The Game of Life makes certain aspects of real life quite funny. As my 9-year old nephew said, “You know, this game of life has a lot of chance!” Well put. If you roll the dice poorly, you have a major car accident and lose $50,000. For example, if you roll the dice well, you find buried treasure worth $100,000. In the Game of Life, as in real life, your long-term economic position depends only partly on choices you make, but depends more heavily on random rolls of the dice. The Game of Life does a good job of countering much of the individualist America ethos that says everyone gets what they deserve or what they work for. The Game of Life doesn’t tell us what happens to people who follow these different tracks, but sociologists will tell you that real life is much messier than the Game of Life. Interestingly, despite the fact that half of marriages in real life end in divorce, no one in the Game of Life ever gets divorced. In real life, however, kids don’t always come before marriage, people with jobs still struggle to buy a home, and some people won’t every marry or have kids. Therefore, all players must go through several key life course transitions: everyone must get married, buy a house, and have at least one child. The Game of Life is also very sociological because it has spots on the game board where everyone must stop no matter what they roll. Think the family life is for you? Take that path and see how many kids you’ll have! Will you venture down the risky road where fortunes can be won… and lost? Do whatever it takes to retire in style with the most wealth at the end of the game. Spin the wheel of fate and take a drive along the twisting roads families have enjoyed for more than 50 years! Do good deeds as you go through the game to earn Life Tiles and more money down the road!” “Where will your choices take you? You made it through high school, so now what’s next? Go to college or start a career -it’s your choice. Here is how Hasbro advertises the Game of Life: After a few rounds of the Game of Life, my nephew exclaimed, “Gee if I go to college I finish the Game of Life with a lot more money!” To illustrate, in the Game of Life the first thing each player does is choose either to start a career (and start earning money) or go to college (you delay earning money now but will earn more later). Why? Because we teach our students that choices you make early in the Game of Life shape the rest of your life. Throughout the week, as we played the Game of Life several more times and I realized that the Game of Life must have been designed by a sociologist (or at least someone who majored in sociology in college).
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