I just discovered a fun, new game.  It's called The Layoff Game. Maybe I have too much time on my hands, having recently been laid off; however, I found this game to be fun, challenging, and a very timely satire on today’s economic reality. And best of all, you can play it online for free.

Similar in play to the ever popular Bejeweled, players of Layoff attempt to match three or more redundant workers by moving them adjacent to one and other.

The game is played, interestingly enough, from management’s perspective. The objective is to cut operating costs by finding redundancy in job functions and reducing your workforce accordingly.

To do this, click on adjacent workers and they’ll swap places. Once three or more similar workers are aligned, "workplace efficiency adjustments" are made. The redundant workers drop to the bottom of the screen to the unemployment office, while new workers drop in from above.

Here’s the part I love. If you get stuck or find no satisfactory moves are open to you, simply press the "Bank Bailout" button and the game board will reshuffle, thus opening potential new moves.

Great satire for today’s troubled economic times; however, to help us remember that real layoffs impact real people, the Layoff game includes worker biographies. Each worker on the grid has a unique bio. To read it, simply hover the mouse cursor above that worker and their bio will pop up at the bottom of the screen.

The Layoff game is co-produced by Tiltfactor and Values at Play. Both are nonprofit groups. The National Science Foundation and Microsoft funding provided assistance. Mary Flanagan, a professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth College, was the project leader.

Flanagan is Dartmouth’s first holder of the digital-humanities chair. She participates in a research group, the Games for Learning Institute, who has joined with Microsoft Research to study the most efficient ways to use video games in teaching math and science to middle-school students. She is also director and founder of Tiltfactor Laboratory at Dartmouth, which designs games to promote social change.

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