The Uber Game from the Financial Times: a gig-economy news game

The Financial Times released The Uber Game in October 2017 on its own website, alongside an article titled Uber: The uncomfortable view from the driving seat. The game is a text-based adventure built on real reporting, including interviews with dozens of Uber drivers in San Francisco. The player is a driver with a family to support and a $1,000 mortgage payment due in a week, and the task is to earn enough in fares to cover it.

Players pick a difficulty. On Easier the driver has good credit and can afford to live in San Francisco. On Harder the driver has bad credit and lives in Sacramento. From there the choices are small and concrete: whether to buy a car charger and a data plan, whether to work longer hours to complete bonus quests, whether to go home for a promise to a son or keep driving, and whether a half-hour trip to chase triple surge pricing is worth it. At the end the profit is measured against the costs. The Financial Times also published a making-of account, titled How (and Why) the Financial Times Made The Uber Game, on the OpenNews site, in which the team explains that it wanted to prompt players to examine the systems behind gig-economy platforms.

The Uber Game is a news game, not a training product. According to its makers, they wanted to help people understand a subject emotionally and to prompt curiosity about the constraints and biases of gig-economy platforms. It suits readers interested in platform work, students of business models and teachers who want a short, discussion-friendly case.

The game's own page on the Financial Times interactive site loads in November 2026. It shows the title The Uber Game, the question Can you make it in the gig economy?, a Let's ride button, a fullscreen option and a status bar with day of seven, rides and quest progress. The page asks for a current version of Chrome, Safari or Firefox on desktop, or a recent iOS or Android phone, and its footer carries a 2022 copyright line.

No notice of retirement appears on the page, and the game is listed here as playable.