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Look, we know we write a lot about Jane Street, but it’s a fascinating place and people seem to be interested in it. So it was hard to resist the temptation to write about the trading store’s entry into the mobile gaming space (so to speak).
In 2013, Jane Street developed a card game called “Figgie” that was intended to simulate open outcry trading, teach trading nous, and generally burnish its reputation for quirkiness – strictly in the industry.
All you need is 40 cards from a normal deck, and the rules have been public for some time. During Corona, Jane Street created a virtual version for remote interns. Now it’s a mobile game publicly available on Apple and Google’s official app stores. Really:
HT Sujeet Indap for the spot. The app first went online in Apple’s App Store three weeks ago and, at the time of the Pixel, is at number 27 in the card game charts – narrowly beaten by Wizard of Oz Slots, Phase 10: World Tour and Solitaire Grand Harvest. The three people who reviewed it unanimously gave it a five-star rating.
The Google Play page shows “500+ downloads,” no reviews, and a detailed list of required device permissions:
Such innovations are not uncommon in the quant trading space, where many players try to compete for talent with more than just fat paychecks (obscene competitions are par for the course these days even for recent graduates).
Making Figgie public is clearly an HR thing. Right next to it is the “APPLY TO JANE STREET” button, which will take you to the Figgie tutorial as well as in the app itself.
Other companies have taken similar approaches. WorldQuant, for example, runs a “World Cup” for quants, while Two Sigma released four iterations of an online computer game called Halite, in which players program the behavior of fleets of starships that mine resources and fight for territory. However, it looks like it’s dead (perhaps a victim of a founders’ feud/paralysis).
It’s easy to be cynical about guerrilla marketing when it’s done on behalf of a huge, highly secretive commercial enterprise. In general, however, the approach is more interesting than the generic McMarketing stuff that most financial companies produce (although the latter is a more reliable employment option for former journalists).
We’ve downloaded Figgie and will add our own review in due course once we get the app up and running. . .
…but it probably won’t beat The Pit – the classic card-based commodity trading game from 1904. This alpha villain has many fond memories of shouting “CORNER!!!!!” in his little brother’s face after he has collected all the barley, flax or corn cards again. Happy Days.