In Real Lives, a software program developed by Educational Simulations, and Ayiti: The Cost of Life, developed by Gamelab with Global Kids, players are given the opportunity to experience living conditions through simulation gameplay. Both games have relevant social messages, but they feel and play quite differently.

If you're reading this website, you most likely live in a First World nation, with access to the Internet and the leisure time to enjoy it. However, the majority of the world's population does not share those luxuries. Educational Simulations' "Real Lives" is an attempt to educate First World citizens about life on the rest of the planet.

Upon booting Real Lives, the game places the player as a newborn child randomly in one of thousands of locations around the world. Your parents, siblings, health, and genetic potential are all randomly generated, so you can start life as a sickly child of privilege or a robust slum-dweller, with any number of gradations in between.

The primary activity is Real Lives is aging - each time the player presses the "Age a Year" button, their person ages one year, and a number of events happen. Siblings may be born, family members may be stricken with disease, parents may get new jobs or be laid off. Until the player is in their teens, they have very little control or agency over their fate. As they age, however, they can make simple decisions about their life - whether to stay in school or work, what leisure time activities to pursue, and how to spend. The game has no "goals," no winning conditions - you simply live, and try to survive and make a better life for your family. And, at the end of every Real Life, you inevitably die, and the game is over.

Real Lives attempts to draw attention to the realities of life in developing nations, much like Ayiti: The Cost Of Life, which Gamelab developed in conjunction with Global Kids. Real Lives draws statistical information from countries all over the world, incorporating a vast amount of data to construct its simulation, whereas Ayiti focuses on one country, Haiti. However, where Ayiti can be played like a game, with an understandable and reproducible strategy, Real Lives can be frustratingly arbitrary - the player can die in infancy from disease or violence with no choice in the matter. In addition, Ayiti gives the player more agency over the fate of the entire family, allowing the player to understand the family as a unit and the importance of interdependence on survival in poverty.

When developing Ayiti, it was vital to humanize the struggle of the Guinard family, thus the visual representation of the characters and their environment in a warm, friendly tone. Real Lives has no such representation - you never know if your family is happy, sad, content, or suffering - all you know is your financial situation and whether you're affected by disease. Ayiti in many ways is about working your way to success and proving that even in the face of adversity, it is possible to educate yourself and improve your lot in life. Real Lives, in contrast, paints a much more pessimistic picture of the human struggle, with most lives ending too soon and too sadly. As a game, Real Lives is severely limited, but as an educational tool and a source of exploration, it's worth examining.

Download Real Lives from Educational Simulations here.

Read the Jay Is Games review of Ayiti: The Cost Of Life here.

By K. Thor Jensen, Project Manager.

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