The Game of Life

“The Game of Life” is a board game that a majority of people have played at least once in their lifetime. It attempts to depict life and the events that you encounter through it, with the end objective being retiring with the most money. The game has portions in it that require you to do as the game says with no decisions on your part: who you are going to marry, having children; it assumes that at some point in your life you are going to get married and have children, also resulting the assumption that the player desires to be married and have children; though the game does do it as a way to create a semblance of balance between every player, no matter what each player has to spend money on their family. The game also requires the player to choose his or her career solely based off chance, the player is required to pick two cards out of four then a single card from the two revealed career cards, there is no legitimate choice made by the player on how successful of a career they obtain is. This is much unlike the real world where a person can dictate whether or not they want to pursue a higher paying career or a lower paying career. In “The Game of Life” a lower paying career tends to be less desirable due to the objective of the game, so instead of choosing a career based off of what would make the player happy throughout their life they choose it off of what career would generate the most money.

Despite the game’s many assumptions and lack of choices on how people live it does provide some life lessons throughout the gameplay. It has an accurate portrayal on how at some points in life you will have to pay for bills that were previously unanticipated by you and your bank account, and also teaches you how to save and invest in your future. In the article “Financial Lessons from The Game of Life” Scott Spann discusses how the game teaches how, “The more money that we make throughout our careers, the more opportunities we have to save and invest for retirement – however we choose to define retirement. Having the financial freedom to focus on important life goals requires us to build a retirement nest egg that allow us to fulfill our dreams, vision, and values.”

In order to have the game be more representative of real life and create components which would lead to one’s view of the good life the balance would have to be taken out of it. Where every player has to get married, or other actions that the game requires you to do in your personal life in order to proceed, it would have to become a choice to the player. There would also have to be components added where the player can choose how they spend their money on wants other than a house, and the monthly payment of bills would also have to be incorporated. However, in order to make the game more realistic it would lose its balance amongst the players and may become long and tedious to play. As far as a board game goes its attempt at an accurate portrayal of life while still being fast and fun is fairly well done.