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Sweatshop
A dark and comedic strategy game about offshore manufacturing.
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.
Despite its light-hearted tone, Sweatshop offers an accurate picture of the lives of those who work in the system, from the lowly child workers who stitch together the clothes, all the way up to the Western client who places the orders, responding to the trends set by an image-obsessed celebrity culture. The game is littered with real facts about the fast fashion industry and aims to provoke teenagers into thinking about their fashion choices more carefully.
Funder: Channel 4 Education
Price: Free
Press:
Contact:
Darren Garrett, darren@littleloud.com
Simon Parkin, simon@littleloud.com
Trailer:
Review the Game
This game truly captures what it would be like to work in a sweatshop. The eye-opening facts after each level are jaw-dropping, and make you think twice about where you are shopping. The game is fun, but I am giving it an 8 because it can be a little difficult to get the hang of it, and stay engaged.
Game successfully delivers its message–though clearer directions on how to play with game and if it were more engaging, might have a higher success rate.
Gives the player a glimpse into the hazardous sweatshop world. Enjoyed that even if you don’t play all the levels, you can go to a page called "Sweatshops" that tell you the not so fun facts about sweatshops.
I believe this game is well made, taking the mechanics of a Tower Defense and implementing them with the narrative of a sweatshop is really a perfect fit. The reward system which is based on cash and how it relates to the implementation of trophies gives this game an interesting look into how actual sweatshop managers consider the value of their employees and their well being compared to their salary. I don’t know if my suggestion would fit in the model of a tower defense but one thing that strikes me when thinking about sweatshops is the fact that the manager’s will work their employees until their of no further use, so i was just thinking an age mechanic might be interesting, but i guess it may not quite fit. Still though an amazing game which really has you take a second look.
I really enjoy this game. You’re the assistant trainee manager of a garment factory assembly line. Your job is to hire workers and install amenities that keep those workers from dying, becoming injured, or becoming exhausted. You keep getting a higher quota of pieces to complete and it gets more stressful as time goes by.
It’s not particularly realistic, but it does get its point across.
The best part is that while you’re playing it gives facts and stories regarding the state of the garment industry, such as a company that blocked the fire exits and allowed its workers to burn to death or the famous "suicide nets" built on tall buildings to prevent jumpers from dying.
There is a major oversight in this game, though, and that’s that although the game itself mentions that most garment workers are women, most of the workers in the game are men. This distorts the issue and reduces the major women’s rights component.
This game is great for giving people insight into the garment industry that most of us don’t have.
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