Birth Lottery started as a small idea that turned into a game. None of us chose where we would be born. Yet the place we're born affects a long list of things, from how many years we live to whether we get to go to school. You can read about this in numbers. Living it through a game sticks with you much longer.
What the site is for
8mlia.com has one goal: to let you feel, in your gut, how much weight your birthplace carries for your chances in life. Indicators like life expectancy, child mortality and income per person look cold in a table. Watch them play out as one person's life, though, and the gap hits you. Roll the same dice once in Japan and once in Chad, and you see how differently the first ten years go.
The game doesn't blame anyone and doesn't lecture anyone. It puts real population data inside a story and lets you draw your own conclusions.
How to play
- Roll the dice. One of 70 countries is drawn, weighted by how many babies are born there each year. You're likely to land in India, because about 23 million babies are born there every year. Along with the country, the game sets your sex, whether you grow up in a city or the countryside, your family's income bracket and how many siblings you have.
- Life unfolds. Over the length you pick, from about 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, your character grows up year by year. They start school, fall ill, fall in love, find a job or don't. How often things happen depends on the data for the country they were born in.
- You make the calls. At a few key moments in life, the choice is yours: study for university or start working, move abroad or stay, take a risky job or not. If you like, the "Auto" button lets the computer decide for you.
- See your result and share it. When the life ends, you see how many years you lived, your score and what share of 500 random lives your score beats. You can make a story image or a challenge link and send it to a friend. Your friend is born as the same person and tries to beat you with their own choices.
There's also a "Life of the Day", where everyone is born as the same person each day. In the passport section, you earn a stamp every time you're born in a new country.
Where does the data come from?
Annual births, life expectancy and fertility rates come from the United Nations World Population Prospects 2024 (WPP 2024). For income per person (at purchasing power parity), deaths of children under 5 and the urbanisation rate, we use the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The values are from around 2022-2023 and appear in the game in approximate, rounded form. You can read the details of the model in How 8mlia works.
Using it in the classroom
Teachers covering geography, social studies, demography or development can use the game in class. A life in the game is an easy way into an abstract idea like "life expectancy". With a challenge link, the whole class can be born as the same person, make different decisions and then compare results. No sign-up is needed, so students don't have to create accounts. The 30-minute option fits into one lesson. If you use it in class, we'd love to hear how it went.
This is a game
The characters, names and event texts are fiction. No records of real people are kept, and no life in the game counts as a forecast or a prophecy. The statistical background is real but deliberately simplified: real life is far more varied than a national average. A result in the game says nothing about your actual lifespan or anyone else's.
Languages and privacy
The site is available in 25 languages and needs no sign-up. Your game history stays only in your own browser. For details, read the privacy policy. For bugs, translation suggestions or anything else, get in touch.