There was a time when I used to invest real money into stocks on a hourly basis. There are days when I have made a good lump of money and many more days where I have lost badly. I got over the habit of investing money into the stock market a few years back. As I moved to the States, I came in contact with a few people who used to buy stocks online and gamble. I also came in contact with a few websites offering mock stock market game strictly for fun. Having played with the real money, I wasn't too keen on "investing" my time over nothing. Last week, a friend of mine introduced me to a website where you can buy and sell Indian stocks with fake money. I was eager to check this new Indian stock market game on the internet. Well, here's the website.
The registration for the website is free. The website is simple and the navigation is simpler. Each registrant is given a tenth of a million rupees to start buying stocks on the BSE Sensex. The sensex values are synchronized with the real time values and hence it makes it more interesting for those stock buyers. The values change every hour and each registrant is rated on different timelines. I have played this game for the past 5 days and I seem to be getting addicted to it.
This game website is a part of sensex.in which aims to be a one-stop place for all Sensex news and blogs. It incorporates the latest news in Sensex and has a link for the stock market game as well. It also figures some facts regarding Sensex. I just learnt that the base value of Sensex was 100 on 1st of April 1979. These days Sensex climbs over 14,000. Now, that's a steep climb.
Now my honest opinions. The game is wonderful in terms of it's simplicity and easy to navigate. A registrant doesn't have to read a lot of rules and regulations (which is available) to understand the game. But, this is the age of ultra-modern web design and this game needs to up the ante by going in for a professional web design. The site seems to be built over a pre-existing freely available template. The web design is not very attractive to the eye. The forum available is like a desert. There is no single post. One advice to the developer, request the current users to start posting on the forum, which in turn brings in more people and more suggestions come out of such forums. It is not sufficient to point to a forum but very important to convince users to start posting on the forum regarding anything. The website needs to introduce monthly or quaterly prizes so users can play not just for peanuts but something valuable.
This is the first of the kind for the Indian stocks. The only way to better and popularize Indian stock games is to start giving suggestions. I have done my part. The rest is in the reader's hands.
