After many years of seemingly endless population growth and technological development, human civilization has finally reached its limit. It takes longer and longer to learn all existing knowledge to be equipped for society; the planet is saturated with population; and worst of all, they will be soon running out of energy resources.

In response to the crisis, they turn to Social Darwinism/eugenics and body modification. They build a spaceship using the best existing technologies and algorithms to foster children.

Children are mass-produced by machines. After birth, they would join a ceremony called graduation. The ceremony is in fact a survival competition. The children are observed, evaluated, and selected by people from the civilization. If they failed to win a spot in the competition before they turn 18, they would become the fuel for the spaceship.

In the contemporary world, the rising technologies and rapidly growing global economy created many unforseen struggles for humanity. However, being an inseparable part of this world, individuals are unavoidably influenced by constructed social practices. Society is a complex interlocking system that no individual could shake on their own. Millions of fragments serve to build and maintain this huge spider web. We are often so entrenched in it that we unknowingly perceive status-quo stories as facts. Thus, I want to create a fictional dystopian world that urges players to reflect on their experiences, understanding, and expectations of the real world. People have been using dystopian works to criticize social reality. In the 20th century, many classic dystopian stories were successful critical narratives working against “the grain of the grim economic, political, and cultural climate” (Baccolini & Moylan, 2003, p. 3). I hope to create a game that embodies similar social significance.

Despite the seemingly dramatic differences, players would discover more parallels between the fictional and the real world as they dive deeper into the game. It would bring people through a process of destruction, doubt, and reconstruction, in which players would reconsider the social construct, power structure, and individual experiences in our society. How constructed identities are used to differentiate and rank people? How technology plays an important role in the system of power? What does each individual experience differently in such an environment?

Our society has a set of standardized assessments to monitor, evaluate, and select people. One would need to go through evaluation after evaluation in their life to achieve anything. Many claimed that standardized testing ensures equality, but the reality is bleak (Au, 2016). Not only has the evaluation system never been equal, it intentionally solidified the established power system. The educational system today is shaped by capitalism and the belief in neoliberalism. Au (2016, para.1) describes education as “a market where consumers can make choices about where to send their children to school.” Although education claims to be a free market, choices are made by people in power. Social-constructed differences are purposely ignored in a society that heavily emphasized personal choices and achievement. In this system, the privileged get more privileges, and the disadvantaged continue to be disadvantaged. In response to this phenomenon, societal influences on characters’ identities will be erased in the game. Characters are represented by numbers, not names. Their intelligence, memories, physical ability, and other identities are fully generated by machines. Thus, it would look unfair for the children to compete with each other since they have no control over their birth. Referencing the real-world situation, one would discover parallels between the machine and social construct, which would induce players to question the eligibility of ranking in the first place.