How did we come to be who, what, and where we are?
Find answers (and more) in The Game of Humanity, an online board game that traces human history from the Big Bang to the Here Now — and beyond!
Mother Nature, Meet Human Nature
For 13 billion years, Mother Nature ran the show: Stars formed, planets cooled, life crawled out of the ocean. Then humans arrived and started making choices — some brilliant, some catastrophic, most somewhere in-between.
The Game of Humanity puts you inside those choices. You don’t just read about cooperation, competition, empathy, and exploitation — you practice them, against real people or AI opponents who won’t make it easy:
- Human Nature Challenges — social experiments based on game theory: Split resources with someone who can punish you, contribute to a common fund that tempts freeloaders, or quietly rate your own empathy or wellbeing and see how others rated you.
- Aid or Raid — a Prisoner’s Dilemma that erupts whenever two tribes collide. Everyone knows the math. Betrayals happen anyway.
- Dark Mode & Evil Mode — Mother Nature strikes back with plagues, ice ages, and climate collapses that oppress everyone. Who is evil enough to exploit the collective downturn for personal gain? It’s history’s oldest pattern, played out in real time.
- Solo or Multiplayer — up to three AI opponents with genuinely different moral compasses, or up to three other humans with [moral compasses to be determined].
Our Story — Not Just History
We live our lives immersed in the present — working, raising families, navigating the daily challenges of being human. It’s easy to forget that we’re the product of 14 billion years of cosmic and biological history, that every choice we make echoes patterns as old as civilization itself.
This game is a reminder of that context. It encourages you to zoom out (not zone out!) for an hour or so and see the larger story: How did we become who we are? What forces shaped us? What patterns do we keep repeating?
You’ll encounter the same dilemmas humans have always faced — whether to cooperate or compete, to sacrifice for the common good or prosper at others’ expense, to share hardship or exploit it. The game presents these not as abstract concepts, but as concrete choices you have to make, often with consequences for all players.
The mechanics are simple, but the symbolism is not. While you’re competing for Peeps and resolving Human Nature Challenges, you’ll also be experiencing something deeper: what it means to be the only species that can question the nature of its consciousness, tell (and play!) its own story, and help shape what comes next.
Imagine The Game of Humanity as a mirror that reflects not just you, but the 100 billion humans who came before you.
From Stardust to Limitless Possibility
The game board bookmarks 150 events in the story of everything. These events made and continue to make us who we are. Click any of them for a summary; shift-click for its dark/evil twin.
Free and ad-free. Takes about 1 hour to play.
PLAY THE GAMEHumanity of The Game
The Game of Humanity is one Peep’s attempt to reason through and gamify what it means to be human. Yuval Noah Harari did the first part brilliantly in Sapiens, but who reads anymore? A small team developed a play-and-pass version in 2018, and an even smaller team reinvented it as a multiplayer online game in 2025.
Our Mission
The Game of Humanity, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to help people understand human history and human nature through free, ad-free educational games. Our primary program is The Game of Humanity, an online multiplayer game that teaches 14 billion years of cosmic, biological, and cultural history through play, along with social experiments based on game theory.
The Game of Humanity, Inc. · 501(c)(3) nonprofit · EIN 99-3605446
27 W Anapamu St PMB 479, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
Suggestions, corrections, and dissections are welcome at info@gameofhumanity.com.
David Simon — Aggregator-in-Chief
Version 1 Teammates: Reed Gesteland, Maurice Iten, Vadym Kedych, Dan Gilbert
Version 2 Teammates: Claude Code, ChatGPT
What Humans Are Saying after Playing
It’s like a mirror to real human behavior. Do you help the other tribe or take the resources? I kept switching between wanting to be generous and competitive. It really combines history and strategy.
It put me in a situation to spend time with people I care about. My nephew got to practice reading, and I got to relax and learn about humanity and the universe. It’s not just fun — it’s rewarding on a deeper level.
The AI tribes have real tendencies — one raided me every single chance he had. The second game, I ended up with a tribe who actually worked with me. It was a totally different experience.