Sitting under a white tent on 13th Avenue on Wednesday at the ASUO Street Faire, local vendor Chris Pender was selling a game based on personal experiences — and it’s even called “Real Life.”
In the Milton Bradley version, “The Game of Life,” every player receives a car, job, spouse, child and retirement plan. But Pender’s parody, “The Game of Real Life,” is not so easy.
Role a one on the first throw of the dice, and the game is over. The player has been aborted. Land on the war square, role a six, and the game is over for everybody. There has been a nuclear war.
Wearing a tie-dye shirt, Pender, who grew up during the Vietnam War, said he enjoyed the original version, but he remembers thinking, “Why isn’t war (included) in this game called ‘life’?”
Thus, when Pender created his parody in 1997, he added the missing ingredient: a complex dose of the modern world. While the player faces poverty, addictions, diseases and death, he or she can also gain intangibles like happiness and peace of mind.
Those — and other — aspects of Pender’s philosophy are clear from the game’s beginning. Before starting, the player flips a coin for gender. After choosing a name, the player roles a dice for economic class and health at birth. Luck is everything.
“Real life has risks,” he said. “You can choose drugs, sex or stealing, but the choice is rare. It is much more a game of fate. Things happen to you.”

Pender said he is currently facing the complexities that are central to his game. He wants to sell 500 games this Christmas, but he has not found the right market. He said game stores don’t want the game — which costs $10 or $27 depending on the type — because of its mature references. On the other hand, sex shops will sell it, but it is often too tame. He also said he does not want to accumulate debt, which he said is necessary to expand his business.
The players are also challenged by the same interplay between money, health and happiness. While health and wealth can fade away in the game, Pender said happiness cannot be lost because it turns into memories.
Freshman Lindsay Amberg, who played the game at the fair with two friends, said the game reminded her of the importance of happiness.
“I had $1,000, and then I died because I ran out of health points,” she said.
In the “The Game of Real Life,” events occur that cannot be anticipated. The player’s character can choose to experiment with sex and drugs. While these choices may bring happiness, they also have the consequences of addictions, diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
However, when Pender designed the game, he saved the graphic details for war in order to emphasize its negative impacts. Characters can inhale anthrax, witness rape and die from ethnic cleansing.
Pender’s game uses shock and dark humor to appeal to consumers. He said that gaining health points from a common sense square isn’t the part of the game that players will probably find funny.
“Getting hit by a tsunami is funny,” he said.
Because of its maturity and dark humor, “The Game of Real Life” is intended for players age 13 and older.
Freshman Krista McLaughlin, whose male character tried LSD and got a sexual disease, agreed, “Little kids wouldn’t understand its concepts.”