this could look like.
A Zoo of Investments
Intro
Users open the app to a simple screen showing that they have $1. They need to turn that $1 into their retirement account. The $1 increases every second fractionally. This rate is 20% of the market rate (discussed below). $1 will not cut it. To grow that dollar, they decide to open a zoo.
The First Investment
An animal rescue notice is posted on the user’s bulletin board. They are prompted to select the glowing paper on the board that will reveal the first animal they can add to their zoo (costs 0 gems).
An interactive screen glows showing colors corresponding to various rarities of creature (rarity odds example below). A creature is selected either of common, rare, super rare, epic, or legendary rarity – all start off as one star animals.
The new animal and exhibit appears in the user’s zoo. They are prompted to allocate funding towards the exhibit. They currently have only the $1 they started with to invest. A user can choose to reallocate that $1 towards the exhibit and earn the exhibit’s earnings rate (info below) or they can leave it in the bank earning 20% of the market rate.
Day to Day
Each day, users can return to collect free gems. They can also watch 2 ads every hour. These ads give additional gems. To supplement revenue, application owners should allow the purchase of gems.
Gems can be used to review the bulletin board and add more animals/exhibits to the zoo for the user to invest in.
Users can add more funds to their account that they can allocate towards different exhibits/animals.
Each exhibit can only hold a designated amount of capital at a time based on how many stars they are (data below). This ensures that users are always looking to expand their zoo so they can hold more funds rather than getting one good exhibit to put all of their funds into. To prevent purchase recycling, exhibits cannot be liquidated at 100% value.
When users invest dollars into their zoos, the application owner will invest the funds at the market rate, accumulating 100% of the market rate while users play.
Over time, users can accumulate dollars that they can withdraw. This withdrawal has a $10 minimum and the first withdrawal has a $1 fee for the dollar loaned to them at the start.
Data Breakdown
Market Rate
This is a safe estimate on your rate of return for held investments. If I were doing this, I would have this set at a standard 5% APY rate so there is virtually no risk in negative investments. As your APY rate offer changes, this rate should adjust in the application as well.
Asset Allocation Caps
As mentioned above, limiting the amount of capital that can be placed on a single asset is important to ensure individuals keep purchasing new assets (exhibits in this case). Here is a recommended framework based on the star system.
| Star Count | Max Capital Investment |
| 1 | $10 |
| 2 | $20 |
| 3 | $40 |
| 4 | $80 |
| 5 | $100 |
New animals/exhibits all start off as one star, but can be upgraded with gems to be 5 stars.
Base Rate
The base rate should correspond to a specific percent of your market rate (20% of 5% APY is a 1% APY for the user). I Recommend this aligning with your lowest tier’s lowest rate as shown below. This base rate ensures that there is nothing inhibiting users to invest more. Without this, how many assets a user has will limit their investment capability.
Acquisition Rates
Each tier of asset (animals/exhibits here) should correspond to a specific percent of your market rate (20% of 5% APY is a 1% APY for the user). Below are my suggestions for this example:
| Asset Tier | 1 Star Rate | 5 Star Rate |
| Legendary | 60% | 100% |
| Epic | 50% | 90% |
| Super Rare | 40% | 80% |
| Rare | 30% | 70% |
| Common | 20% | 60% |
Revenue Sources
For the operators of the application, gem sales, investment margins, and advertisements drive revenue.
User Outcomes
Application users that weren’t investing before now have a fun way to ‘spend’ their money that builds it over time. This will help them invest casually and enjoy doing so, leading to better retirement outcomes. This is gamified investment.
Concept Expansion
Here are a few other ideas to expand upon this concept:
- It would be possible to offer different market rates or take slightly more risky investments.
- Holding in-app events can further supplement income by advertising and interaction/
- I listed many themes or ways to express this idea above. It would be possible to combine all this data into a single universe of investment. This concept could warrant further thought and review.
If you didn’t catch it, I also included a link to images I generated while originally thinking through this idea here
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