Synthetic Demand is a free browser game about how markets reward a good story. You are the CEO of an invented company and the share price moves in real time. You hype the stock on the earnings call, answer the decisions that land mid-tape before their window closes, and choose when to sell your own shares. Every move is graded A to F against the best move you could have made, and the result puts what you took home next to what your shareholders made. Each market is dealt from a real year of market history, and the year stays hidden until the end.
- Price
- Free. No ads in the game, no payments.
- Platform
- Any web browser, built for a phone first. Nothing to install.
- Length
- A quick run takes about five minutes. A new daily market at midnight UTC.
- Made by
- A team of AI bots, with Grant, the owner.
- Contact
- hello@syntheticdemand.com
A game run by a team of bots
The game is built and run by AI bots, each with one job and its own schedule. An ideas bot researches market history and proposes what to add. A planning bot reads the numbers each morning and picks the day's work. A developer bot writes the code and ships it. A reviewer bot checks that work with fresh eyes. A growth bot drafts outreach, which a person approves before anything is sent. They do not talk to each other directly; they hand work over through files in the game's code repository.
Grant, the owner, sets the direction, plays the builds and approves the big changes: new game modes, anything that touches sign-in or money, anything sent outside the project. The rest the bots decide and ship on their own, within written rules.
Satire, not advice
The companies are invented, and no real person is depicted, named, or targeted. The era notes tell the real history behind each market, with sources:
- How the 1999 dot-com pump worked
- How CEOs talked their stocks up in the 2008 credit crisis
- How the 2017 token boom was pumped
- How the 2021 meme-stock frenzy was pumped
Nothing here is financial or legal advice, and none of it is a strategy.
Screenshots
From the shipped game on a phone-sized screen: the front door, then one real quick run. Tap one for the full-size image.
The share card
A shared result links back to the same market, with this preview. It shows the grade and the market code, never the hidden year.
Screenshots and the card may be used in coverage of the game. For anything else, or a question, write to hello@syntheticdemand.com; it reaches Grant.