“Our ultimate goal was to have a fun game that people wanted to play that would help you learn basic financial decision lessons for when you get out in the real world,” Clobes said.

The game — which currently is in development — revolves around setting up and running a house for a character and their roommates, Clobes said. Decisions such as how much to charge the roommates for rent will have different consequences for players, she said.

Clobes said having students’ perspectives ingrained in the game from development will make it more interesting and relevant to students.

“For me, it was an opportunity to have the students create the game versus going out and finding a vendor or company do the game,” Clobes said. “I liked the opportunity to work with the students and working with the college.”

The game has a two-year design schedule in which the first year is strictly development by students and the second year involves testing and polishing, said Janet Lillie, associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. Currently the game is intended to be free, she said.

“I think (students) will benefit because they’ll be able to learn in a fun and educational way about how to better manage their finances,” Lillie said.

Computer science junior Alex Lockwood is the lead programmer on the student team creating the game. Lockwood said MSUFCU is “mature” for wanting to promote themselves through an emerging medium.

“Educational video games aren’t something that have been around for very long,” Lockwood said. “The fact that they’re putting their trust in us and putting this money into this is just really awesome.”

Lockwood said he believes there’s a certain art to designing educational video games. After beginning early stages of development last September, the game is starting to grow into what the team is looking for, he said.

“There’s enough playability to it that it’s not blatantly educational,” Lockwood said. “The design team did a really good job of not making it that much different from a normal video game at all.”