What 55 players told us about The Safe Spread
The first measured FinBild game. Results from 55 post-play surveys on 9 September 2026, what they show about the egg-and-basket metaphor, and what they cannot show yet.
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The Safe Spread is the FinBild game about risk diversification. Your wealth is a tray of eggs. Each hanging basket is a category. Over three rounds the table shakes, some baskets tip, and the eggs inside them are gone. You cannot predict which basket falls. You can decide how much one fall is allowed to cost.
On 9 September 2026, 55 people played it and filled in a post-play survey. This is the first FinBild game with measured results, so I want to put the numbers down properly, including the parts that limit what they mean.
Why diversification, and why a mapping test
Diversification is the concept that financial literacy surveys find hardest. In Lusardi and Mitchell's international comparisons, the risk question is the one people most often answer with "do not know".
There is a second reason to be careful with it. Benartzi and Thaler (2001) found that many people in retirement plans follow a naive "1/n" rule: they split money evenly across whatever options they are offered. The result looks diversified, but the spread follows the menu, not an understanding of risk. A game that only checks whether players spread their eggs could be measuring the same reflex.
So the survey did not stop at "did you spread". It also asked whether players could map the game back to finance: what the basket stood for, what the egg stood for, and whether they could name the strategy outside the game.
The setting
Players went through the three rounds and the metaphor map, then answered the post-play survey. There was no pre-test and no control group. I come back to what that means below.
Did the mapping land?
All 55 chose the diversified option for €1,000, and all 55 chose spreading investments across different assets as the way to reduce risk. 54 of 55 said the basket meant diversifying, and 51 of 55 said the egg meant an asset.
The mapping questions are the ones I care about most, because they are where the 1/n reflex would not help. A player who spread eggs by habit but never connected the basket to a category of investment would have failed them. Almost nobody did.
How it felt
89% agreed the game connected to real investing (49 of 55), and 82% found the eggs-and-baskets mapping very or extremely clear. 78% said they learned something new. 73% would rather learn this in a game than by reading (40 of 55).
The lowest item is the one I would watch: 65% agreed they were more likely to diversify. That is an intention, measured right after play, and intentions are a weak guide to what people later do with real money.
What these numbers cannot tell us
No control group and no pre-test. We do not know how many of these players already understood diversification before they played, so the results describe where players ended up, not how far the game moved them.
The questions came right after a game about spreading risk. Some of the 100% is likely a ceiling effect: once you have played The Safe Spread, the right answer to "how do you reduce risk?" is obvious from context.
Self-selection and self-report. Players chose to take part, and the experience items are opinions, not observed behavior.
Transfer is narrow. Barnett and Ceci (2002) reviewed decades of research showing that people often fail to apply a skill when the new situation looks different from the one they learned in. Mapping eggs to assets in a survey about eggs is a near transfer. Spreading a real portfolio is a far one.
What the next study needs
- A pre-test and a comparison group that reads the same idea as text, so the effect of the game itself is visible.
- A follow-up weeks later, not minutes, including at least one behavior question.
- A transfer item with a different surface: the same risk structure with no eggs or baskets in sight.
- Results reported by background, so any gap between groups is visible rather than averaged away.
Takeaway
The metaphor held. Players who had never seen a finance word during play could map the basket to diversification and the egg to an asset, and most of them said the game connected to real investing. That is the result the design was built for, and it is enough to keep building. It is not yet evidence that The Safe Spread changes what people do with money, and I would not describe it that way.
The aggregated results are on the learning analytics page, and you can play The Safe Spread in your browser.
References
- Barnett, S. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2002). When and where do we apply what we learn? A taxonomy for far transfer. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 612–637. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.612
- Benartzi, S., & Thaler, R. H. (2001). Naive diversification strategies in defined contribution saving plans. American Economic Review, 91(1), 79–98. doi:10.1257/aer.91.1.79
- Lusardi, A., & Mitchell, O. S. (2011). Financial literacy around the world: An overview. Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, 10(4), 497–508. doi:10.1017/S1474747211000448
Data: WissenFlow post-play survey for The Safe Spread, 9 September 2026, n = 55. Only aggregated results are published. Percentages are rounded to whole numbers.