Real Lives

RealLives is a 2001 educational video game designed by Educational Simulations and now taken over by Neeti Solutions, Pune, India. The third version of the game is currently running after including player feedback in its development. It allows players to live out lives of randomly generated people on Earth. Players are allowed to choose their occupation, living conditions, social activities, and start families, but all their decisions are affected by available statistical real data. For example, if your character was born a girl in India, a database of Indian girl's names would be consulted as well as a database of Indian last names, Indian cities, Indian health statistics, etc. Throughout the game players' lives can be affected by random events such as floods, outbreaks of war, disease, car accidents, and other major life-changing events. Players get to play from the moment of birth until they die.[1][2][3] Older features from the 2010 edition include a three-dimensional face for the player character and his or her relatives, the ability to start a business as an alternative of finding jobs and Google Maps connectivity to show the exact place the character is born.

RealLives
Logo from the 2010 release of RealLives.
Developer(s)Educational Simulations / Neeti Solutions
Publisher(s)Neeti Solutions
Platform(s)Cloud
Release2001, 2007, 2010, 2018
Genre(s)Education, simulation
Mode(s)Laptop & Desktop Version

Different countries mean different possibilities for their citizen. In reality, there is no choice whether one is born into a wealthy family or a poor one. Similar rules apply to your innate talent and other skills. Yet, everyone seeks happiness regardless of their situation but this can prove difficult depending on the country, skills, and family wealth. By putting yourself in a different life situation, the game aims to provoke questions about life and empathy towards other people in the user.

Gameplay

The game is structured in rounds which represent a year. So all decisions that you take will be valid for at least one year. You can make decisions about education, profession, leisure, relationships if you want to live with your parents and how you spend your money when moved out. There are also certain sudden events that need an instant decision. A few examples of such events: "A person seems to be hurt do you want to help?", "You are pregnant. What do you do?" or "Do you want to get a pet?".

You have 11 attributes which are health, resistance, happiness, intelligence, artistic, musical, athletic, strength, endurance, spiritual, and wisdom. These change through events as well as your decisions in the game. The two attributes artistic and musical affect your relationship while athletic has positive effects on health, resistance, strength, and happiness. By going with the mouse over them you can see the impact they have created.

Every year events occur, and the character's attributes change. People get sick or change jobs or relationships. There can also be things happening in the state regulatory or natural catastrophes. During most of the events are additional information is available. This information can explain the origin or effect of an illness, the possibility of natural catastrophes as well as actual structures in society and state. Some of the events happening do not have an effect on the game but teach players the way things happen in the real lives of other people.

Reception

Rock Paper Shotgun said that "everyone should play it at least once in their own lives."[4] But it also criticized the game for turning characters into "numbers on a stats screen, beset by a random number generator".[5]

PopMatters praised the game's social messaging.[6]

References
  1. Gudmundsen, Jinny (April 13, 2004). "Learn about others' lives with interactive role-playing". USA Today. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  2. Lang, Dan (September 1, 2008). "RealLives: Interactive Life Simulation". Teach Magazine. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  3. Crogan, Patrick (December 1, 2008). "Real lives 2004: the devil you know..." Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue. Archived from the original on November 2, 2012. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  4. Caldwell, Brendan (February 26, 2019). "Have You Played… Real Lives?". Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
  5. "Diary: Our Real Lives and Deaths Across the Globe". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. September 13, 2016.
  6. "Real Lives, PopMatters". May 5, 2004.
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