Experience life as a:
• Peasant farmer in Bangladesh
• Factory worker in Brazil
• Policeman in Nigeria
• Lawyer in the United States
• Computer operator in Poland
or any of thousands more ...
Except that you won't ever be a lawyer in the United States because everyone in the world is poor and has a goiter. Insofar as this is intended to be an educational sim it's been successful. So far I have learned:
1) Illegal immigration is the best choice a poor person could make.
2) Political activism will always get you arrested.
3) Seriously everyone has a goiter.
Games that start you out somewhere impoverished (mostly China and India, for demographic reasons) all follow a similar pattern. You are born, you have some talent that's almost enough to make you a musician or artist or pro athlete, but not quite, so you go to trade school cause you failed to make it to college, then you graduate and work as a salesperson, get married, scrimp and save, and then illegally immigrate to Europe or the US or Japan. Also you will be crushingly unhappy (probably around 15% happiness) and have a goiter.
The best games are the ones that go beyond the sort of numbing tragedy of the poor and really plumb the depths of the human suffering. I played a game where I was born in some country in Africa (Namibia?) to a 16 year-old soldier father and a 15 year-old subsistence farmer mother. We all had goiters, and I was stunted. I was gifted with exceptional artistic ability, but then my father was killed in some war and my mother died of AIDS or cholera or something so I had to work as something like a manual laborer. I lived on meager food and in a makeshift dwelling, but then finally found a man that loved me and could support me. We got married and then I died. I think it was malaria.
The only places where people don't have goiters are America and Europe and Japan, but if you happen to be born there (wildly unlikely) you will most likely be dumb as a rock and go to trade school and work as a salesperson and then when you retire to some island nation at 65 you'll contract a liver parasite and die.
In all seriousness – and against my best efforts – I'd have to say this game has genuinely given me a bit of perspective on my (apparently) insanely privileged life. In contrast with the vast majority of the world (and my country), I'm in no danger of starvation, I'm going to university, and my life, in all likelihood, will not consist of a series of senseless tragedies and absurd loss. Also I don't have a fucking goiter.
EDIT:
0 years old
I was born a boy in a village in Ethiopia's Gonder Region, not far from the city of Gonder.
Happiness: 16
Intelligence: 86
Artistic: 61
Musical: 87
Athletic: 32
Strength: 32
Endurance: 56
Appearance: 52
Conscience: 52
My parents have named me Tulu. My surname is Sarsa-
Dengal. My mother, Leki-Ye-Delu, is 16 and my father, Kelile,
is 18. I have no brothers or sisters.
1 year old
Growth stunted from inadequate protein.
2 years old
Died in a fire.
3 comments:
Okay, I didn't want to include this in the main post cause it would clutter it up but I tried again on that Ethiopian boy – the game lets you revert to previous years of your life. So after I reverted I didn't die in a fire, but I got measles and my dad died of AIDS. So I reverted again and this time no one died. I made it up to age 10, when I was doing so well I skipped a grade. The next year though, I was too weak to continue with school. So I reverted back a year, but it happened again, so I got a job doing music. Then my mom died of an opportunistic infection, and then next year I died of tetanus.
This game.
solution: DON'T BE A FURRY
What.
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