Where Eight Billion Lives came from
Eight Billion Lives was inspired by 1 in 8 Billion, a game where you are born as one random person and live that life. We liked the idea enough to make our own version. This page says what we took from it and what we built ourselves.
The idea
A birth lottery: you do not choose where you start. You are born somewhere, into some family, in some year, and the rest of the game is living with that. The idea makes a statistic personal. “Half the world lives on a few dollars a day” is easy to skim past. Being the person who does is harder to forget.
What we took
The idea, and only the idea: being born as one person chosen by chance, and living that life. We did not take any code, text or art from the original.
What is ours
- Real odds. Your country, sex, setting and year of birth follow public birth statistics, not a hand-made list.
- Labeled numbers. Every statistic is marked Sourced, with its source, or Extrapolated, with the model used. Read how accurate the game is.
- Same seed, same life. Every life replays exactly from its seed, so you can share a life and someone else can live the same one.
- No AI model while you play. The story text comes from templates, and the game shows a counter of model calls that stays at zero.
- Your notes stay on your device unless you choose to share them.
The full walk-through is on How it works.
Not affiliated
Eight Billion Lives is an independent project. It is not made by, endorsed by or connected to the makers of 1 in 8 Billion, and the name is ours.
Play the original
If the idea appeals to you, try 1 in 8 Billion as well. It is where this started.