Sweatshop A Dark Comedic Game on Offshore Manafacturing Favorite 

Date: 

Jul 17 2011

Location: 

Online

From the Games for Change website:


Through a series of thirty challenging levels players must balance the unreasonable demands of Boss, the temperamental factory owner and Boy, a gentle, hard-working child labourer. Together, the team must work to make the factory a roaring success supplying clothes to their ever-demanding retail clients.

The game presents a series of moral dilemmas to the player, who must juggle the needs of clients with the welfare of workers. Should you hire a fire officer to prevent the risk of workers dying horribly in an industrial blaze or pack them in to get the job done? Should you train workers to make them more efficient and satisfied or fire them when they lose a limb in an industrial accident?

As the player journeys through the game, the story of the characters evolve and the sweatshop grows, moving into ever new larger premises with all the complications of management this entails. Ultimately, the player will be managing multiple ranges of clothing across huge labyrinthine conveyor belts, while trying to meet the ever-increasing demands of the disposable, fast-fashion industry.

Video trailer for game:

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Critique: 

The game was released in 2011 and if you play it, one question that comes to mind is how effectively the empathy is communicated in the game. Can one truly empathize with sweatshop workers through a game that simplifies the transactions as unfair, but may not be able to convey depression, and other human factors?

The game was able to garner some press and is currently used in some schools to educate kids on the realities of sweatshops. 

Posted by thelonious on