Systemic Lives
A downloadable game for Windows
Conversation in the United States is currently dominated by the subject of police brutality. However, hidden beneath the issue of police brutality lies a larger web of racial disparities and systematic racism that affects black lives every day.
This game attempts to illustrate some of these disparities by simulating a series of lives according to the player's choices. Using real data, the game will determine the outcome of chosen events for groups of white people and groups of black people - side by side. As more and more lives are simulated, imbalances that may be hidden at first begin to come forth.
Systemic Lives will evolve as you play. There is an ending and I hope that you stick around to see it through!
Team Name: Digital Daydream
Team Members:
- Justin Ray - justinaray828@gmail.com
- Josh Altman - joshuaealtman@gmail.com
- John Poe - john.poe007@gmail.com
- Matthew Glenn - matthew.mark.glenn@gmail.com
Game Name: Systemic Lives
Research
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dNqt2xpo_gTNl2XWMZIyZgAZPl4ZIIG6BxaCUN8AwvI/edit#
Non-Original Assets used:
If you want to help solve these problems, Please considering donating to Black Lives Matter
FAQ
What’s up with the Black sounding names in your game?
We did that intentionally. The names selected came from a study on callback rates for resumes based on black sounding names (The National Bureau of Economic Research). It found that people with black sounding names had a callback rate of 50% of people with similar resumes but with white sounding names. We used their list so we could use their stats when building the choice for, “Find a Job.”
Some of the results for different lives seem unlikely, how are you building your results?
We are running these stats individually and not taking into account previous choice responses. For example, finishing high school may make it more likely for someone to find a job after college. But our algorithm doesn’t try to create a true probability out of two choices, the chances for future accounts do change based on previous ones. This is partially a limitation of the data but also the limitation of time limit for the Game Jam (A short marathon development session, we finished this entire game in less than a week). However, as the number of lives grow, it starts to represent the larger societal reality.
Why did you make this political, games are supposed to be fun?
Because all art is political. When a system is racist, not saying something about it and opposing it supports that system. It is not enough to simply not be racist,one must be anti-racist.
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Comments
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I have to build a game for a Game Jam, so I'm doing my research on the games that are already on this topic (Racial Equality).
You definitely opened my eyes for some stats that I was looking for at the same time that you closed my heart to it all as well:(( live is hard:/// but yeah... we have to keep going!
Thank you for your work!
>Because all art is political
There's nothing political about Mona Lisa or supertuxkart.
>When a system is racist, not saying something about it and opposing it supports that system
Some people just doesn't care to change the system or not change the system. I don't think there's anything with being indifferent.
>It is not enough to simply not be racist,one must be anti-racist.
No , It is enough to just not be racist. There's nothing wrong with being indifferent .
Rather dissapointing all in all. Hamfisted, not to mention the black sounding name study was rather...strange in its name selection, to say the least, with many questionable choices. For example a study on 1050 adults, asking them to rate various names with the most propable race of those having them, has resulted in a 59.7% error rate.
I do not agree that there are issues, however, to call them simply an aspect of "being black" is rather disingenuous to the actual issues and frankly insulting to those that have to deal with them.
Thank you for the feedback and trying the game. Concerning the names, we wanted to represent the data accurately and used the same names in the survey we quoted. You can find the rest of the research we used for the game at the link below. All the 'choices' and situations relate back to published research and each are real issues that can lead to negative outcomes for black people and often more positive outcomes for white people. As with all black people, my experience with racism is unique, but all black people in America live within a system that oppresses us. If you are a black person that was insulted by our game, I'm sorry. All the situations listed are 'actual issues' that we have to deal with. The goal of our game is to illustrate them and invite players to help change them.
- Matthew
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dNqt2xpo_gTNl2XWMZIyZgAZPl4ZIIG6BxaCUN8AwvI/edit#
I was perhaps a little to confrontational in this one, I am sorry about that. The link has given me some rather interesting studies I will be looking into a tad more, although I would like to point out that certain american circumstances could play into that a good bit, such as the ghettos being primarily black populated, at least to my knowledge, thus skewing some of the statistics, but I won't say that this is the only reason, more a tad of a word of caution. Thanks a lot for this well put together reply. I suppose without getting upset here I wouldn't have managed to get this kind of insight so uh...I suppose job accomplished?
>As with all black people, my experience with racism is unique
It's probably not that unique. If all racism against black in USA is always unique that's just random chance at that point.
>but all black people in America live within a system that oppresses us
Assuming system here means law , show them to me .