For Gaming Nerds Only
You remember those "edutainment" games you played in elementary school? Carmen Sandiego, Number Munchers, Oregon Trail?
-Your oxen have drowned crossing the river, and all your children have typhoid/cancer/malaria. You have died. *Crappy DOS music pipes in*
Anyhow, I like simulation games. Sims, Harvest Moon, Neopets...I found this very odd one marketed towards elementary and middle schools called Real Lives, where you're born somewhere in the world with skills distributed along a normal curve. Things happen to you based on the probability they would happen to someone in that country. So if you're born in Peru, and 30% are wasting away from malnutrition, you have a 1/3 chance of wasting away as well. The point of the game is to...well, I guess not die and be as happy for as long as possible.
I've been born everywhere from Austria to China to Peru, and there's one thing I've noticed. If you're born a girl in the non-Western World (and chances are you WILL be born in the non-Western World) , you're fucked. If you're born a girl in the non-Western World AND you're not physically attractive, you're utterly and completely fucked.
I've been born in rural China and died of malnutrition before the age of 5 about 100 times. Died in the streets of India because my asshat parents wouldn't send me to school, even though my intelligence was the only thing going for me...couldn't leech off a guy because no one would date me because I had no money and was ugly as sin...couldn't leave home because my siblings did, and didn't want to leave my jobless mother stranded, and there was no social assistance anywhere...I've never been more frustrated. Most games it's just a matter of finding the right strategy before you start winning. In this one, you realize, that sometimes you're just completely screwed from the outset, and there's next to nothing you can do about it.
I've never been more appreciative of how disgustingly lucky I am to be born where I was.
-Your oxen have drowned crossing the river, and all your children have typhoid/cancer/malaria. You have died. *Crappy DOS music pipes in*
Anyhow, I like simulation games. Sims, Harvest Moon, Neopets...I found this very odd one marketed towards elementary and middle schools called Real Lives, where you're born somewhere in the world with skills distributed along a normal curve. Things happen to you based on the probability they would happen to someone in that country. So if you're born in Peru, and 30% are wasting away from malnutrition, you have a 1/3 chance of wasting away as well. The point of the game is to...well, I guess not die and be as happy for as long as possible.
I've been born everywhere from Austria to China to Peru, and there's one thing I've noticed. If you're born a girl in the non-Western World (and chances are you WILL be born in the non-Western World) , you're fucked. If you're born a girl in the non-Western World AND you're not physically attractive, you're utterly and completely fucked.
I've been born in rural China and died of malnutrition before the age of 5 about 100 times. Died in the streets of India because my asshat parents wouldn't send me to school, even though my intelligence was the only thing going for me...couldn't leech off a guy because no one would date me because I had no money and was ugly as sin...couldn't leave home because my siblings did, and didn't want to leave my jobless mother stranded, and there was no social assistance anywhere...I've never been more frustrated. Most games it's just a matter of finding the right strategy before you start winning. In this one, you realize, that sometimes you're just completely screwed from the outset, and there's next to nothing you can do about it.
I've never been more appreciative of how disgustingly lucky I am to be born where I was.