Video games are thought of typically of ways to avoid what is happening in the real world. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dartmouth professor Mary Flanagan is changing that perception by incorporating today’s economic recession into her game, Layoff.
The Layoff game was developed by collaborators from Dartmouth College, the Values at Play research project design team, the Rochester Institute of Technology Game Design and Development program and the Tiltfactor Lab, in hopes of shining a light over the country’s current financial crisis.
By using the game to comment on these imperative social issues, players are required to make harsh employee cuts during this unstable economy.
Layoff demonstrates laying employees off to save corporate money by making worker efficiency adjustments. Gamers do so by aligning matching workers in groups of at least three.
When five or more are aligned a company takeover takes place providing the company with even more money. The game’s guidelines go on to explain that bankers do not lost their job on a count of perhaps digging the company into a rut and needing the bank’s subsequent bailout to reach success.
While the object of the game remains to fire as many workers as possible, to paint a further realistic picture of people’s values and principles, gamers can emotionally connect with the employees when viewing job descriptions, personalities, and dreams of each by simply scrolling over the character before ruthlessly lining them up for unemployment.
Professor Flanagan’s Layoff game exposes not only the stress of the employee’s being laid-off, but also the heavy burden of the employer firing his workers.
“Business men never get aligned, we never get laid-off,” as explained in the games tutorial by the blue-suited businessman, is another reality of our society that Layoff illustrates.
If a player attempts to move or hovers the cursor over a businessman or banker, the character will reply with tired expressions of his prominence in the company. As businessmen begin to fill up more of the grid’s spots, it becomes difficult to find three like employees in a row.
While businessmen and bankers are perceived as “the bad guys,” developers of the game assure the public that their intention is only to raise awareness and leave the game’s stance up to gamers to decide.
The power of video games in today’s society is undeniable. Developers and supporters of Layoff are hoping that this generation of gamers realizes they can dramatically impact our country.
Our Take:
Today’s economy is something that everyone needs to face and deal with. By developing a video game where gamers are able to see how the recession is affecting workers, maybe the gaming generation will realize they can do something about it. Who knows? We might witness an economic turn for the best after gamers have had the opportunity to play Layoff.
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