RIT Alumni Are Gamifying the Stock Market

June 5, 2024 Erin Graham

Gamifying the every day is one of the best things technology has allowed us, from productivity apps to games that bring the fun back to exercising. But what about something fun to teach us new skills, too?

key art from the game stockfighters, title reads welcome to stockfighers pulverize with your portfolio. in the background is cartoon drawing of a city

Stockfighters is the brainchild of IntrepidVX, a “pioneering company” whose team features over a half a dozen of RIT faculty and alumni. The group highlights the power of interdisciplinary work: partners on the project range from Computer Science and Graphic Illustrator graduates to department directors like Dr. Dave Schwartz of Interactive Games and Media.

official portraits of founder Johnson and director david schwartz

Founder and CEO of IntrepidVX P. Joseph Johnson’s goal with the mobile app is to demystify investing in the stock market for the masses. There’s something intangible about buying and trading with a near invisible currency - Stockfighters is looking to make that experience more palpable…and fun.

“We want to be able to empower these people that are undereducated in the financial sector by giving them that medium of a simplified platform,” Johnson said, referring to their target audience of 18-25 year olds looking to get into investing but not knowing where to start. “It’s a lot of fun.

Schwartz, the lead academic consultant on the project, affirms that IGM alum are uniquely suited to projects like Stockfighters. “They’ve learned how to model and express actions as abstracts of rules and their systems…everything that has items with behaviors can somehow be expressed with games.” Fingers crossed for a game that rewards us for answering emails soon.

Stockfighters doesn’t have a hard launch date yet - but Johnson is hopeful for a launch sometime this year.

More Featured Profiles and Work