Make the call before you learn what happened

What it is

Play the Situation is a site of games, each one set inside a real situation from the news: a decision somebody is facing right now, with a deadline, a budget and too little to go on.

The games are not one game in different clothes. Each is its own idea, with its own rules, its own look and its own length, and they run side by side under one name. You keep one nickname and one record across all of them.

What is inside a game is called whatever that game calls it, and every piece of it is something you can finish in minutes. New ones arrive while the site runs, because the news does not stop.

Why a game, and not an article

An article tells you what happened. By the time you read it, the decision has been made, the outcome is known, and everything about it looks obvious. Everyone sounds smart in hindsight.

A game puts you in the room before that. You get what the people in it had: a clock, people who want different things, choices that each give something up, and not enough information. You have to commit. Then you see what the real people did, and the reasons they gave.

Making the call first is the only honest way to find out what you would have done. It is also what makes the real decision worth reading when you get to it.

The real record

Every game carries the real calls behind it: what a named person or body decided, the reason they gave, and where it was reported, with the day someone opened the source and checked it. Each one links to its source, so you can read it for yourself.

The record is kept apart from the game on purpose. A game is a model. Its people are invented, and it says so, and its outcomes are simulations, not predictions. Real conditions can turn out differently, and other decisions may work as well or better. There is no single right answer, and nothing here is financial, legal, medical or professional advice.

How it is kept fair

Every game that is open is shown on equal terms. Wherever the site lists games, they come in the order they have been seen least this week, and the one featured place on the front page follows a written rule, not a preference.

There are no payments, no prizes and nothing to buy. Your record is status, not money. Other players see the name you chose to show, and nothing else.