Author here. Thanks for reading this post. I had fun making this and thought the path that led me to this might be interesting for others.
I’m really interested in feedback and ideas on things I could improve and add. I found this really inspiring as it got me more into programming, discovering electronics, and 3d printing.
I have no desire to ever make this project commercial, but it’s been a great platform for me to learn and experiment new things so I’ll take any idea be it for the gameplay or purely technical. Some features I have in mind are:
- Multiplayer over bluetooth where one device is the ‘game-master’ running the exchange and can monitor and guide players while injecting events.
- Additional quoting algos such as pegging one side of the order book and fighting for position
- A tutorial and better UI. The game is hard to pick up for the first time and probably needs to be made more intuitive etc.
While all of this was made with no practical use in mind (there are a lot of markets and products, and you’d trade them in different ways, so you’d need a different game to speak to a volatility trader for example), some people I work with at various trading desks found it useful for interviews or as an introduction to the idea of market-making for junior people.
This is a really cool project. When I was at Unity, we had a team build a Westworld themed isometric Gameboy game that would let you monitor and admin k8s!
This is great, when I first started in trading in 2006 one of the traders actually used a Gravis gamepad to do click trading. I even remember conversations between devs debating about the latency of the human eye in order to make screen refresh decisions.
Also around the time the was a company called Trading Technologies that had a patent for click to trade on a GUI grid/order book and was suing everyone.
Note: for anyone trying to “stand out” to get a job, you don’t need to do this
None of this is typically relevant, even if it gets you a callback, passing subjective technical interviews is more important. No matter how fascinating your lead is, such as the hiring manager, or recruiter, or whatever nepotism you think is so great, you still have to pass that. Other things can get you the callback you need to get that far, such as simple buzzwords on your resume.
If being at entry level is the issue, then don’t be at entry level. Make a contracting company and contract. Use that as experience in your resume.
Interesting project! The kid is only mentioned at the beginning, I wonder if they participated further in the project, or if they enjoyed playing the game?
They did continue participating but it's true that this became a sort of electric train where daddy buys it for the children and ends up playing the most with it.
The trading game did not capture their interest further than watching colourful flashes for a few minutes. It's probably too complicated for their age and hard to understand without knowing some basic financial markets knowledge.
However I used the same device to make other more appropriate games and keep them involved. I could ask them what game they would want, and I would make most of it but involve them in the parts of the code that can be meaningful to them. I found that while they like understanding how it works when I walk them through some small bits of code, writing code (even heavily assisted) is still daunting at their age so they prefer tools like MIT scratch.
As someone who operates in the trading technology space this is really cool. Over the years I have recognized that the top active traders develop a new sense through analyzing order book data (level1-level3) and perhaps gamification like this could help/accelerate that. Just a thought.
Thanks for the feedback. Yes it takes some practice to be able to read and understand an orderbook, and I find that visualisations help a lot, so does making your own derived metrics (for example calculating vwap prices, distance to fair in basis points for each level etc). What this game does is provide a feel for it, for your relative position, and for visualising pockets of liquidity, but it's also quite limited by the form factor.
I drafted another version of this game which is more arcade-based (and does not run on handheld but a computer or arcade box) and the game is essentially about fighting over an orderbook to (a) be in the best position possible to capture the flow that you want, (b) monitoring for orders with a positive edge and sniping them faster than the other player (or even pick off the other player before they have a chance to move). The values next to the bid and ask quantities are the edge in basis points relative to faire value. If you see some positive edge somewhere you want to go and cross the book to pick out the price.
Very interesting journey. Some can be like ben 6502 make into a long series of yet for training and future budding hacker. The whole journey inckudeing issue handling I hope.
You're right and besides that, it's not an interesting game for them. I continued involving him using the same platform, but we made more age-appropriate games. It's easy to upload a different game over a USB cable so I could just remove the trading one and upload some other.
Some of the games we made were a quizz platform (times tables, French words etc.), a version of etch-a-sketch where they can move a cursor around, draw, and change the color, and a 2d space shooter game.
It was a good platform to introduce them to code on some of the more tangible bits such as explaining that the screen is a grid of pixels, and that hitting the move button means incrementing your position variable by a few pixels. It's also quite cool for them to be able to bring this to school and to explain how it works, both from an electrical standpoint, and for some of the simple software bits.
TheTank|1 year ago
I’m really interested in feedback and ideas on things I could improve and add. I found this really inspiring as it got me more into programming, discovering electronics, and 3d printing.
I have no desire to ever make this project commercial, but it’s been a great platform for me to learn and experiment new things so I’ll take any idea be it for the gameplay or purely technical. Some features I have in mind are:
- Multiplayer over bluetooth where one device is the ‘game-master’ running the exchange and can monitor and guide players while injecting events.
- Additional quoting algos such as pegging one side of the order book and fighting for position
- A tutorial and better UI. The game is hard to pick up for the first time and probably needs to be made more intuitive etc.
While all of this was made with no practical use in mind (there are a lot of markets and products, and you’d trade them in different ways, so you’d need a different game to speak to a volatility trader for example), some people I work with at various trading desks found it useful for interviews or as an introduction to the idea of market-making for junior people.
ssimpson|1 year ago
Bluecobra|1 year ago
Also around the time the was a company called Trading Technologies that had a patent for click to trade on a GUI grid/order book and was suing everyone.
reeboo|1 year ago
bhasi|1 year ago
oarsinsync|1 year ago
yieldcrv|1 year ago
None of this is typically relevant, even if it gets you a callback, passing subjective technical interviews is more important. No matter how fascinating your lead is, such as the hiring manager, or recruiter, or whatever nepotism you think is so great, you still have to pass that. Other things can get you the callback you need to get that far, such as simple buzzwords on your resume.
If being at entry level is the issue, then don’t be at entry level. Make a contracting company and contract. Use that as experience in your resume.
gberger|1 year ago
TheTank|1 year ago
The trading game did not capture their interest further than watching colourful flashes for a few minutes. It's probably too complicated for their age and hard to understand without knowing some basic financial markets knowledge.
However I used the same device to make other more appropriate games and keep them involved. I could ask them what game they would want, and I would make most of it but involve them in the parts of the code that can be meaningful to them. I found that while they like understanding how it works when I walk them through some small bits of code, writing code (even heavily assisted) is still daunting at their age so they prefer tools like MIT scratch.
monkeydust|1 year ago
TheTank|1 year ago
I drafted another version of this game which is more arcade-based (and does not run on handheld but a computer or arcade box) and the game is essentially about fighting over an orderbook to (a) be in the best position possible to capture the flow that you want, (b) monitoring for orders with a positive edge and sniping them faster than the other player (or even pick off the other player before they have a chance to move). The values next to the bid and ask quantities are the edge in basis points relative to faire value. If you see some positive edge somewhere you want to go and cross the book to pick out the price.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/b4qMs6f
ngcc_hk|1 year ago
rgmerk|1 year ago
But the last thing I want for my kid is for them to learn that active trading is fun, lest they try doing it with real money.
TheTank|1 year ago
Some of the games we made were a quizz platform (times tables, French words etc.), a version of etch-a-sketch where they can move a cursor around, draw, and change the color, and a 2d space shooter game.
It was a good platform to introduce them to code on some of the more tangible bits such as explaining that the screen is a grid of pixels, and that hitting the move button means incrementing your position variable by a few pixels. It's also quite cool for them to be able to bring this to school and to explain how it works, both from an electrical standpoint, and for some of the simple software bits.
jowdones|1 year ago
[deleted]