White Liberal Guilt: The Game

November 3, 2007 1:06 PM

Real Lives is an educational game for students that's meant to teach geography in a fun and interesting manner, but I think it just proves how soul-crushingly difficult it is for a Westerner like me to eek out subsistence living when I'm, say, the fifth child of seven in an impoverished nation somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. Add this one to the list of socially aware games (previously) that have been popping up here and there these last few years.
posted by Weebot (10 comments total)

Interesting link--thanks. I took a look through the virtual tour and it is pretty impressive. Nice that they've got a 2-week free trial--I'll have to try it out.

The premise of the game reminds me of a more complicated version of Ayiti: The Game of Life (previously on Metafilter). And oh boy, is that one ever soul-crushingly difficult. I couldn't keep my people from dying of diptheria, tuberculosis, or other awful diseases for the first ten times or so that I played it.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:29 PM on November 3, 2007

" it just proves how soul-crushingly difficult it is for a Westerner like me to eek out subsistence living"

Eek, it is difficult to eke out a living that way.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:37 PM on November 3, 2007

Thanks for the link, my middle school teacher/activist wife is very interested!!!
posted by HuronBob at 2:18 PM on November 3, 2007

Eek! A typo!
posted by newfers at 2:55 PM on November 3, 2007

As a kid I had book had a bag of rice and a spinner attached to it that determined where in the world you were born. 95% of the spinner gave you some miniscule amount and 5% gave you the whole bag. This looks a lot more fun than that. I'll have to wait to play it 'til I can get my hands on a PC, but this looks like something I'd love to use in a classroom.
posted by lilac girl at 2:57 PM on November 3, 2007

"You have Died Of Dysentery"
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:48 PM on November 3, 2007

Fantastic game! Thank you~
I was born into poverty as a bi-sexual Chinese boy, arrested several times, emigrated to Kansas, got rich, retired in Mexico with a cool half million dollars, had a sordid affair with a construction worker 20 years my junior, then died of an infection due to complications from diabetes. If only my real life were that exciting.
posted by ameca at 6:04 PM on November 3, 2007

Well, that was depressing.
posted by blacklite at 9:01 PM on November 3, 2007

Wow, it looks really detailed. I'm going to download it and try it out.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:47 PM on November 3, 2007

This reminded me of the old 8-bit game Alter Ego, which simulated the social and personality traits of an individual during their life -- deciding whether to cheat on your wife, yell at your kids, etc. Combine that with Real Lives' disease/economic simulation, and you've got this year's Christmas hit.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:09 AM on November 4, 2007