The village simulator game was extremely frustrating, mostly because I perform very poorly in video games. Throughout the hour long endeavor, I was so confused and consistently disappointed. For some unknown reason, the ‘help’ button and the tutorial video were unavailable, so it became a guessing game. And that guessing game did not go well. Coupled with my lack of agricultural/fishing knowledge, I did not know how much or what to invest in. First off, the work days for Kodjo and Fatou were initially 12 hours a day, and exceedingly cruel and inhumane work day–especially for two teenagers. Their health began dramatically declining due to such tough conditions and lack of nutrients, but because money needed to made I only lowered their work days to 10 hours, still an absurd amount of hours to spend on hard labor. Both kids had only completed 6 years of schooling and were unable to spend more years in school because of immediate financial need. When one’s entire income depends on agriculture, fishing, and small business endeavors, the wages one earns are very volatile depending on the season, and usually very low. I repeatedly took out loans because I needed money to buy more supplies in order to increase my yield of crops, but it only resulted in increased debt. This just felt like a consistent losing game, and even though it’s a “game,” the village simulator depicts everyday life for many people across the globe. The lack of resources and monetary capital is breathtakingly tragic, and puts one’s life in perspective. The thought of completing maybe a 6th grade education and then spending the rest of ones life in a never-ending cycle of property, highlights the severe inequalities in our country. It makes me think how in the world BILLIONAIRES exist when millions of human beings live in such grueling and horrible conditions–the level of inequality is truly disgusting.