RealLives for Webware

RealLives is a gamified simulation that evokes empathy and understanding in the minds of users about humans from other countries, cultures, and socio-economic contexts. The primary hurdle in feeling empathetic towards humans from other backgrounds is that we often tend to think of them as people who are different from us. By thinking of others as different, humans are able to perpetrate atrocities on them (humans find it very difficult to be cruel when they recognize the commonness of humanity with others). In the RealLives simulation, the user may be born in an unfamiliar country or socio-economic status or culture or gender. The user then lives a complete birth-to-death life in this context, facing various life-events at every age. Featuring almost 200 countries, with data drawn from about 100 reputed sources, RealLives ensures that the life-events experienced (in any country) are data-realistic- because they are calculated from authentic UN data. The gamified experience also encourages the users to introspect and express their reactions to their life-events - thus precipitating the feeling of a common humanity with all others.

Several scientific and academic studies (see attached) have been conducted across the world on the Real-Life model, and they all indicate a high degree of efficacy in engaging the students and in evoking their empathy. We have several formats and exercises for using RealLives in the class-room - making it easy for teachers to effectively use it for teaching subjects that require international awareness (such as immigration, persecution, human rights, mass-violence, etc). It is interesting to observe that RealLives also works its empathy-creating magic equally well in non-academic circumstances, in the Gamer world - where people even begin to prefer RealLives over other entertainment-only games. RealLives earlier version/s routinely features in the top-10 game downloads on CNET - a sparkling testimony of its engaging pedagogy.