Patent ID: 7846014

Claim:
In an entertaining and educational investment and trading video game, a non-transitory computer-readable medium having program code embodied therein configured to cause the execution of the following steps: i. Prompting a player to select a plurality of corporations from a database of corporations, wherein each corporation record in the database of corporations has a pre-defined initial value for the attributes of stock price, earnings-per-share, level of risk, capitalization, and descriptive narrative of a history of the corporation adding entertainment value to the game; ii. Prompting the player to select a game complexity level linked to the player's selection of one or more pre-defined objects from a securities database, a database of economic indicators, and a database of actors, wherein the database of securities comprises stocks, bonds, warrants, and derivatives, the database of economic indicators comprises economic indicators used in a real-life economy, and the database of actors comprises an Exchange, a Brokerage House, an Internal Revenue Service, a legislature, and a U.S. Supreme Court; iii. Automatically presenting a play option to the player, each play option comprising a selection of a directive from a database of directives and a selection of an opportunity from a database of opportunities, wherein each directive in the database of directives comprises an instruction that causes a change in the stock price of a corporation, and wherein each opportunity in the database of opportunities comprises an instruction that changes the financial position of the player or an opposing player, and wherein furthermore the probability of presentation of the selections is determined by pre-defined rules linked to a behavior of a real-life economy given a current value for each of the economic indicators; iv. Automatically executing the play option, v. Prompting the player to optionally engage in an investment or trade transaction and then automatically executing the transaction if the player elects to engage in an investment or trade transaction, vi. Continuously displaying current values for the economic indicators, corporation stock prices, and player account equity, where player account equity comprises values for cash, stock, and bonds in a player account; vii. Automatically verifying the current value of the player account equity and deleting the player account if the value is zero or less, and viii. Iteratively presenting a new play option per Step iii above and executing Steps iv through vii, for each player whose player account equity is greater than zero.