1in8B: live one of 8 billion lives

A life simulator where you are born as a random person

1in8B is a 1 in 8 billion game. You do not pick a country, a family or a starting point: you are born as a random person, much as every real baby is. India, China, Nigeria and Pakistan come up most often, simply because that is where the most children are born.

Everything after that follows from the draw. Family income, city or village, religion, your parents' jobs, the odds of going to school and of growing old all come from public data by the World Bank, the UN, WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO and Our World in Data, covering 186 countries.

How to play

Life moves one year at a time. Events happen with the odds that are real for your country: illness, school, work, moving, weddings, children, loss. At the turning points the game asks you to decide: university or not, stay or move to the city or abroad, marry, have children, how to get treatment when you fall ill.

If you would rather not tap through every year, switch on auto mode and the years roll by on their own, stopping only for choices. In the settings you can set how long a life takes: roughly 15, 30 or 60 minutes.

Play with friends: on one phone or online

1in8B is at its best with other people. If you are in the same room, pass one phone around: everyone is born in the same second, and you all stop together at ages 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 and on to see where each life has gone.

At each stop the game offers questions to talk over, and at the end it hands out awards, such as the biggest «lottery gap» in the group. If you are apart, open an online room instead: friends join with a four-letter code, each plays on their own phone, the stops are the same, and you can react to each other's lives.

What it feels like

Under many events a grey line shows the real number behind it for your country, for example: «In Niger, 1 in 9 children dies before age 5 (UN)». When that line sits under the death of your little brother, the statistic stops being abstract.

It can be sad, but it does not try to wear you down. Plenty of lives turn out long, calm and happy, and that is part of the truth too. At 5, 15, 30, 50 and 70 the game pauses with a question worth sitting with before you carry on.

When the life ends

At the end you get a death record, a life map with a colour for every year, and a survival curve of your country set against others. The moments you starred are gathered in one place, and you can share a card of the whole life.

Past lives stay on your device, so you can come back to them and see how differently things went for the same player.

A few tips

Read the grey lines: they are what the game is really about. Star the moments that hit you, and at the end you will see them all together. Do not stop at one life: the third or fourth usually shows how wide the spread really is.

If you are playing with children, turn on «Leave out hard scenes» and the harshest moments are skipped. Without it, the game is recommended for ages 15 and up.

Questions and answers