FemCity

FemCity is a simulation of a complex social and economic environment, which young women find themselves in, when designing their future. FemCity was commissioned by the Office of Women's Affairs, Vienna/ AT, 2003.

The game tries to encourage the gamers to consciously select between alternative life-styles, career plans and personal dreams. At the starting point of the game, the players are set up in an urban environment, where buildings suggestive of different careers will invite them to enter: A steady job, higher education, a trip to a Caribbean island, a dreamscape, fast and easy money without any guaranteed continuity of income, a relation etc. During the course of the game the players will be presented with where their decisions might lead to. A macroeconomic model computes savings and accounts for "happyness", "success", "social commitment". The game does not want to suggest that any of the decisions made need neccessarily lead to happiness or frustration, but it encourages the players to try out things with their own (or rather their avatar's) life. Chance and good luck as well as social interaction can always lead to unexpected results. In the end however a few facts about economic processes, statistical data and about alternative lifestyles should be learned. Maybe as important as that is to have been involved in a joyfull learning experience and to have had an aesthetically pleasing joyride to a para-realistic, proto-realistic or maybe Unreal world.