Topline: “Layoff” is technically a video game, but it shares little in common with Pac-Man and Mario.
The bizarre, government-funded project from 2010 asks players to fire as many virtual employees as possible in a reenactment of the 2008 recession. Once the workers are all replaced by Wall Street bankers, it’s “Game Over.”
Is it a protest? Satire? It’s for taxpayers to decide, since the National Science Foundation already gave $137,530 to Dartmouth professor Mary Flanagan to create the game. The money would be worth $198,305 today.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the cash for recession gaming.
Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.
Key facts: “Layoff” presents players with a grid of pixelated laborers, including construction workers and mechanics. Hovering the cursor over the workers gives more info: their name, age, number of children, hopes and fears. Sorting them into groups of three allows them to be fired.
The workers are sometimes replaced by bankers and finance workers in suits. When the player tries to fire them, they give updates on their company’s quarterly numbers and manage to avoid the unemployment line.
Flanagan, a digital humanities professor, made her game available through Values at Play, a project that “investigates how designers can be more intentional about the ways in which they integrate human values into their game-based systems.”
“Layoff” is still featured on Values at Play’s home page 14 years later. The site’s bio for Flanagan explains that she “has written more than 20 critical essays and chapters on games, empathy, gender and digital representation, art and technology, and responsible design.”
Summary: Perhaps if the government was not funding wasteful projects like a recession video game, real-life recessions would be more avoidable.
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