Real Lives - An interesting simulation "game"

Not so long ago, I was browsing Reddit when I came across a game called Real Lives (freely available here) Intrigued by how it was described, I downloaded it and gave it a try.

In the game, you are randomly generated as someone, somewhere on the planet of any gender. In my (admittedly limited) experience playing the game, you tend to end up in third world countries. When you're "born", a family is also randomly generated for you, and these people can have an occupation (or not as the case may be) and potentially any number of physical or psychological defects.

The goal of the game is to simply live out your life. You can put time forward or back a year, and see what happens. Sometimes siblings will be born, sometimes they will be married, sometimes they die. As you grow older you have some control over your schooling and job prospects. Being in a third world country will restrict this for unfortunately obvious reasons.

What I found most interesting about this game is it's status as a persuasive game. The game is intended to be used as an educational tool in classrooms, to show children what life is like around other parts of the world, and more importantly I think, how hard it can be. It also aims to teach what the different countries of the world are like, sometimes throwing in little facts about the countries exports and geographical features.


As a simulator however, the problem I get with it is that it just felt like a numbers game. You need to balance your income against typical expenses, though the option to give money to charity feels somewhat out of place. This I think hurts the game message, by simply not making it a particularly compelling experience, being overall rather simple and easy to abuse as a system.

I hope some others can give the game a try, and let me know if you agree.

Cheers,
Matthew Miles-Watson