The reading room
Behind the numbers
How the numbers are chosen, weighted, and disclosed.
Public sources
Births, life expectancy, and household economics come from public statistics: the United Nations population prospects, the World Bank’s open data, and the OECD’s house price records. Nothing is invented to look real.
Weights, said out loud
When the game bends the world for play, the bend is written on the card. Facts quote their source; the rest of a life stays story.
No account, no backend
Saves, keepsakes, and even your visit days live in your browser. There is no server keeping a copy, because the game asks for nothing it does not need.
Words of our own
Every line of copy here is written for this site. Fact lines name their source; nothing is borrowed from another product’s words.
Twenty-five languages
The catalogs are translated by hand in the site’s own voice, so the same life reads locally in Buenos Aires and in Nairobi.
min read