Praxis Gameplay: teaching finance in a fun, unique way
MAKATI CITY -- Picture yourself immersed in an old familiar board game where the elements are basically everything that can happen to your financial life, but at the end of the one to two-hour session, you are left with some financial realization and yearning to take action.
This unique, safe, low risk, immersive and experiential Gameplay is how Praxis helps anyone to effectively learn and apply personal finance concepts like savings, insurance, and investments in real life.
Praxis is described as a company that teaches financial management in a most unorthodox but effective manner -- through Gameplay.
Developed in Singapore almost 20 years ago by a team of financial services professionals and Gameplay design experts drawn by their common passion for financial literacy, “the business is focused entirely on financial literacy,” Praxis Group CEO Greg Martin told the Philippine News Agency (PNA).
PNA was recently invited to witness how a session of Gameplay plays out at Praxis Philippines local office at Classica Condominium along H.V. Dela Costa Street in Makati City.
The gameplay concept as an effective means to teach financial literacy is meant to address the usual perspective that the subject of financial literacy is intimidating, boring, insensitive, and unapproachable.
“This is the way to do it, you read a book, you’d probably fall asleep, (same as) when you watch someone do a presentation,” Martin explained.
The traditional game style, where one is fully involved, immersed and get the senses curious feels real, adds Martin.
What’s in the game? Martin shared “basically everything that can happen in a person’s financial life, it’s what we call gameplay,” which contains elements like jobs, savings, property, retirement, insurance, stock market.
It also contains fun stuff (i.e. you go on vacation, get employee bonus), the standards and a couple of interesting things like the business cycle -- the engine of the gameplay -- boom, recession, slump, and recovery and how these changes can affect your financial ability, like getting a bonus, or worse losing a job.
The game also features “breaking news” where slides are played for a particular experience “that our clients want to have like how the riot in Jakarta affects the stock market, etc., we build those realism into the game.”
The Praxis effect? “People who experienced Praxis end up wanting to do something in their financial life,” adds Martin.
Praxis Philippines, which opened in 2015 has been working with schools, financial services industry and companies “and we want to keep growing the business,” said Martin.
Other than the Philippines, Praxis also maintains operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.