Revenue Rush

Revenue Rush: price elasticity of demand and total revenue for Edexcel IGCSE Economics

This free game is part of our Pearson Edexcel IGCSE Economics (4EC1) course for exams in EXAM YEARS 2027-2030.

Set the prices on Riverside Walk

Revenue Rush is a free 3D game about price elasticity of demand (PED) and total revenue for Pearson Edexcel International GCSE Economics (4EC1). It covers specification points 1.1.4 (a), (b), (c), (e) and (g): the definition and formula of PED, calculating PED from percentage changes, interpreting PED values, and using total revenue calculations to decide whether demand is price elastic or price inelastic.

It’s a busy evening on Riverside Walk. Kemi, the head of pricing, asks you to set the prices at six businesses: the Roxy Cinema, Spokes bike repairs, Flow yoga mats, the Riverside Times newspaper kiosk, the No. 9 bus and Riverside Arena. Beside each one stands a takings board. Total revenue is shown as a wall of gold bars drawn on real axes: its height is the price and its width is the quantity sold, so the wall is literally price × quantity. One customer stands below each column of gold, and the demand curve runs across the board as a glowing line.

Watch money being won and lost

• Pull the price lever (drag it, tap its arrows, use the arrow keys or drag the gold bead on the board) and two things happen at once.
• A price rise slams a green layer of gold on top of every column that stays: the extra money from the customers who keep buying. The columns of the customers who leave turn red and crash off the board: the money lost.
• A price cut turns the top layer red: you lose the cut on every sale you already had. New customers run in with green columns: the money won.
• Labels show the sums, for example at the cinema a cut from £10 to £8 loses £2 on 400 tickets (£800) but wins only 50 more tickets at £8 (£400), so total revenue falls from £4,000 to £3,600.

Whichever is bigger, the red or the green, decides whether total revenue rises or falls, and that depends on elasticity. With price elastic demand, price and total revenue move in opposite directions, so a price cut raises revenue. With price inelastic demand they move in the same direction, so a price rise raises revenue.

Test, call it, then cash in

Kemi guides you through the first two businesses, which use the numbers from the lesson. After that you run the total revenue test yourself: move the price one notch, see what happened to the price and to total revenue, and call it ELASTIC or INELASTIC. Then you push the price the way that raises total revenue as far as the owner allows, and the takings are banked.

Next you learn PED: PED = % change in quantity demanded ÷ % change in price. At Flow, a price cut from £20 to £16 (−20%) sold 50% more mats, so PED = +50 ÷ −20 = −2.5: ignoring the minus sign, it is above 1, so demand is price elastic. A PED scale shows all five cases from the specification, from perfectly price inelastic (0) through price inelastic, unitary price elasticity (−1) and price elastic to perfectly price elastic (infinity). At the bus and the arena you get a PED value or the percentage changes instead of a test, and in the late rush eight owners each give you one fact and you push the price the right way against the clock.

Learn it, then prove it

Everything is taught in the game before you are tested on it. Quick checks ask you to calculate total revenue, calculate PED from percentage changes, read PED values and pick the answer that would get full marks in the exam: say what happened to the price and what happened to total revenue. A wrong call, a wrong-way price move or a wrong answer brings up a short explanation with a “Why not?” and a link to the lesson, and then you try again. The end screen gives your rank, your best score and a one-page summary with the total revenue test table, the PED formula and a labelled diagram.

The game takes about 6 to 10 minutes. It works with a mouse, a touch screen or the keyboard, needs no login and runs on school Chromebooks, so it’s easy to use as a starter or a plenary in an economics lesson.